Delivering the goods ...

One more afterthought about our recent voyage on England's historic canals:

Adam Tooze points out: "The railway revolution of the 19th century in Britain really was not good for the canals which provided bulk transport in the early industrial revolution."

Click to enlarge.

 

England is honeycombed with canals that served as major modes of commerce -- until, precipitously, they didn't. 

Today these canals are curiosities enjoyed by pleasure boaters -- and in some areas the source of local water supplies.

Having grown up in proximity to New York State's Erie Canal, this is not hard to fathom.

When hate becomes a problem ...

 

Anita Chabria is a highly opinionated, downright cheeky, political columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her take on the Trump-Vance shitshow is delicious. 

The Trump campaign has long seemed to function on the belief that it could scurry around under the garbage of racism and misogyny, nibbling at ideas such as the Great Replacement Theory (that immigrants are “hordes” that will destroy America), then run for cover when the spotlight flips on.

“Fake news!” they cry when caught in the glare. “Liberal media!”

It’s a cynical strategy of barfing ugly all over the rug, then blaming it on the dog, to switch critters on you.

It skitters underneath the “cat lady” claims, as well as the false “chameleon” narrative that Kamala Harris does not equally embrace her Indian and Black heritages.

Both assertions are about putting women and minorities in their place with venomous dog whistles of resentment and rancor that ring clearly in the ears of a certain set of voters, ones that have long made up Trump’s most loyal following — angry young white men.

But a funny thing happened when the Democratic ticket became a California stepmother with Hindu and Jewish influences and a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner with two IVF kids.

The dog whistles changed frequency and we all could hear them clearly.

It turns out the average voter — the swing state undecided who is critical to victory — doesn’t believe “childless cat ladies” are a subset of sociopaths. Or that being mixed race is somehow too confusing to comprehend.

Hate is a lot harder to hide — or embrace — when it’s directed at particular people. When the Trump playbook found itself unexpectedly facing Harris and Walz, the bitterness against diversity, equity and inclusion morphed.

The derided acronym — DEI — switched from being a dog whistle into shorthand for values most of us respect, and that many families embody everyday simply through their complicated, varied existences.

California values. American values. Family values.

What’s the Trump campaign to do?

... the problem for Trump-Vance is that their family values have long been grounded in white Christian nationalism — controlling women, ending rights for the LGBTQ+ community — and backing away from the hate is freaking out that base. That is especially true for those angry men.

“Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign,” white nationalist Nick Fuentes wrote recently. “We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”

Groypers, for those with better things to consider, are a bunch of far-right white supremacists who count Fuentes as their leader.

Right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan also signaled defection from Trump, seemingly endorsing Robert Kennedy Jr. before backing away from that. Ditto for hard-right YouTuber Tim Pool.

Trump is feeling that heat enough that Monday night he did a social media interview with Elon Musk, child-king of petulant men. That call drew more than 1 million listeners.

During that conversation — calling it an interview is an insult to anyone who has ever asked a sentient question — Trump gave the usual rants, including his promise to close the U.S. Department of Education. “Not every state will do great” with giving their kids the foundation for success, he conceded. But it will be So Great for the far-right. As for Musk, it was serious fanboy energy

Not all of those listening were fans, to be sure (I was one of those million). But it turns out angry men really do like Trump, and he really does like that adoration — Sally Field at the ’85 Oscars type of like.

They like the Trump who calls immigrants murderers and rapists. They like the Vance who slams women for not procreating according to his standards.

They don’t want to be moderate.

And so Trump-Vance has a problem. Going for the middle may gain some votes. But it may also lose the hate-based base.

I wonder how long it will be before some more national outlet swoops up a writer of Chabria's caliber? For the sake of the LAT's long suffering fans, I hope she gets a good run in the southland.

Migrant lives are on the line in November

Mexican journalist and TV news anchor Leon Krauze is asking what I think is the right question: What would Donald Trump (and his evil sidekick Stephen Miller) deporting 15 million undocumented immigrants look like?

Trump’s plans to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in history are no secret — he refers to them frequently in stump speeches. And the outlines of the plan have been amply documented. ...These vulnerable millions know no other country but this one. If they are forced to leave everything they have behind overnight, their anguish will make the hideous stories of family separations we heard during the first Trump term pale in comparison.

I struggle to fully understand some Hispanic voters’ enduring support for Trump today, given his racist rhetoric and terrifying policy proposals. While Latinos are generally more moderate on immigration policy than the average American, a considerable number appear to favor punitive measures. In a recent poll, 53 percent of Hispanic voters said they would support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, with 50 percent supporting “large detention centers” for those awaiting possible deportation.

