Author: wrongologist

We’re In Hot Water

The Daily Escape:

Harbor Seals hauling out on a buoy in Petersburg, AK. Wrongo and Ms. Right were passing by in a zodiac – July 2023 photo via the cruise line

It seems like it’s going to stay hot for a long while, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Temperatures are rising both on land and at sea, with climate experts ringing alarm bells about unprecedented sea surface temperatures:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late June warned that half of the world’s oceans may experience marine heat wave conditions by September.”

And it’s hitting close to home:

“Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.”

The NYT reported that the water temperature around Florida hit 90° yesterday.

And while it’s possible to score cheap political points on their governor DeSantis who would rather fight with Mickey Mouse and whatever “Woke” means this week while ignoring climate change, Wrongo won’t stoop to that. He’s sure that Floridians love their governor’s priorities. Just last week, as insurance companies were pulling out of Florida, DeSantis was saying not to worry, the insurers will return to Florida after the hurricane season.

As Pogo said many years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Primarily, the enemy is the Republican politician who continues to vote against efforts to bring the world’s CO2 levels under some semblance of control. The fixes to climate change that will have the most impact involve changes in public policy that will never happen as long as Republicans hold enough votes to block them.

But the big idea is that we’re not going back to where we were heat-wise, no matter what we do to cut further CO2 emissions. As NYT journalist Jeff Goodell said on NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We are moving into a different world, and we need to grasp that idea….the planet is heating up…because we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere…..It is essentially permanent when we put it [CO2] up there….And the warming will not stop until we stop emitting CO2 and burning fossil fuels….And even if we stop [adding more] CO2, we are stuck with that warming planet for a very long time.”

So, even if at this moment we made huge changes, we would always be on this part of the temperature scale, unless we figure out how to take quite a bit of that CO2 out of the atmosphere.

A few red state legislatures are considering following South Carolina’s lead and simply banning all mention of global warming or climate change in official documents or state-funded research. They think the only real way to deal with the climate problem is to ignore it.

Worse, nobody has a good model for what happens when all that warm water sits and gets warmer. Some meteorologists have pointed out that if the Caribbean got hot enough, it could spawn a continuous series of Category 5 hurricanes, say, once a week from May to October.

Which would resolve the problem of insuring Florida’s oceanfront properties pretty quickly.

It’s becoming evident that we live in a world designed for a climate that no longer exists. What’s really sobering is that the climate that now exists won’t resemble the one that will exist a generation from now.

How our societies and political systems deal with this is the central question of the 21st century.

Wrongo and Ms. Right moved back to New England from California partly because of climate. We were concerned about how scarce water would become in Los Angeles, and we knew that Connecticut would have more water for longer. This week, several of our roads and bridges closed because we had too much rain, causing the Housatonic River to overflow its banks.

This shows that there are no longer any places that can be marked safe from climate change. It has become impossible to predict the future climate/weather anywhere based on the past. And we’re still not coming to terms with just how hot and dangerous things are becoming. Or how fast it’s happening.

Let’s close the week with a wake up tune. Here’s “The Effects of Climate Change on Densely Populated Areas” by People Under The Stairs, a hip hop group from LA formed in 1997:

Sample Lyric:

Hundred degrees at midnight for the third day in a row
Nobody sleepin’ well and I can feel the tension growin’
LA wth rollin’ brownouts, rollin’ papers and rollin’ sixties
Heat exhaustion increasing caution across the city
Some people hit the mall, they’re tryin’ to stay cool
Some people call the cops; “there’s black children in the pool”
Everybody’s lookin’ sideways, we’re ragin’ on the highways
I hate it, I’m tryin’ to stay hydrated and faded but my way Is blocked
By road construction like a scene from “Falling Down”
Cops, they tryin’ to function but it seems they takin’ down us
Brown people at will People get hot and then killed
As the sun begins to set it’s hotter, no-one can chill
Everybody’s windows open there’s not a moment of silence
Alcohol heatin’ frustration that’s increasing domestic violence
9-1-1 is overwhelmed, homie, guess you on your own
The hills are still on fire, I recommend you stay at home

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Two Data Points That Say Much About Our Economy

The Daily Escape:

Another Alaska pic: Wrongo was in a kayak about 20 yards from this big guy asking himself whether he could out-paddle a charging grizzly. June 21, 2023 photo by Kristina Rau for the cruise line.

