Forced to listen to people say they don't like him

Today I had lunch with my friend and debate partner. After our usual discussion of personal adventures he turned to discussing Israel and Gaza. In particular he wanted to talk about my post from a week ago in which I wrote:

What would be the situation today if Israel had been kind to the Palestinians? What if Israel made sure the Palestinians had nice homes, like the homes of the West Bank settlers but without the settlers taking over the land? What if Israelis made sure the schools in Gaza were great, that the people there had what they needed to flourish on their own terms, rather than being packed into what amounts to a prison? What if the Israelis made sure the Palestinians were prosperous enough that they wouldn't want their society jeopardized by Hamas?

My friend said being kind takes two people. Israel tried being kind and Palestinians rejected that kindness. At our earlier lunch my friend said that Hamas has a policy to commit genocide on Israel and Israel does not have a policy of genocide on Gaza. I wondered: Though Israel does not have such a policy might Netanyahu and his far right supporters have such a policy? The severity of the destruction of Gaza can give that impression and I suspect that’s why so many people are protesting on behalf of the Palestinians. See the news reports of Columbia University over the last few days in which protesters were arrested. My friend said the severity of Israel’s attack is because of Hamas. We hear about the civilians caught in the destruction. We don’t hear about the military need that resulted in that destruction. And that military need is because of the nature of Hamas. They brought the war with their attack even they knew the destruction that would happen to their own people. I had heard, perhaps a few months ago, that one goal of Hamas in this war is to make Israel look so brutal that international opinion would turn against Israel. If true, they’re succeeding, at a great cost to their own people. My friend also said that when this war is over the politics in Israel will be vastly different. Much or all of the far right will be tossed out. umbra of the Daily Kos community wrote:

From Electrek (Industry blog): In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before. At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point. "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight."

Good news! Though ... this was not for 24 hour periods but only parts of the day. And it was for Feb-Apr the time with the least load on the system. jamiewertz of the Kos community discussed how the Steelton-Highspire School District in rural Pennsylvania went solar. They did it out of financial necessity – this was a way cut their costs. They worked out a deal with McClure Company, which provides energy services. The cost of the solar panels is paid back in energy savings. The solar panels were installed over a landfill, school property that could not be used for anything else. They now save $200K a year in energy costs. Harsh Goenka posted a cartoon of a sweating boy talking to the sun.

Boy: Dear Sun, Please go to Settings > Display > Brightness! And reduce it...Tooo hot to handle! Sun: I have not changed any settings... Please go to your settings and... (1) Increase number of trees (2) Reduce carbon emissions levels (3) Reduce concrete jungles (4) Increase number of lakes. Basically switch to human mode from auto mode.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his By the Numbers part of his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos:

Estimated amount it would cost for all the nations in the Paris Climate Accord to reach their goals by 2050, according to a study published in the journal Nature: $6 trillion Expected economic damage due to the climate crisis by 2050: $38 trillion

I told my friend and debate partner that I’ve been reading some articles about the nasty guy’s hush money trial, though certainly haven’t tried to read everything. I also ignored the live blogging by those in the courtroom. He said he’s been reading a lot more of the trial and even downloaded the questionnaire given to prospective jurors. He thinks he could be impartial. I thought in the course of writing this blog I’ve written about the nasty guy over 500 times. None of those have been complementary of him. So, I would say that I can’t be impartial. So the jury and the alternates have been chosen and opening arguments are next week. Which means the nasty guy and his trial will be in the news most nights perhaps until June. Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote:

Because criminal defendants are required to be present in the courtroom, the famously thin-skinned Trump has been subjected to a wide variety of people’s opinions of him—forcing him outside the bubble of bootlickers that normally insulates him from reality. Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery noted on social media site X that during juror questioning Thursday, Trump was “forced to sit down & hear several say they don't like his character. Slumped back in his chair, arms folded, big frown, furrowed brow. Angry as people trash him.” It’s impossible to know how much this is bothering Trump, but the fragility of his ego is legendary.