One possibility is that the sheer scale of Trump’s proposed immigration policies is making it hard for people to comprehend the human toll.

... If carried out, Trump’s planned mass deportation would leave nearly 4½ million children in the United States partially or wholly orphaned. The impact of mass deportation on families would be profound. In Florida, nearly 2 million U.S. citizens or non-undocumented residents live in households with at least one undocumented person; in California, it’s more than 4 million.

The sudden disappearance of a parent or a main provider will be devastating: It is estimated that more than 900,000 households with at least one child who is a U.S. citizen will fall below the poverty line if the undocumented breadwinners in these families are deported. ...

For years I have tried to explain to Anglos that the absurdities of U.S. immigration law mean, at least here in California, that most immigrant families live in what's called "mixed status." Because of history, because the border has at times been close to fictional, because there is often no way to migrate "the right way, the legal way," ordinary people often live "out of status." 

If it is not the two parents, it's Auntie Isabel who is undocumented, but looks after the kids while the parents work. For a long time, it was a friend of mine whose immigrant family came "legally"; but they had a lot of kids and somehow they never got around to doing the paper work for him. There are hundreds of variations of immigration anomalies, so as there are millions of long term US residents, our neighbors, who live in legal limbo.

Since 1986 (!) Congress has not been able to pass and a president sign any major reform to our convoluted immigration laws. Republicans have largely decided that inciting hostility to migrants serves their interests. Democrats too have sometimes been hostile to immigration law reform. Presidents have attempted adjustments by way of executive orders, but those create precarious situations for people, as did President Obama's creation of the "Dreamer" category of quasi-legalization.

The most recent effort to enact major immigration reform was attempted by a coalition spearheaded by Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma in February 2024. Democratic Senators signaled they'd vote for it, however reluctantly. But Donald Trump preferred to keep immigration alive as a complaint against Dems, so that reform died.

If Trump is elected, he bellows that mass deportations will follow; if we elect Kamala Harris (and a cooperative House and Senate), perhaps there might be a genuine immigration reform law thirty years after the last one. The world has changed; human displacement only increases. It's time to bring a broken system up to date as humanely as we are able.

Tim Walz is a labor giuy

It has been a commonplace to say that Joe Biden has been the most pro-labor president since ... well, forever. But Tim Walz may boast an even more supportive record of accomplishments for unions and working people; Walz even walked a picket line during last fall's United Auto Workers strike.

Timothy Noah explains:

The centerpiece of Walz’s labor policy is S.F. 3035, a law he signed in May 2023 that the news website Minnesota Reformer described as potentially “the most significant worker protection bill in state history.” The law requires Minnesota employers to grant full-time workers at least six paid sick days per year; bans noncompete clauses in new employment contracts; bans “captive audience” meetings, in which workers are required to listen managers’ anti-union messaging; establishes a board to set minimum pay and benefits for nursing home workers; extends job protections to meatpackers who refuse work they deem too dangerous; designates general contractors in the construction industry as joint employers jointly responsible for any wage theft committed by their subcontractors; and requires warehouse distribution centers (notably, Amazon’s) to furnish workers with clearer instructions on their expected work pace and also data on how well those workers are meeting those expectations.

Governor Walz signs bill creating paid family leave

In addition, the bill allows classroom size in public schools to be negotiated through collective bargaining and extends to early education and adult education teachers the same contract protections enjoyed by K-12 teachers.

... in May Walz signed a bill requiring Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare companies to pay drivers a minimum of $1.28 per mile and 31 cents per minute (excluding tips). According to the Service Employees International Union, this constituted a 14 percent increase over the average driver’s 2022 compensation. No other state has established a pay minimum for rideshare drivers. This precedent probably doesn’t thrill Harris’s brother-in-law, Tony West, who’s preparing to go on leave as Uber’s chief legal officer to work on her campaign as “family-member surrogate” (whatever that means).

Walz left Congress with a lifetime score from the AFL-CIO of 93 percent,...

Okay --he's a Minnesotan, long a very good place for labor. Still, this guy is special.

Lebanon on my mind ...

The Post reports:

The exodus from Lebanon began last week after back-to-back assassinations targeted a Hezbollah commander near Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

... Vacations cut short, hurried goodbyes and last-minute flights at exorbitant fares — residents and tourists, heeding warnings of an impending war, are scrambling to leave summertime Lebanon as tensions build between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese ally.