Today let’s talk about two interrelated economic issues. First, with more than 200,000 jobs created in the US economy in June, nearly 4 million more people are now employed than just before the pandemic.

Heather Long at the WaPo looked at who’s getting them. Along the way, she busts a few Right Wing myths:

“The mistaken notion that Americans don’t want to work can now be put to rest. Nearly 81% of Americans ages 25 to 54 are working, the highest share since 2001.”

Long reminds us that in March 2022, Fed Chair Powell argued the labor market was “unhealthy”:

“There was a misguided belief that it would take a recession to get supply and demand for goods — and workers — back to more normal levels. But what many experts missed was how many workers of color and immigrants wanted to work and were still looking for opportunities.”

Long provides the demographic breakdown for our recent job gains:

“Fewer White people are employed now than pre-pandemic. In contrast, over 2 million more Hispanics are employed now, over 800,000 more Asian Americans and over 750,000 more African Americans.”

Before the pandemic, companies were complaining that they couldn’t find workers, while the experts were saying the nation was at “full employment.” However, every month, Black and Hispanic people (largely women) kept entering the labor force and getting jobs.

Also, more than 2 million more foreign-born people are employed now than before the pandemic. This means that more than half of the new workers have been immigrants.

This is partly a result of low unemployment. Blacks and Hispanics often do not get hired until late in an economic recovery. In the past year, there’s also been a strong uptick in jobs in government and health care, two sectors in which women of color have historically found employment opportunities.

Employers have also loosened their hiring criteria, offering improved pay and benefits, and removing requirements for college degrees for many positions. Long says:

“This past spring, for the first time, Black Americans were as likely to be employed as White Americans.”

What a change! Hard to see much “socialism” in this new jobs analysis.  This is good news that disputes the old Right wing bromides about how “these folks don’t want work; they want to sit back and get free stuff”.

Second, the WaPo’s Department of Data, a new statistical analysis feature, answered the question:

“Which states contribute the most to the federal budget in taxes, and which get the most back in terms of benefits?”

They start by reminding us where tax revenue comes from:

“The vast bulk of the $4 trillion in revenue the federal government received in 2021 came in the form of income taxes and payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security. Most of the rest comes from corporate income taxes and excise taxes on goods such as gasoline and alcohol.”

And just 4.5% of that income (customs duties and earnings on Federal Reserve deposits) cannot be traced to individual states.

But let’s get to the good stuff. Just eight blue states, (CA, NY, NJ, MA, CT, WA, NH, and CO) pay more in taxes to the federal government than they receive in federal benefits. They therefore subsidize all other states. Every other state receives more federal money than they pay in taxes.

And unsurprisingly 9 of the 11 top recipients of federal benefits are red states (KY, WVA, MS, AL, AK, LA, OK, AK, SC).

Nine of the 10 states that sent the most to the federal government, per person, voted for Biden in 2020. Nine of the 10 states that sent the least voted for Trump. So who’s got the bigger stake in socialism?

Its important to remember that when Republicans complain about “out of control” federal spending, most of them live in a state that receives more from the federal government than they contribute.

If we ever called their bluff, Republicans would scramble to decide what federal benefits their home states would be willing to give up in order to cut federal spending.

But of course, they would simply bluster on about socialism in the cities.

Maybe we should divide America into the MAKER states and the TAKER states. It’s nice to see that the data again shows Blue states are far more productive. Maybe another question for the Department of Data is:

“Why is higher income so closely aligned with support for Democrats?”