John Richards posted a cartoon of the bailiff swearing the nasty guy before he gives testimony: “Do you swear to tell the (snicker) truth, the (snort) whole truth, and nothing but... Sorry, judge, I can’t… I just can’t...” Ruben Bolling of Kos, in his Tom the Dancing Bug comic, wrote we need to get back to traditional American values. Interlopers are ruining our way of life. Those interlopers don’t respect law and order and are committing horrific crimes. They want to impose their religion despite the traditional separation of Church and State. They despise our founding principle of democracy.

They plan to burn every molecule of carbon on Earth

NPR host Mary Louise Kelly talked to congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt about what happened when the Senate took up the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This was after two months of the House waiting for the right time to deliver the articles of impeachment. Short answer: The Senate rejected the articles and did so rather quickly. There will be no trial. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said:

We felt very strongly that we had to set a precedent that impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements.

I heard from another source that Moscow Mitch essentially said he did not like setting a precedent that the Senate didn’t take the House articles of impeachment seriously. I’m with Chuck on this one. Ariana Figueroa of Michigan Advance wrote a much more detailed account of the proceedings. She included the series of votes and the Republicans attempts to force a trial or postpone the trial. It came down to Democrats approving Schumer’s point of order that neither article of impeachment actually contained an impeachable offense. All votes were along party lines, though Sen. Murkowski voted “present” for the first article. Pakalolo of the Daily Kos community reported that Jerome Powell, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, identified an important component that is keeping the Fed from meeting its 2% inflation target. That is insurance. The price of auto insurance is up 20.6% from a year ago and home insurance went up 11.3% in 2023. Pakalolo quoted UPI:

Experts attribute the escalating insurance premiums to various factors, including the impacts of climate change and rising prices for car parts. These factors drive up insurers’ costs, prompting them to pass on the expenses to consumers through higher premiums. As insurance costs continue to climb, they exert upward pressure on overall inflation rates, complicating the Federal Reserve’s efforts to manage monetary policy and stabilize prices.

Pakalolo then discussed how climate change is a big factor in making some regions of the country uninsurable. How might we protect Boston from sea level rise? A hotter climate means larger and stronger weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, gale-force storms, and flooding. There was the Bipartisan Infrastructure deal to help the nation prepare but that was a lot smaller than what is needed. On to a quote from Reinsurance News with data from Bloomberg Intelligence:

According to BI, global insured losses from natural disasters in 2023 are estimated at $118 billion, which is well above the 2017-21 average of $97 billion. The BI team also explained that more than 50% of the top 20 global reinsurers held or cut their natural-catastrophe exposure in the January 2023 renewals.

A reinsurer is an insurance company for insurance companies for the times when a payout for a storm is more than an insurance company can handle. All this comes to homeowners not being able to get insurance either because the costs have risen too high for their budget or too many companies have decided that a region (such as Florida) is too risky and have pulled out from doing business there.

To be clear, drastic sea level rise is baked in and will destroy coastal cities. Wildfires are baked in. Despite ignoring all the blinking red lights over the past decades, humanity will have to lie in the bed that we have made. There will be no do-over for the climate crisis. The best we can hope for is preventing the worst impacts, and that window is closing. Once a home is uninsurable, the owner can’t find a buyer to get a mortgage. The banks will want their money back, the little gals and guys will be on their own, and fossil fuel companies will not pay a dime to help. They plan to burn every molecule of carbon on Earth, and they know we will let them do it.

If a home can’t be insured it loses a great deal of value. Pakalolo discussed Acapulco, which was hit hard by hurricane Otis last October. Recovery and rebuilding has barely begun because of insurance problems. A lot of tourist accommodations are gone. The destruction has limited fumigation efforts and mosquitoes are spreading an outbreak of dengue fever. A quote from Rainforest Action Network:

Insurance companies are abruptly dropping customers, and premiums are doubling and tripling. Why? The cost of protecting customer from climate disaster has become too high. And yet, insurers continue to insure fossil fuels. Sit in that irony for a sec.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed new polling by Civiqs. It didn’t ask which candidate was ahead, but asked what is motivating people to vote they way they intend. Would you be upset if the other candidate became president? That was a tie at 48%, so half of the electorate will be upset no matter who wins. Would you be very happy if your person won? Biden: 28% Nasty guy: 38% Would you be okay with him winning? (Is he at least better than the other guy?) Biden: 17% Nasty guy: 9% Are you extremely motivated to support your candidate? That was the case with 63% of voters. Biden: 62% Nasty guy: 78% Are you extremely motivated to vote against the rival candidate? Nearly 80% said that’s the case. Biden: 85% Nasty guy: 77%

This election is going to come down to which candidate voters simply can't stomach. And with third-party options available, the Biden campaign has to make the possibility of a Trump victory absolutely intolerable to a solid majority of voters.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

The states’ rights case for determining abortion access — let the people decide — falters on the fact that in many states, the people cannot shape their legislature to their liking. Packed and split into districts designed to preserve Republican control, voters cannot actually dislodge anti-abortion Republican lawmakers. A pro-choice majority may exist, but only as a shadow: present but without substance in government.

Eric Tucker, Sarah Brumfield, and Lea Skene of the Associated Press reported on the latest about the Baltimore bridge collapse. The ship ran off course because it lost electrical power and the ship could not be steered or slowed. This report says there were signs of electrical problems before the ship left port. There is now an FBI investigation to go along with the inquiry of the National Transportation Safety Board. Another body was recovered. It was in a construction vehicle in the bridge wreckage. The family requested the name not be released. Three bodies are still missing. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced legal action to hold responsible all entities accountable for the tragedy. The ship Dali is owned by Grace Ocean and managed by Synergy Marine Group. They filed a routine petition under US Maritime law to seek to limit their liability to the value of the vessel’s remains after an incident. Attorneys for the victims argued against the petition. If the ship’s electrical problems were fixed before it left port the accident and the deaths could have been prevented. Timothy Pratt, in an article for Capital and Main and posted on Kos, reported on “In Her Hands,” a pilot program in Atlanta to give 654 women an average of $850 a month for two years. It was a success. For Shamarra Woods it allowed her to pay off debt and afford child care. That allowed her to keep her job at a company that eventually promoted her.

Now a group of academics has completed a report on the first year of the two-year program. “In Her Hands” has had some initial success in paving a road out of poverty. The new data, when added to the results from dozens of other studies, has supporters of guaranteed income hopeful that policymakers will see the benefits of dedicating public funds to the idea, at the federal, state, or local level. One obstacle addressed by research findings, they note, is the longstanding narrative with roots in the Reagan-era “welfare queen” trope about poor people being “undeserving” of no-strings assistance. ... As with others researching guaranteed income, [Stephen] Roll [of Washington University of St. Louis] said findings continue to refute the belief that giving money to people in poverty will “allow people to not work, and stay home.” He said the studies show “the vast majority of people [receiving guaranteed income] don’t leave their jobs, and they use the money either to pursue their goals or to supply staples on the table.”

If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable...

