The Daily Escape:
In her series Marjory’s World, photographer Rebecca Reeve creates portals from the domestic into the wilderness. She uses household drapery that she purchases from local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores to evoke the feeling of looking out of a room.
This photo was taken in the Everglades in Florida in 2012.
Reeve’s series, Marjory’s World is named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas who was an American journalist, author and conservationist. She was an advocate of the Everglades and defended against the efforts to drain and reclaim it for development. Her most influential book was “The Everglades: River of Grass” written in 1947, the year that the Everglades was made a National Park.
In 1990, when she was 100 years old, her name was given to the high school in Parkland, FL where in 2018, a mass shooting took place leaving 17 dead and 17 more wounded in less than six minutes. Stoneman Douglas died at 108 on May 14, 1998.
(hat tip to Adam Tooze for introducing Reeve to Wrongo)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) died on Friday at 90, leaving a complicated legacy. Having lived in California for more than 10 years, Wrongo and Ms. Right had the opportunity to vote for her. In her early years in the Senate, Feinstein was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans. Feinstein in her later years overstayed her welcome in the Senate.
But her real legacy was Chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) Torture Report in 2014. Feinstein’s tenure as SSCI Chair ensured there was a documented account of the torture done during the GW Bush administration which was serious enough that the CIA actually “lost” its sole copy of the 6,000+ page report. And she defied Obama by releasing the unclassified summary of the torture perpetrated during the War on Terror. For that alone, her legacy deserves respect.
She also championed the assault weapons ban that became law under Clinton, which was later allowed to expire by Bush. For history buffs, she became mayor of San Francisco after the murder of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. She found Moscone shot in his office and tried to revive him. After Moscone’s death, Feinstein succeeded him as Acting Mayor of San Francisco. She was also a strong leader for SFO during the AIDS crisis when Reagan couldn’t care less.
But let’s also talk today about a politician whose legacy will be forever tarnished, House Speaker Kevin (My Kevin) McCarthy. On Friday, the Republican-controlled House voted down a last-ditch measure to temporarily avert a government shutdown, 198-232 with all Democrats against it, along with 21 Republicans.
The Continuing Resolution (CR) would have kept the government funded for 30 days while cutting funding by 30% for all agencies except the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, something no Democrat would ever accept.
Most GOP “no” votes were by right-wingers who objected to the very idea of a CR. While it failed, 198 House Republicans voted for this bill sourced from God Knows Where (GKW). The Thesaurus says one synonym for GKW is “alien”. And a few synonyms for alien are: Contrary, Estranged, Opposed and Inappropriate. These all seem right to Wrongo.
These Republicans do not belong in our government.
You may remember that back in June, House Republicans and McCarthy agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, McCarthy and Biden agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this kind of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But McCarthy welshed on that deal, under pressure from a number of MAGA Republicans in his caucus who are refusing to fund the government and are calling for deeper spending cuts.
Meanwhile, McCarthy is “leading” one of the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades. He faces a choice of either showing moral courage by introducing a funding bill with the backing of House Dems, or letting the Shutdown run for several weeks or months.
Another day, another new McCarthy plan. Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters say that they don’t want the government to close.
You’re unlikely to win if you decide to place a bet on McCarthy getting a dose of moral courage and standing up to his Party.
Here in the Northeast, we’ve been dumped on by even more rain leading into the weekend, which isn’t expected to taper off until late this afternoon. Despite that, we’ve taken the Bluebird nesting boxes down, cleaned them out and stored them until next spring.
But we have to find time for our Saturday Soother, where we forget about the mess Republicans are making of their “impeachment inquiry”, you know the one with zero evidence. Instead we must focus on building up our mental resolve to wander through the government shutdown without injury.
To help you build resolve, let’s start by grabbing a comfy chair by a south facing window. Now watch and listen to U2’s take on Kevin McCarthy’s problem. Here is U2’s remastered video of “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” from their 2000 album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. The song was written by Bono for his friend, lead singer of INXS, Michael Hutchence, who committed suicide in 1997:
Let’s hope that McCarthy doesn’t engage in any self-harm, except for losing the Speakership.
Sample Lyric:
I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you (Ooh)
You gotta stand up straight,
Carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere (baby)
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it
The quality of Republican legislators is shown in numerous acts of pettiness but one that stands out – even amidst the bullshit is placing an amendment into a defense appropriation bill that reduces Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1. My wife’s father was an air force officer and though he had died when I met my wife, we saw many officers who were my mother in law’s neighbors and friends. They are routinely well trained, capable and able to execute the mission. When I first voted in 1972, I thought the Republicans were the smart and reasonable ones (of course this was the Northeast). I cannot see a way out of the mess