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 9, 2023

You’ve all heard about Zuckerberg’s Meta taking on Musk’s Twitter. Meta’s product is called Threads. It’s a simple app that looks almost exactly like Twitter. Because it is linked to users’ Instagram accounts, it was immediately adopted by about 50 million people who have posted on the platform some 95 million times. It’s become the most rapidly downloaded app of all time.

That also eclipsed several other Twitter wanna-be’s like BlueSky (which has a million users), Mastodon (10+ million), Post, and Notes, all of which have been up and running for a few months but together, haven’t reached Threads’ 50+million users.

What Threads’ place in the social mediaverse will look like is anybody’s guess. But there are things we know right now, with certainty:

  • Meta is a for-profit social media businesses. Its business model relies on selling ad space based on targeted markets and selling users’ information.
  • Meta has been operating under a consent decree issued by the FTC in 2011 after it violated users’ privacy. Then it violated that agreement, resulting in a $5 billion fine which it has fought against paying.
  • Meta’s track record on privacy isn’t great. It includes the non-consensual collection of personal data that was later used by Cambridge Analytica/SCL and may have been involved in influence operations during the 2016 election.

Wrongo joined Threads to see what the fuss is all about. It does look a lot like Twitter, and at the moment has a wild west feel. From Kyle Tharp:

“The social internet is in the midst of a massive upheaval right now, and no one really knows how it’s going to impact our politics next year. Americans’ social media diets are becoming more distributed and less trackable….I obviously think the internet will still have a major role to play next year, but predicting the future is harder than ever.”

If Threads has staying power, it will present both new opportunities and challenges for Meta. Facebook has been withdrawing its investments in news and politics over the past few years, which included killing its news partnerships division and deprioritizing political content in users’ Facebook feeds.

If Meta is going to become the online place for news consumption and political debate, it will face the same questions that Twitter and Facebook had to face: How will it handle content moderation and the spread of false or misleading content? How will fact-checking work on the platform? How much money is Meta willing to spend on that, especially after cutting those same investments in policy and integrity at Facebook? Will they allow political ads? On to cartoons.

Will Twitter unravel?

We’re melting:

Supremes add to their must carry rules:

Supremes have redefined their branch of government:

They’ve also redefined property ownership:

The Supremes say they’re ending racism:

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Saturday Soother – July 8, 2023

The Daily Escape:

There are currently 13 turkey chicks roaming the Fields of Wrong. One mom has nine and the other, four. While each year we hope for the best, we live amongst always hungry Coopers and Red Tailed hawks. Oh, and watch out for the foxes, coyotes and bobcats – July 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo.

In Wrongo’s last column, he talked about the need to fight and win the long battle to reclaim rights that were lost in recent Supreme Court decisions:

“It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible.”

And new data from NBC offers a ray of hope:

“Republican primary voters are older, whiter and much more conservative than the electorate at large…. 39% of Republican primary voters are age 65 and older, compared with 25% of the overall electorate and 25% of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll…..89% of GOP primary voters are white, versus 72% of all voters.”

Here’s a chart from the poll:

Only 24% of GOP voters are under age 50, compared to 57.9% of the US population. More:

“…67% of Republican primary voters say they are conservative, including 41% who are “very” conservative…..That compares with 36% of all voters who are conservative, including 18% who are “very” conservative.”

There’s more bad news for the GOP in recent census data:

  • One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election is that census data show that the number of white people without college degrees (a core of Trump’s support) has fallen by 2.1 million since 2016.
  • Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college (an increasingly Democratic constituency) has grown by 13.3 million.

Worse for the GOP and Trump, the reliance of the GOP on the electorate without college degrees has grown. In 2012, 48% of Republicans didn’t have college degrees. By 2016, that percentage had increased to 58%, but according to the NBC News poll, it’s now 63%.