I saw two documentaries this weekend, both a part of the Freep Film Fest (Freep is the nickname of the Detroit Free Press newspaper). Thankfully, I could stream both of them at home. The first was: Ignore the Noise: The Transformation of the Detroit Riverfront. It is just under an hour long. For much of Detroit’s 300 year history (it was founded in 1701) the river was all about commerce and it was essentially the back door to companies along the river. Except for Belle Isle the public didn’t have access to the river. As Detroit fell on harder times after the middle of the 19th century there were attempts to use the riverfront as a way to revitalize the city. The first of those was the Renaissance Center, built in the mid 1970s. It is the tallest building in the city. But it was built with a bunker mentality as a place for white suburbanites, not black Detroiters. And though it was right on the river it didn’t provide access to the river. Then General Motors bought the RenCen (this movie doesn’t say they bought it from rival Ford). GM needed more space for its headquarters. One of the early things GM did was to create the Wintergarden, a glass-enclosed atrium to connect the complex to the river and to improve access from the atrium’s doors to the river. That was part of talk to improve public access to the river from “bridge to bridge” – the four miles from the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor and the bridge to Belle Isle. Another step happened in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton designated the Detroit River an American Heritage River. I think this was the only urban river to get the designation. That provided grant money. Then Windsor got a casino and Detroit was in a tizzy watching so much gambling money go across the river. Detroit had voted down casinos (I think three times) but then Detroit had all the problem gamblers of a nearby casino but none of the revenue. So another vote was held and casinos were approved. There was talk of putting the three casinos on the riverfront. Thankfully, that was abandoned when planners realized it would not increase public access to the river. The next prompt for action was Detroit’s 300th birthday in 2001. There was a fleet of Tall Ships, old sailing ships, that came up the river. Planners saw clearly the only public access was Hart Plaza. People lined the river anyway, even if they had to go through private property to get there. The Detroit River Conservancy was created in 2002 to revitalize the riverfront. It was created separate from the mayor’s office. They raised money with a few key grants. They were responsible for stringing together each piece of property on the riverfront. Some parcels had apartments and the conservancy said you really want to lease your riverfront to the city for free for 99 years, don’t you. A later apartment building went up and could advertise as life on the riverwalk. Another task was cleaning the industrial waste and remains. That included the silos of three cement companies. There was talk for a while about keeping one set of silos and painting murals on the sides. They’re all gone now. That separation from city government turned out to be important when Detroit was the hardest hit city during the foreclosure crisis. Again when Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who had been a big help with the riverwalk, was convicted of embezzling (I was surprised he appears in the film – and not just in old news clips). A third hit was GM’s bankruptcy and a forth was Detroit’s bankruptcy. If the riverwalk was under the control of the city government the project would have been abandoned, rather than delayed. The riverwalk is not complete all the way from downtown to the Ambassador Bridge. It is complete to the Belle Isle bridge, though some of the land near the bridge hasn’t been developed yet. I’ve walked a section of it and it is quite nice. And people – both city and suburban – use it. This is a Detroit success. Just days after watching this film I heard the news that GM will move its headquarters out of the RenCen into the old Hudson site where the second tallest building in the city is being built. This was the site of the largest Hudson Department Store, a huge place. I never made it inside (I didn’t grow up in the Detroit area) and the one time I tried I discovered they closed at 5:30. Lots of ideas were floated for reuse, but in 1998 it was imploded. Then the site sat empty for 20 years. The second move is The Riot Report. The movie begins with the 1967 riots – rebellions – in several, maybe more than 20, major cities, including Detroit. We see images of rioting, police response, fire and destruction in Newark, then Detroit. The March on Washington was four years before. This was a big event in the struggle for equal rights. And President Lyndon Johnson was leading on it, with his Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Great Society initiatives. He said it isn’t enough to open gates. All should have the ability to walk through those open gates. But every action had a backlash (in this case a “whitelash”). That included Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and quite conservative. His claim was Johnson was fueling the unrest. Blacks were saying we have had enough of the systems that oppress us. Whites were saying you have made gains, why wasn’t that enough? The 1960s were still part of the black Great Migration from the south to the north. Cities were getting higher percentages of blacks. But the reporters discussing the black experience were white, male, and middle class. The Los Angeles Watts rebellion happened in 1965. Several more cities were hit in 1966. One voice in this movie said “riot” was not a good word because it means destruction without reason. When