Britain has ordered its citizens to “leave Lebanon now,” while Paris is urging French nationals to depart “as soon as possible.” The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, in an alert over the weekend, instructed Americans who wish to leave to “book any ticket available to them.”

At the Beirut airport, passengers waited for delayed flights or for seats to open up, tired children resting against luggage carts piled high with suitcases, their parents sipping coffee out of paper cups. As airlines such as Lufthansa, Air France and Royal Jordanian cancel flights to and from the country, ticket prices have skyrocketed, putting them out of reach for many Lebanese grappling with the effects of an economic crisis, including soaring inflation and a currency that has lost much of its value. ...

Once again, Beirutis have reason to fear their small country is about to devastated by an Israeli attack on Hezbollah. Western media always neglects to mention that Hezbollah, though certainly the most heavily armed faction in this divided country, is also a legitimate part of what passes for government in Lebanon.

We visited in 2006, just prior to the last time Israel blasted the Beirut airport and much of the city to bits. So much has come to pass since then.

This picture of an advertising balloon over the city could not be taken today. Several years later an explosion in the port blew out the windows to the balcony from which I took this shot -- that apartment was no longer habitable.

That was an accident of sorts. But this would be war and retribution, largely striking people who have had no choice but to be in the firing line.

What comes around ...

The New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie offers the observation [gift article] that, by nominating a couple of unattractive weirdos, the Republicans seem to be ceding to Democrats the terrain of the "normal" in US politics.

It's a delicious column, reaching into recent political history as Bouie often does. He points out.

... they’ve given Democrats an opportunity to do what Nixon did: to make their party the party of the silent majority and to define Republicans as one of the worst things a party can be in modern American politics.

Weird.

However I can't let pass what Bouie also reminds me of: GOPer Richard Nixon prosecuted his case that Democrat George McGovern was outside the bounds of normal Americaness by representing the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion,”

Nixon's charge hasn't aged very well.

• Today the Dems are the party of legalizing weed -- an overwhelmingly popular position.

• "Amnesty" referred to re-incorporation of Vietnam war resisters in the political mainstream. Though there's still some residual heat among some old people, the national consensus has long hardened that the US campaign against Vietnam was, at most charitably, a murderous mistake and that the draftee army which fought it had to be completely reconstituted in the 1970s.

• As for abortion, Dems are now firmly the party of "mind you own damn business!" when it comes to women's reproductive choices.

Times have changed and look who is weird now ...

Friday cat blogging

Today the local cats yield pride of place to the magnificent animal that VP nominee Tim Walz brought home from Mankato rescuers.

According to that Humane Society, Afton rules the roost in the state residence where the Walz's live. 

Afton’s antics keep the first family on their toes. He inserts himself into the Governor’s public policy work to demand affection. He sends emails full of random letters from the First Lady to colleagues at the State Capitol. And he has made countless homework assignments disappear from family computers.

At the Governor’s mansion, Afton has the luxury of water bowls on every level of the house. But Minnesota’s first feline is obsessed with water being fresh. It’s not uncommon for him to demand a fresh refill by tipping over every bowl in the house. 

Afton is as affectionate as he is mischievous. Gwen Walz says the family fell in love with him as soon as they met him. The three-year-old "cuddle bug," a former stray, was adopted from the Blue Earth Nicollet County Humane Society in Mankato. Adoption was an easy choice for the Walz family. "We know there’s a lot of animals that need homes."   

You shall know your leaders by the animals who agree to live with them? Perhaps yes!

Walz delight

They say (whoever "they" is) that vice-presidential picks don't matter to election outcomes. And "they" are probably right, though I remember vividly the emergence of a certain half-term governor of Alaska who helped tank John McCain's already hobbled presidential run in 2008. (Is JD in that category? He just might be.)

Kamala Harris's pick of Tim Walz to replace her in her thankless job is eliciting squeals of delight in all the right places. Here are two you might not have seen.

Jess Piper writes from tough terrain; she works to rebuild the Democratic Party in rural Missouri. 

Walz is so perfect for the job of VP. He’s a rural progressive. He’s my people. A dirt road Democrat. He’s a liberal guy who lives among conservative folks. He’s a veteran, a teacher, a lawmaker, and a dad. Walz can speak to Republicans and can likely help pull in Independent votes.

He can show up to an event in a tee and a hat and a Carhart jacket and not look like he’s trying to be something he isn’t.

Walz is the guy who could install your gutters and snake your drain and patch a hole in your drywall. He can also sign a bill into law to feed every kid in your state breakfast and lunch for free. How can you not love the guy?