They’ve also lost many of the college educated over the past eight years. And the population of the non-college educated is shrinking. It’s not a good formula for victory. It all points to having a decent chance to win the town by town, state by state fight to blunt the Supreme Court’s extremism. Forget what the media are saying, 2024 doesn’t have to be a close election.

And let’s also forget about the news, or where in the world Prigozhin is hiding. Rumors say he’s in St. Petersburg, Russia. Soon we’ll want proof of life.

And if you want to know just how far to the right the House Freedom Caucus has moved, they just ousted Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for being too liberal.

But it’s time to leave all of this behind and concentrate on our Saturday Soother.

We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in northwest Connecticut, and that makes all of the necessary yard work much more difficult to do. This year, we’ve had rabbits in our vegetable garden along with the usual horde of chipmunks, so Wrongo put up some of the deer fencing we use in the winter around the garden. We’ll see if it is successful.

This morning grab a cold brew coffee and take a seat in the shade outdoors. Now put on your Bluetooth headset and watch and listen to Sissel Kyrkjebø, a Norwegian soprano, perform “Going Home”. This song is about Antonin Dvorak, who wrote his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” soon after arriving in America in 1893.

The song is based on the larghetto movement from Dvorak’s 9th. One of Dvorak’s students, William Arms Fisher, put words to the melody from the second movement. He called the new song, “Goin’ Home“. It was published in 1922.

Dvorak outlived his entire family, and returned home to Bohemia from the US. He died in 1904, at the age of 63. Sissel, who Wrongo knew nothing about before today, sings beautifully. Consider that English may not even be her primary language:

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You Say You Want A Revolution

The Daily Escape:

17 Palms Oasis, Anza-Borrego SP, CA – June 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon. When Wrongo and Ms. Right lived in LA, we hiked to this spot twice with grandkids.

This year, the Fourth of July just won’t let go of Wrongo. Political historian Eli Merritt has an op-ed in the LA Times: The Fourth of July is all about America’s first principle — the right of revolution:

“This right of resistance against inequality and tyranny is the American way. It is the essence of the American experiment, beginning in the 1760s and 1770s with the colonists’ defiance of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts; and in the 19th and 20th centuries with the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage movement, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, and the civil rights movement; and today with nonviolent fights for racial justice, equal voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights.”

We’re a country born of revolution. But after the Jan 6 insurrection, people are probably put off by the very idea of it. It’s what Trump’s seditionists did when they stormed the Capitol. Their goal was to prevent, or at least to obstruct, the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

And they did so by summoning the spirit of 1776. But in contrast to the J6 “protesters”, the people who approved the Declaration signed their names to a document. They didn’t wear hoods, masks, or camo gear and beat up people. The country’s “revolution” began with paper, pen and ink, with “revolutionaries” plainly identifying themselves. As Merritt points out:

“…the Declaration of Independence is a nonviolent manifesto. It makes no mention of swords, guns or war. Separately, the Continental Congress called upon American patriots to arm themselves, yet only in self-defense of God-given natural rights.”

Yet here we are in 2023, facing once again a fight for rights that we had already won, says The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The first thing to remember about the damage done by the US supreme court this June and the June before is that each majority decision overturns a right that we had won…. What this means is that the right wing of the US supreme court is part of a gang of reactionaries engaging in backlash.”

In the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, the Supreme Court made a decision based on nothing, in which a woman refuses to perform a service she didn’t provide, to a gay couple that didn’t exist, in the name of religious “liberty.” That six Supremes jumped on this case is a travesty. We either back down and accept the direction these extreme Justices are pushing the country toward, or we fight.

Wrongo wants to fight, just like he did in the 1960s. It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible. And this from WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin:

“On…Independence Day, which celebrates rebellion against a monarch lacking consent of the governed, it behooves us to dedicate ourselves to robust and authentic democracy: government of the people, by the people, for the people — not by arrogant right-wing justices.”