the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots were commemorated in 2017 the word rebellion was decided to be a better fit. I’ll try to use it. Whites had sympathy for blacks in the south for resisting Jim Crow. But whites turned against blacks when they rebelled. There was lots of fear of blacks moving into white neighborhoods and their violence coming with them. In 1966 conservatives followed Goldwater’s playbook. When the rebellions happened in 1967 Johnson was in a political trap. He saw a commission to investigate the rebellions was a way out. Of course, many said, sure, another commission. That’s a way out, not to solve the problems. Johnson created the commission on civil disorders to figure out why it happened. He required members of the commission to be supporters of the Civil Rights act and the Vietnam war. The 11 members included politicians, business people, a woman, and two black men. One of them was from the NAACP. It was named the Kerner Commission for the chairman, Otto Kerner, governor of Illinois. Some thought Johnson could pull strings to get what he wanted out of them. That’s not what happened. Johnson essentially had three questions he wanted the commission to answer about the rebellions: What happened? Why did it happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? Some members wanted to look at root causes. Others wanted only to support police in how to crush the next uprising. Those wanting to look at causes prevailed. So the commission toured the country, visiting the cities where there had been rebellions. They sent teams to these cities to listen, then write reports of what they found. Sure, they talked to white people. They spent more time talking to black people. They saw the terrible living conditions. They saw the faces of the people who lived in those conditions. This was quite amazing for the 1960s. The black people said they knew how to protest Jim Crow with civil disobedience. But the rules of segregation in the North were not written into laws. They didn’t know how to protest something unwritten through civil disobedience. They had to protest in the streets. Youth saw the Civil Rights law has passed, yet their lives hadn’t changed. They had nothing to lose. Black people understood police were there to protect white interests. And whites didn’t want black people around. So the primary purpose of police was to patrol the boundary between white and black neighborhoods and keep blacks docile. They were frequently brutal. Their purpose was to remind black people: We’re in control. You’re supposed to be afraid of us. One would think that if the war on poverty wasn’t working the police would try something new. Instead, they doubled down. The situation was waiting for a spark. And the police had plenty of opportunities to provide it. They did so by overreacting. One solution was to integrate police (fifty years later we see how well that went). Some witnesses to the commission, such as J. Edgar Hoover, blamed the riots on outside agitators and Communists. They said our blacks wouldn’t behave this way. But the commission saw no Communists. When the report was published the reason for the rebellions was clear: white racism. The report said it that plainly. Black people were not crazy, they had good reason to act the way they did. The report indicted institutions and systemic power that supported that racism. It said racism threatened America. It proposed solutions to correct institutions. It was a report for white America to read, learn from, and act on. Failure to act would mean continued black rebellion. Other solutions included guaranteed basic income, open housing, and new jobs. It would cost about the same as what Johnson was spending in Vietnam. The report was published in paperback and sold widely. There were lots of media coverage of the report. The blurb for this movie seemed to imply it was buried. No, it wasn’t. It was in the hands of the public. When the report was published Johnson was in a box. Conservatives would not accept the conclusion. But Johnson couldn’t reject it without annoying liberals. So he refused to receive it. As for all those fine proposals Johnson claimed he didn’t have the money the proposals said should be spent. Congress said we’re waiting for bills to come from the president (a fine passive-aggressive stance) and Johnson offered none. Vietnam threatened Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. His presidency would be known, not for the good he did, but for Vietnam and riots. He had formed the commission to enhance his presidency. Instead, the report sunk it. In 1968 Johnson declared he would not run again. In a way, Johnson was right about not having money for what the report recommended. White people didn’t want to pay taxes to help rioting blacks. When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 rebellions flared again. Many blacks thought King’s efforts to end racism through non-violence hadn’t worked. The predictions of the Kerner report were fulfilled. A couple things came from the Kerner report. There was a fair housing law passed in 1968, but it was toothless. Also, news reporting as diversified. Black people reported on black people. Robert F Kennedy ran in 1968 saying he would take the Kerner report seriously. He was assassinated. Nixon (famous for his racist Southern Strategy) rejected it. He claimed Johnson’s programs had failed (when they hadn’t gone far enough or hadn’t even been tried). He said rioters should not be rewarded. Time to stop these programs. He ran on a war on crime, which made all the things blacks were rebelling against worse. The Kerner report was dead. The Kerner report is still relevant. As the nasty guy’s first criminal trial gets underway Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community asks:

While this might be unprecedented in U.S. history, other democracies, including France, South Korea, and Israel have charged, convicted, and even jailed former presidents and prime ministers. So why are we having such a hard time wrapping our head around this as a country?

Jay reminds us that President Harding was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal and escaped being implicated by dying. And Nixon avoided indictment and trial by being pardoned by Gerald Ford. Jay then lists the Republican politicians who dismiss the nasty guy’s trial and proclaim the American people are rallying behind him (well, some are). Israel’s Netanyahu has so far avoided a trial, but Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were convicted. In France former presidents Jacques Chirac and Micolas Sarkozy were convicted. In South Korea four former presidents and one still in office were convicted. Another committed suicide while under investigation. In Italy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted, through is sentence was reduced to probation. In Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated for plotting a coup carried out by his supporters. He has been banned from running for office until 2030. We wish the US Senate had done the same for the nasty guy in 2021. Jay concluded: “If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable, there’s no reason why we can’t do the same.” Jay also wrote “Tax cuts for the rich are a bad deal for corporate elites—and everyone else.” But that’s not quite the sense of Jay’s article. That can be more accurately described as: Supporting a fascist regime because they’re willing to cut taxes and overturn consumer protections is bad for corporations and their owners. First, some of the other things the nasty guy has said he would do would crash the economy and make the workforce problems worse by deporting workers. Second, a fascist regime will eventually come from them for insufficient loyalty. See Disney and DeathSantis as the most famous such situation. An Associated Press article posted to Kos on Tax Day discussed the difference between the tax policies of the two major candidates for president.

“For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.” In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I'm really rich.”

Biden releases his tax forms. The nasty guy has refused. Biden will make sure the 2017 tax giveaway will expire next year. He’s talked about raising other taxes on the wealthy while pledging those earning $400K or less will not pay more taxes. He talks about tax fairness. The nasty guy talks to billionaires about how much he will cut their taxes. I don’t think he talked about taxes paid by the middle class or poor people. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Richard Stengel of The Atlantic writing about paywalls. More than 75% of America’s leading media are behind paywalls. Almost 80% of Americans ignore paywalled sites and seek out free media.

Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.

In the comments of another roundup are some good cartoons. One by Bill Bramhall shows a TV news host saying, “A court decision upholding a 1692 law banning witches is causing problems for Republicans.” A cartoon posted by Fiona Webster and written by Adam Zygus shows Lady Liberty getting an ultrasound by a doctor with the nametag SCOTUS. On the screen is a fetus labeled “Trumpism.” The doctor says, “This baby will likely kill you, but you’re legally required to carry it to full term...” Kos user exlrrp posted a meme that shows a crowd of red hats and says, “They will never admit he’s guilty, because that will mean he’s made fools of them all.” In the comments of a third roundup is a cartoon by Drew Sheneman showing a woman with a sign reading, “My Body My Choice.” An elephant tells her, “If you wanted rights you should have been a corporation or an embryo.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Grant Snider showing the hierarchy of humor. From the top: Paradox, Dark humor, Self-deprecation, Slapstick, Modern art, Irony, Illogical humor, Scatological humor, Logical humor, Impractical joke, Practical joke, Double entendre, Puns, Dumb jokes, Cats. Your ranking may be different. Ellis Rosen posted a cartoon of a corner of an art museum. There are four images of the same woman, one has white horizontal lines through it, another shows a small image on a big canvas, a third shows an upside down image too big for the canvas, and the last shows the bottom of the image all crumpled. The docent tells patrons, “In this series, the artist is in dialogue with her printer.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Dave Coverly showing a king looking down on a mob with pitchforks and torches. An aide says, “Oh, you don’t need to fight them – you just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.” As part of Mark Sumner’s seven less reported stories for Kos he discussed a walkability score put out by Walk Score. There is also a nature score put out by the Washington Post. I tried it for my address. I live in generic suburbia, though next to a park. My home’s walkability score is 4 our of 100, as in almost all errands require a car. I’ve mentioned this problem of suburbia. I also got a bikeable score of 55 because there is some bike infrastructure. No public transit score was given. It listed nearby parks, but didn’t include the one I actually live next to. I would think my nature score would be decent because I live next to a park. But that’s behind the WaPo paywall. I tried the address of my friend and debate partner. He got a walk score of 99, a walker’s paradise, a transit score of 65, and a bike score of 94, a biker’s paradise. I doubt his nature score would be as good as mine.