Anita Chabria writes politics for the LA Times. Does anyone still care what the failing newspaper in our second largest city thinks? They might.

This guy. He’s pure Minnesota, in the best way. He was in the National Guard for 24 years. He coached football. He was a social studies teacher who advised his high school’s first LGBTQ+ club.

Since then, he’s been a champion for LGBTQ+ rights, in a part of the country where there’s often little political capital for doing so.

He has signed laws protecting gender-affirming healthcare. He’s stopped book banning for containing gender issues. He’s protected abortion rights. He’s banned so-called conversion therapy, the controversial practice of attempting to un-gay people through religion or other methods.

Perhaps most notably, he’s the guy who started the “weird” framing of Vance — and Republicans in general. That bit of low-key genius has stuck, completely changing the dynamics of the race by putting Republicans on the defensive. A few days ago, Trump got all playground-hurt, saying, “Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.”

Perhaps most endearing, he posts videos with his daughter Hope that are pure dad. They’ve got some real Fargo humor going. (Yes, I know that’s North Dakota. Close enough.)

And, as a bonus, if a Harris-Walz ticket won, Walz’s lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, would become the first Native American governor in American history.

The campaign is going to be fun. Hard, not easy. But don't bet against joy and goodness.

We forget at our peril

Seventy-nine years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the city and people of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later we dropped a bomb of slightly different design on the city and people of Nagasaki. Two hundred thousand people were killed immediately. Survivors, a dying cohort, live on with varying degrees of disability.

The New York Times has produced a sensitive introduction to the remaining hibakusha. Here's a gift link.

 

The arrival of the Atomic Age had intense impacts on the childhoods of my age cohort, American children of '50s and '60s. We knew we might be blown away if the powers-that-be miscalculated. We practiced absurd "duck and cover" drills in elementary school. Most of us knew these exercises were what we later learned to call "security theater." (Did the adults put us through this to push back against their own secret terrors? I wonder.)

 

Now we scarcely think about the Bomb at all. The kind of people who specialize in these things fear we're in as great danger of blowing ourselves up as we've ever been.

But the worst hasn't happened yet. Seventy-nine years ...

Suicide watch

Writing in the Israeli magazines +972 and Local Call, the Iranian-Israeli political activist Orly Noy expresses the agony of this moment on the verge of an even more catastrophic spasm of violence.

Israeli leaders celebrate assassinations — and make the living pay the price

... “Death-worthy” is probably the most well-worn phrase in Israeli public discourse to describe the recent assassinations. It is one among many justifications Israel has found for its uninhibited violence over the last ten months. But there is something terrifying about the fact that the question of whether or not someone is deemed “death-worthy” dictates our fate here more than whether we civilians are life-worthy.

At every intersection since the massacres of October 7, Israel has chosen the path of violence and escalation. Justifications have never been lacking: we must respond forcefully to the attacks; we must persecute those who initiated and executed it; we must intensify the pressure until they return the hostages; we must attack Lebanon in response to the rockets; we must signal to Iran that we will not be silent about its support for Hezbollah.

Ultimately, however, the automatic choice of violent escalation is suicidal. This inertia is so sweeping that it does not allow us to ask basic, existentially vital questions: Has the criminal genocide we are perpetrating in Gaza increased the security of a single person in Israel? Are we safer now, while we wait for the Iranian response? Is Israel doing better on the world stage than it was on October 7?

... It is easy to pin everything on Netanyahu; to say that the war serves his political survival, and that he has an interest in continuing it indefinitely. This is true, but it is too easy a way out. Netanyahu indeed chose to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the lives of Israeli hostages, and our collective security for his personal gain. But the Israeli public devoted itself from the very beginning, with chilling joy, to the deadly path that Netanyahu paved.

• • •

While sorting through some of my extensive cache of old demonstration photos the other day, I encountered this.

 The date was December 2008. It's been a long process, but the direction has not changed.

If you don't like it, lump it

Click to enlarge.

This comes from something called the Guernsey Country Democratic Club, Cambridge, Ohio. My sentiments exactly. Do click to read.

An observation -- I felt less frequently misgendered during our recent time in the UK than I do at home. Perhaps the very fit older woman is a more common cultural type, though there are certainly plenty of other types too.