The Supreme Court is the point of the American Conservative movement’s spear, and it must be our goal to blunt their extremisim. The ballot box is our only way out of this mess, so it will take an immense amount of organizing and effort to overcome the gerrymandering, active voter suppression and massive disinformation campaigns conducted by the media.

The current SCOTUS cannot change our beliefs and values. These rights are ours, regardless of what six Supremes say. From Solnit:

“If you didn’t believe that equal access and rights were wrong yesterday…you don’t have to believe it now. Not just because those rights were denied by six justices….”

The country is on our side. Gallup has a new poll of approve/disapprove of the Supreme Court:

This shows that the people  agree with blunting the power of today’s Supreme Court. The final words go to Solnit:

“…history shows us that when we come together with ferocious commitment to a shared goal we can be more powerful than institutions and governments. The right would like us to feel defeated and powerless. We can feel devastated and still feel powerful or find our power. This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.”

We must take every available measure in our democracy to revoke consent and remedy these unconstitutional decisions. It will require active engagement in all levels of the democratic political process, from local school boards to the presidency. We can’t take any political office for granted.

Help new voters obtain ID and register to vote. Educate yourself about the candidates, vote in the primaries. Get your friends and families to vote. Make sure no seat goes uncontested wherever a GOP politician holds office or runs without opposition.

Above all, do not let them assume that you consent to the loss of our rights.

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July 4, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kilauea Caldera showing a blackened lava lake, Hawaii Volcanoes NP – June 2023 photo by J. Wei for the NPS

Kilauea stopped erupting on June 19, but the threat of another eruption is always present. That could be a metaphor for America in 2023: We could erupt at any moment.

The 1960s were an optimistic time. There were demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. There was police violence against the demonstrators, and assassinations of JFK and MLK. But a throughline of those times was a belief that righteous change was possible.

Wrongo graduated from Georgetown in 1966. His specialty was American colonial history. Those also were times of optimism, and there also were factions and different priorities and beliefs throughout the land.

Back in the 18th century, we overcame our differences, declared our independence, and formed a nation.

Now, 247 years after our revolution, it seems that staying united is difficult, if not impossible. Today, facts are fungible, and so is the truth. As Wrongo stated in his last column, about one third of Americans fail to vote. They are apathetic because they can’t see what would change if they did vote.

Having one third of Americans regularly fail to vote has surrendered control over our politics and our courts to a minority, mostly a few at the top, supported by some people in the middle, and enabled by the apathy of most of the rest of us.

Worse, most of those in today’s controlling minority are extremists. They have exploited the imperfections in our system to impose a return to the social mores and politics of an earlier time.

The best example of this is the string of far-Right decisions handed down in 2022 by the Supreme (Extreme) Court. From Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:

“Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved….The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone….Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone.”

Vast areas of law that took decades to establish were overturned in a year.

And in 2023, the Court’s reactionary majority has continued to overturn more of the American social order. Those rulings: ending affirmative action, preventing the forgiveness of student loans and an egregious decision on gay rights, show that the Court has lost any sense of judicial restraint.

The Court is no longer “calling balls and strikes” as Chief Justice John Roberts famously said. In fact, there could be a highlight reel of umpire John Roberts’ blown calls. It’s clear that the Extreme Court wants to go further, and given today’s politics, there’s zero risk of the other two branches of government agreeing to override their decisions.

So, on this Fourth of July weekend, let’s hit pause. Let’s take time to reflect on how our founders were able to weave a message that united many factions against a common enemy. It should be very clear that at this point that the common enemy to unite against is the partisan power of a partisan minority.

Real power no longer lies with the People or with their politicians, it resides in the Supreme Court. The antiquated and undemocratic elements of our government: the Electoral College, lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices and the malapportionment of the Senate, would require Constitutional amendments to fix. But we’re too divided to amend the Constitution.