A miscellany of British museums

What did we do in England for the month of July? In addition to crewing on a narrowboat and hiking in the Lake Country, we visited museums. Here are a few of them:

The best, or at least most rewarding, first: the Imperial War Museum outside Manchester. I've wanted to visit one of the IWM's three locations for years. The visit was totally worth our time; we did it by tram from the boat. This charitable foundation shares not just stories of wartime heroism and sacrifices, of massive social upheavals, but also asks the questions and highlights the misgivings raised by Europe's spasms of 20th century barbarism. 

• • •

Also in Manchester, we visited the Science and Industry Museum which recounts, celebrates, and interrogates the history of the first modern industrial city. Erudite Partner was mainly excited by the historic cotton looms; she's a weaver. I was gripped by seeing this earl 20th century Linotype machine on display; in the early 1970s when I worked on the Catholic Worker newspaper, we went to press from a shop that used just such a set up; their real business was printing Variety, but they made room for us. Typesetting consisted of a skilled printing professional typing out lead lugs for each line of print from such a mechanism. The machines, arrayed in a long line, were deafening.

I sat in on a class which instructed 8 year olds about the industrial and scientific accomplishments of their city. They were enthusiastic.

• • •

 

On the  Liverpool docks, we visited the International Slavery Museum. I got the impression of a facility trying to find its footing. On the one hand, the museum makes very clear how the trade in human chattel formed the city, its economy, and its residents.

 

But the museum seems to be struggling to give voice to what enslavement meant in the lives of the enslaved people. A work in progress?

• • •

In Sheffield, we were impressed by the Kelham Island Museum which documents the industrial accomplishments of the city, particularly in steel fabrication. Among these, the prototype of the modern water closet.

Sheffield is a city whose prosperity is rooted in steel fabrication, so it is not surprising that its Anglican cathedral features this steel nativity scene by Brian Fell.

We had a great time, away from the local lunacy. There are few joys to equal learning about new places and people!

Friday cat blogging

 

Meet Pancake. She oversees her home, neighborhood, and humans in Sheffield, England. She too often brings home partially eviscerated mice, but is otherwise the sweetest of domestic companions.

 

On the home front, Janeway and Mio are alert for passing birds or interesting people. Many passersby wave to them. To their frustration, they are not, unlike Pancake, allowed to go out to chase.

• • •

I had hoped to returned to this blog with post-vacation energy, but instead find myself tired and feverish. Tests say not COVID, so I should come around soon enough.

The Harris agenda is freedom for this time

Pamela Herd, a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, has taken a stab at laying out what our new Democratic presidential candidate offers as a positive vision for the country. I found her observations a helpful summary:

“Weird” might be effective political messaging, but it tells us little about what a Harris presidency would look like. ...

Harris promotes a different vision of freedom, a version that evokes, but updates, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s definition of freedom, where people are free from want and fear and have freedom of speech and religion. With Beyonce in the background, Harris calls for:

• The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead.

• The freedom to be safe from gun violence.

• The freedom to make decisions about your own body.

• We choose a future where no child lives in poverty.

• Where we can all afford health care.

• We believe in the promise of America and we are ready to fight for it.

This isn’t just a laundry list of policy goals. It’s a coherent vision of what government should, and should not, do. ...

... In her stump speech, a key line is that “we’re not going back.” Audiences have responded by chanting “not going back” in response. ...

I can live with this -- even thrill to this.

It seems to me that Joe Biden offered a vision suitable to his age and experience. As the last of our politicians formed in the before-Reagan times, he harked back to a New Deal-influenced vision of using the state to grow an economy which spread its benefits more equitably and broadly. And we should be more grateful than we are for his leadership.

Harris came up in a different time, with politically active immigrant parents of color, influenced by the liberation movements of the '50s,'60's, and early '70s. An optimistic vision of freedom for all, unbounded by old verities, was the fruit of those heady days. Harris's themes seem to me to derive from that moment -- and I love it!

The civil rights struggle of Black Americans for full citizenship made her candidacy possible. The struggle for women's liberation underpins her constituency and appeal. And the LGBT+ struggle for liberation has unleashed the potential to re-imagine society in novel configurations.

I doubt very much that Harris can fulfill all the hopes her vision of freedom offers. But I can enthusiastically get behind a leader from a new generation whose person was impossible under the old rules -- and who looks forward to new rules. Bring on the Harris campaign. I'm on board.

It's still up to us

Heather Cox Richardson reminds that, in a democracy in which the people's will counts, history can turn unexpectedly. 

... In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.

Today there are postcards to voters. In 1860 there were envelope covers with the message.

The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement.

And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution.

The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….”

And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. ....

... It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.

It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.