Imagine attempting to fix the Senate’s malapportionment by getting a Constitutional amendment through that same malapportioned Senate.

But there may be reason for optimism in the fact that the two of this term’s negative rulings related to college students (admissions and debt relief). Those issues will motivate young voters in 2024.

Here are some numbers that give some cause for optimism about younger voters helping to change our politics:

  • Voters 47 and younger will be in the majority beginning in 2028.
  • Younger voters have historically voted in significantly higher numbers for Democrats.
  • Young women, especially young Hispanics and young African Americans are substantially higher voters for Democrats.
  • Fifty-five percent of white male voters under 45 voted Democratic in 2022, as did 52% of younger white females.

Here are a few other facts that should make us optimistic going forward:

  • Abortion was youth’s #1 issue in 2022.
  • Mid-term voter turnout for people under 29 was 23%, lower than 2018 (28%), but much higher than in 2014 (13%).
  • Michigan had the highest youth turnout in the country (37%).
  • Two swing states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were among the four states to have the highest youth turnout in 2022.

To help you reflect on how we might take back control, let’s listen to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” performed at the Greek Theater in Los Angles in 2012.

There are many versions of this tune on YouTube, but this one makes the point that virtually all of us are descended from immigrants, in this case, Diamond’s grandmother, who immigrated from Kyiv:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 2, 2023

We’re back from our Alaska vacation. It was extended two extra days in Seattle courtesy of United Airlines, who cancelled our flight, along with thousands of others. To add to United’s bad press, its CEO, Scott Kirby took a private plane out of New York while so many of his customers were grabbing hotel rooms they didn’t want, instead of sleeping in their own beds.

Wrongo promised more photos from Alaska:

June 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

This iceberg broke off from the Shakes Glacier, which is located in the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness of the Tongass National Forest. It stood about 20’ above the waterline. Since about 10% of a berg is above water, about 220’ of this bad boy was underwater in Shakes Lake which is about 800′ deep. We rode in a jetboat about 25 miles from Wrangell, Alaska to see it.

This week’s cartoons are about the recent decisions by the Supreme Court. SCOTUS released opinions in three big cases, the affirmative action case, the student loan forgiveness case, and the anti-LGBT+ case. Wrongo hasn’t had time to read them carefully, but the dissents by Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson made it clear that these decisions suck.

These cases show us a few things: First, that the concept of “standing” before the court means only what the Supremes say it means. Previously, It was about where the parties in a lawsuit “stand” in relation to each other. Back in the recent past, a party had to prove they had standing before a court considers the merits of a case. But:

  • In the gay website case, the plaintiff trying to inflict damage on the LGBT+ community didn’t need to show standing. The Colorado web designer, who the Supremes said could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples, cited a request from a man who told the AP, he had never asked her to do any work for him. The state of Colorado said she didn’t have sufficient grounds to sue, but the Supremes ultimately said that she did.
  • In Biden vs. Nebraska, the plaintiffs in the student loan case couldn’t show injury. The Supremes said that the plaintiff, the state of Missouri, had standing because Mohela a student loan servicer, is an instrumentality of the state. Mohela has the independent power to sue and be sued, but it refused to sue in this case, and the state sued on its behalf. Justice Kagan in her dissent said:

“From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint…At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent.”

Second, we’ve learned that the 14th Amendment, which was originally written to insure that Black people had Constitutional rights, no longer applies to them. Now that the Conservative majority on the Court has ended racism, maybe we’ll get a new holiday to celebrate!

Third, this is what happens when a third of America doesn’t vote. In 2016, we were told to elect Hillary because of the Supreme Court, but America didn’t like the “mean” lady, and Trump was elected. Despite what you thought about her, this growing list of Supreme Court decisions that so many people disagree with are a direct result of that loss.

There are two kinds of freedom: Freedom to, and freedom from. But your freedom isn’t supposed to hurt anybody else. And historically when it did, we enacted laws curtailing that behavior, but no longer. Now, we’re out there all on our own.