Thanks to the Democratic Party for, at length, taking up the task.

Lay off the cat people!

I am indeed a "childless crazy cat lady." Janeway and Mio will testify to that. 

When I first heard of this slur from Trump's mini-me JD Vance, I figured I was hearing garden variety homophobia. If we find these posturing bros repulsive, we must be queer. Well, yippee for that!

But Republican natalism -- their obsessive fixation on women bearing children -- is even more vile than simple homophobia. 

JVL of the Bulwark spells out the deeper scandal of GOPer bigotry:

... while Vance and his confederates are super-duper concerned about childless people who “have no stake in America’s future” I have also heard many conservatives/Republicans express a great deal of concern about brown people having too many babies.

... You may have forgotten, but back in the 1990s, conservatives were worried about African-American women having too many babies, so they pushed for a welfare “family cap” which denied extra benefits for low-income women (translation: African-American women) who had children while on public assistance.

Sometimes the Republican pro-natalists let the mask slip. Last year in Texas Republicans pushed a bill that would give large property tax credits to households with four or more children.

But not all households with four or more children. The bill was tailored so that in order to qualify the household would have to be comprised of two heterosexual married adults, neither of whom had been divorced, and—most importantly—who owned the property in which they dwelled.

I’m sure it was just coincidence that in Texas home ownership rates are significantly higher for whites than blacks and Hispanics.

So remember: When you hear JD Vance & Co. talk about the importance of having babies because parenthood gives you some sort of special stake in the country, sure, that’s a batshirt idea.

But this batshirt idea isn’t even on the level. They mean something very different. Here’s what they actually mean:

They are threatened by the fertility patterns of minorities and view white women who don’t have babies as race-traitors.

For too many of our MAGA compatriots, it comes back to racial fears projected outward as racism.

There's something about the women ...

Since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, it's been fun for your vacationing campaigners (that's EP and I) to read about an outpouring of enthusiasm, anchored by women. We feared this was going to be a death march against impending MAGA fascism -- ethically necessary, but entirely defensive rather than uplifting.

They met in January as veteran campaigners do. They knew they would have to take up this fight for decency and sanity. I hope most can now share the new hope

Apparently there are plenty of people who are now feeling engaged. 44,000 Black women jammed a zoom call. 40,000 new voter registrations -- most likely young people -- in one day. 

Sure, there will be bumps in the road; many of us will wish Kamala were more able to break free from the inclinations of the administration which brought her here. 

But she gives us a chance. When you've been terrified you were condemned to a MAGA world, the relief is energizing.

Frank Bruni of the NYTimes catches some of this: 

... [Women] still don’t enjoy full equality with men in America, but we sure have been leaning on them lately to save American democracy. The appallingly stymied attempts to hold Trump responsible for his crimes have rested largely on the efforts of women, a few of whom did vanquish him in court, as my Times Opinion colleague Jessica Bennett noted in an essay in April. She did a roll call of his pursuers: “Letitia James. Fani Willis. E. Jean Carroll, and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan. And, of course, Stormy Daniels. The five women who are living rent-free in Mr. Trump’s mind these days.”

I’d add “crazy Nancy Pelosi” — Trump is still regularly calling her that, unable to purge her from his thoughts — to the list. (Jessica wrote about Pelosi in an essay this week.) Also former Representative Liz Cheney: Nobody on the House panel investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, was more forceful or impassioned than she was in exposing Trump’s actions and inaction on that day. She, too, squats somewhere in Trump’s gray matter, so much so that he recently amplified social media posts that accused her of treason and urged that she be subjected to a televised military tribunal.

... Women’s reproductive rights are in the foreground of this presidential election, Harris is practiced and eloquent in her defense of them, and that could widen a gender gap in a way that works to Democrats’ advantage. Women voters could be the barricade between Trump and that first-day dictatorship.

Also, as my Times colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote recently, and as I discussed with two prominent Democrats in a conversation published on Wednesday, women opponents bring out the ugliest in Trump. Harris will quickly take up residence with Pelosi, Cheney and the gang.

And Trump will have to build an annex, maybe to his frontal or occipital lobe, to accommodate the sorority.

Unless the law gets further twisted to accommodate Trump's crimes, New York State Judge Merchan has now scheduled sentencing in his hush money felonies for September 18. 

It's the crook v. the prosecutor now -- and she's a girl!

*Title borrowed from the 1970s "women's movement" anthem.

Thank you Joe Biden; bring on Kamala Harris. And Nancy delivers again.