Society is moving backwards. Wrongo grew up in the 1960s, those good old days when politicians and the courts strived to promote equality. Now society’s divided. Its coarser, and much less equal. “It’s on you to bootstrap your way to the top” is what the Supreme Court is telling us. We’re born and after that, you’re on your own. However your life plays out, it’s your fault. On to cartoons.

No ladder required:

SCOTUS suggestion for getting ahead:

A case of blind justice:

Blinded by the White:

Some of the Supremes’ action is definitely affirmative:

OTOH, the Supremes overruled the independent legislature theory:

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Alaska! And Russia!

The Daily Escape:

Castle Mountain from Stikine River, Wrangell, AK – September 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. Castle Mountain is on the border between Alaska and British Columbia. This is a Nunatak, or a mountain that was higher than its surrounding glaciers, so over the centuries, it wasn’t rounded off by glacial movement.

This is the first day in several when we’ve had internet (or mobile) connectivity. So, here are a few thoughts on our Alaska trip and on the momentous news out of Russia.

First, we’ve had uncharacteristically beautiful weather! It’s usually raining at this time, but its been sunny and relatively warm for the first 10 days of our trip. Over the next few days, once we have better bandwidth, Wrongo will post more photos from the trip.

We have spent all of our time in Southeast Alaska, dropping in and out of fjords where the cruise ships cannot go. We’ve also spent quite a bit of time talking to members of the indigenous Tlingit nation. It is always interesting to learn about one of the many cultures that make up America. Ms. Right and I spent a morning with Joe Williams, a Tlingit ambassador and a former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska. Attached is a video of Joe giving some highlights of Tlingit history. Joe explained about the Eagle and Raven clans and how the Tlingit gave their children over to uncles and aunts to be raised. The sociology of their tribes and family structure was fascinating.

Second, what the hell is going on in Russia? Wrongo and Ms. Right have gotten to know a retired Marine officer who is traveling with our group. He’s providing commentary for the BBC from our small ship, when we have comms. He says it is way too early to tell how this will fall out, or if there will be a new power alignment in Russia, or if this will make any difference in the Ukraine war.

But as the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan famously said in 2000, “it would be irresponsible not to speculate”, so here goes. It’s clear that Prigozhin became a threat to his buddy Putin simply by leveraging Russia’s assets. As Yale’s Timothy Snyder says:

“Unlike most of its other ventures, Wagner’s war in Ukraine was a losing proposition.  Prigozhin leveraged the desperation of Russia’s propaganda for a victory by taking credit for victory at Bakhmut.  That minor city was completely destroyed and abandoned by the time Wagner took it, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives.”

Before the aborted coup, Wagner’s primary source of funding was the Russian state. Whether that will continue, given the supposed “deal” between Prigozhin and Putin, remains to be seen.

A couple of other points. Will Prigozhin actually go to Belarus? If he does, will he take some or all of his Wagner forces with him? If they all go to Belarus, who will be paying them? Its difficult to believe that Wagner and Prigozhin will remain inactive for very long. As mercenaries, they survive on extracting money from a benefactor and/or from the places where they operate.

There are several possible “deals” between Putin and Prigozhin that drove his “exile” in Belarus. According to the BBC, Prigozhin agreed to move to Belarus after he negotiated directly with Belarus leader Lukashenko.

Wrongo is most intrigued by the possibility that Wagner could open a second front in the Ukraine war from Belarus, similar to what Russia attempted in February 2022. Back then it looked like this:

With most of Ukraine’s military assets focused on a counteroffensive in the east and south, an attack from the northeast could prove decisive at a point in time when Moscow looks to be weak and vulnerable.