So our Democratic leaders have, at length, led. We can now get on with the business of trouncing MAGA. The dis-eased and depleted state of the nation may defeat us, but the majority of us still have a chance to live to struggle another day for hope, justice, civil compassion and government of the people.

Many of us have watched in horror for the past three weeks as the Democratic Party, through whose big tent we are forced to work, has seemed mired in indecision and in desperate need of a generational transition. Well, we've begun one.

In this moment I want to bring forward a bit of almost forgotten San Francisco history. My Congresscritter, the former Speaker and still Party wisewoman Nancy Pelosi, first came into office through a managed generational transition not so different than the one we are seeing now.  She knows how this goes.

In the 1960s and '70s, San Francisco was represented in Congress by Phil Burton, a liberal giant whose legislative efforts included civil rights, environmental protection, disability rights, and the struggle for health care for all. And then, at in 1983 at age 56, a ruptured aortic embolism killed this man on the move. His wife Sala Burton slid into the safe Democratic seat and served two terms, before succumbing to colon cancer in 1987. The shocking Burton transitions left many progressive Californians unmoored.

Nancy Pelosi was a prominent California Democratic leader, a powerhouse fundraiser. But she had not ever held elective office herself. As Sala Burton was dying, Pelosi came away with her death bed endorsement for the San Francisco Congressional seat. Oh, now this Pacific Heights lady wants to be in Congress?

Not all San Franciscans were ready to jump on what seemed an anti-Democratic dynastic transition. The city was then full of left activists, supporters of revolutions in Central America, of affordable housing for all, and particularly of gay and lesbian AIDS campaigners, desperately trying to force the murderous epidemic onto the national agenda. In the special election held to replace Sala Burton, these forces combined behind gay Supervisor Harry Britt. Nancy consolidated the money, the party regulars, and the politically active unions; Nancy wiped the floor with Harry. (I know. I did some door knocking for poor Harry.)

In the end, Pelosi has been a magnificent Democratic Party leader. From her safe seat in San Francisco, she has served her true constituency, her fractious party. Those of us who cast ballots for her are just extras in her Party drama -- but mostly she's been good for the broad progressive project. 

I feel confident that she has had a strong role in the Biden to Harris transition. This sort of thing is her political meat and potatoes and her political genius. Thanks again, Nancy -- I feel sure you have been in the middle of getting us here.

As we try to take in the changes we're riding though ...

... we can enjoy this remarkable art.

I find this creature very soothing. More later.

We already decided this -- we don't like kings

David Rothkopf writes a Substack, Need to Know, which is both hilariously funny (follow the link) -- and wise. He offers these reassuring reflections after watching the Republican convention. 

... The GOP, after all, are not just the party of Trump. They are also the party promoting the idea of the “unitary executive,” a monarch-like president around who sits atop a government that answers to him. Democrats on the other hand recognize or should recognize that the senior most position in our system of government is the citizen, the voter. The president works for us. He or she is accountable to us. That is one of the main reasons the Revolutionary War was fought and it is a concept that Americans have defended with their lives for the past nearly 250 years.

... The Democratic Party is therefore not only not all about our president or presidential candidate of the moment. To succeed, it must be about a large group of professionals committed to shared ideals and goals working to serve a much, much larger group of bosses—the public at large. We should not be, must not become, a party that places loyalty to any one individual ahead of the mission that has brought us all together, that has made what we agree on far more important than our disagreements but must also make a respectful hearing of those disagreements a central part of how we serve a profoundly diverse society.

They have taken blended their cult of personality with their authoritarian impulses and brought this country to the brink of autocracy. (Or returned us to it. After all, as I noted before, that was the state we rebelled against in the first place.) We Democrats ultimately offer the better answer for the country precisely because we are not about any one individual, we are not about blind loyalty to one person’s ideas. We are about capturing and embodying the spirit of democracy of finding a way to serve the many by representing, listening to, acting on behalf the many.

What Democrats are going through now is all good. It is just what we should be discussing. It will make us stronger. It is absolutely certain we all share and will work for the goal of defeating Trump. And that brings me to my last point. Which is I believe we will win in November and not just by a little and, just as importantly, I know we will be ready to better serve the people of this country than the alternative offered by the other cult-like party.

We haven't always, or even often, been a good country. But we were founded with a glimmer of hope for something novel and good. Now our "leaders" need to stop dillydallying and we the people need to get to work. No kings here.

Next post will turn to vacation pictures -- when I can get online again.

Before the railroads, there were canals

England's industrial innovations in the 1700s and early 1800s wouldn't have changed the world (and enriched capitalist entrepreneurs much like the tech moguls of today) if moving product had continued to depend on horses and wagons. And so, the country developed a network of small canals. In the mid-1800s, these water ways were rendered obsolete by railways, but many remain intact and boaters navigate them on what are called narrowboats, barely 7 feet wide and as much as 60 feet long.

The Erudite Partner and I have just enjoyed two weeks on the Llangollen, Trent and Mersey, and Bridgewater Canals, accompanying her brother who is moving such a boat north for its owner. Some pictures:

Would that more days were this bright and clear! Fog and wind in San Francisco is good preparation for an English summer. But when the sun breaks through, a glimpse of "England's green and pleasant land."

Along the shore, small business eke out a living from the traffic.

 

Passing through larger towns, the canal can become somewhat crowded.

 

Then back to quiet and solitude.

 

The canals made transport possible by using locks to raise and lower boats over the rises in the terrain.

 

Boaters operate the paddles at each lock, opening and closing off the water, sometimes with advice from local volunteers. These two women were learning the drill. Erudite Partner and I cranked through dozens of locks while Captain Josh drove.

This is what it looks like from the boat while passing inside a lock.

 

Where a canal encountered substantial rises, the builders dug tunnels. Boaters have to approach with caution; the tunnels are only barely wider and higher than a single boat. On long tunnels entry is timed -- first north bound gets 20 minutes, then the south bound boats take their short turn. Here's what a tunnel entrance looks like:

That's a short one. Sometimes there are curves and some are as long as a mile. Here's what this one looks like while inside.

 

A towpath runs along the canal and serves walkers and runners well, though it is largely uncrowded.

 

Let me close with a pic of E.P. taking the helm.

 

The narrowboat made for an easy and enjoyable adventure. We disembarked near Manchester, leaving Josh to finish his journey with a new crew. We are now on to the Lake Country. More when I have connection and thoughts.

No wonder violence came for Donald

Still out of the country for another two weeks, but able to get online for a brief comment.

Again he dominates our heads. 

Donald Trump traffics in delight in violence. A convenient list via Jay Kuo.

• Trump urged supporters at rallies to beat up protestors. 

• He called for Black Lives Matter rioters to be shot.  

• He used racist language to inflame hate and hate-based attacks against Asian American during the pandemic.  

• He made fun of the brutal attack upon Nancy Pelosi’s husband.  

• He mocked the notion that radicals had plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  

• His words helped inspire racist mass shooters in Buffalo and El Paso.  

• He approved of chants to “Hang Mike Pence.”  And he incited the violent January 6 attack upon the Capitol.

No wonder violence came for him. That's how the world works. We quite often get what we live by.

The MAGAs work to enable every idiot in the country to run around with weapons of war and then wonder why people, including their Orange Totem, get shot.

I guess I'm glad this incident didn't kill him, but if that broken boy's aim had been better, I'd still think Trump got what he asked for.

Too many MAGAs have put American democracy, the rule of law, and human decency in their gun sites. Most of us aren't among the gun-obsessed nor do we wish to stomp on the freedoms, and the people themselves, with whom we coexist, however uncomfortably at times. 

We still have the choice to practice diligent voting and compassionate justice activism.

And we can be kind to each other, seeking to sow better fruit and a better future. That is all.

• • •

Meanwhile there were the inadvertent casualties, the spectators killed and maimed as forced participants in a spectacle. The frolics of cruelty leave their victims.

• • •

I came of age in 1968, during the last era of directly political American violence. We've forgotten how good we've had it.

On vacay as the USofA simmers, literally and politically.

Take care of things, folks.

Our once and future king?

So says the Supreme Court majority. 

Are we going to put up with these black-robed partisans anointing a monarch? That's not our tradition.

I will now resume my vacation, writing from London where they set some precedents about what to do about kings who care only for themselves. Doubt that DJT knows about that. That was a messy process... not something anyone wants to live.

Blog and blogger on break for the month of July

Narrowboat, By RHaworth - Own work, Wikipedia

I'll be on one of these on English canals for a couple of weeks with Erudite Partner and her brother, moving it for the owner. We've seen pictures -- it looks pretty cushy. After that, several destinations in the UK.

Unless something earth shattering occurs, I'll try to stay off this blog -- but who knows? We never do know what to expect these difficult days.

Biden fights back

This is running in the battleground states. That's what they do with all that money they keep asking for. Will it help? It might. 

This is a marathon, not a sprint.