Will this happen? The thing to watch for is how many Wagner assets move to Belarus along with Prigozhin (assuming he moves there). Imagine if part of the “deal” is that Prigozhin is tapped by Belarus to be their army’s commander-in-chief, and they launch a second front during the driest time of the year, rather than in February like last time. Belarus was somewhat neutral in 2022, but since then have become much more tightly aligned militarily with Russia

Russia on the attack may have the resources to open up a second front in Belarus. The question is whether Ukraine can defend itself on one front while attacking Russia on its eastern front.

These are the interesting times we are doomed to live through. Let’s close with a tune from the Aquabats. This was recommended by granddaughter Mallory for our trip to Alaska. Here is “Hot Summer Nights (Won’t Last Forever)” from their 2005 album “Charge!”. Seems appropriate for our trip and for Prigozhin, no?

Sample Lyric:

Dear Elizabeth,
I hope you’re doing well
I think it’s so awesome that you’re out monitoring glacier patterns
In some remote part of Alaska where no one can get a hold of you
I thought I’d try anyway

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Off To Alaska

The Daily Escape:

Sitka Harbor – Alaska stock photo via Bing

(Today we’re leaving for Alaska and will have limited access to WiFi, so columns will be light and variable. Regular columns will resume on 7/1. In the meantime, if turbulence occurs, keep your tray tables in their upright and locked position and if you’re Trump, keep your tiny hands inside the blog.)

Wrongo isn’t sure who is the most famous Alaskan, but he really likes this comment by Sarah Palin, when asked if Trump’s followers were a cult:

Sarah! That’s the EXACT definition of Trump’s followers. And isn’t a cult just a religion that doesn’t have tax-free status? Maybe the difference is that in a cult, there’s a guy at the top who knows it’s a scam. In a religion, that guy is dead.

In other battlefields in the culture war, the Southern Baptists voted to uphold the expulsion of one of its most prominent mega-churches, Saddlebrook, because Saddlebrook had decided that women could be pastors. In the Southern Baptist Convention, preaching is a man’s job. From the Economist:

“The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination with 13.2m adherents, which begins its annual meeting on June 13th in New Orleans, has long treated women as subordinate to men. “Complementarianism”—the idea that men and women occupy distinct but equal roles, with men exercising spiritual authority—is the preferred term.”

On Wednesday the Convention voted by a two-thirds majority to amend their constitution to state that the Southern Baptist Convention “Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder.” Their concern was the old slippery slope:

“….that female pastors are a precursor to acceptance of homosexuality and sexual immorality.”

If you think that sounds out of touch with modern America and more like the Taliban, this chart from the Economist shows that you’re not alone:

This means that the Southern Baptists are back where they were in the 1980s in terms of membership. More from the Economist:

“By the mid-1980s, 200 women had been ordained as pastors….But a year later conservatives commandeered the leadership of the SBC, and began to purge women from seminaries. In 1998 the SBC amended its statement of faith to affirm that a wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband. In 2000 it said that only men can be pastors. Churches that disagreed were hounded out.”

Kind of explains the decline in membership. Also it isn’t the SBC’s biggest problem: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In recent years hundreds of sexual-abuse allegations have surfaced, implicating pastors directly and in the cover-up. And ever more people are leaving the faith. In 2012 there were three baptisms for every congregant who quit. Last year the SBC lost two-and-a-half members for every baptism.”

Could it be that the SBC has some kind of a marketing problem?

This is a problem across the evangelical community: Women are meant to be meek, accommodating baby making machines. They have no sexual education. Home schooling leaves them unable to compete in a globalized work environment. It’s not about the scriptures, it’s about power and control.

That’s what cults are about. It doesn’t matter if it’s MAGAs or the SBC. Considering that evangelicals compose a significant portion of the voting GOP, this shouldn’t be a surprise. These people are fearful of what the future may hold. Like the MAGAverse, they long for a time that may never have existed. The Economist quotes the conservative leaders of the constitutional amendment:

“Once a denomination has female pastors, it’s usually just a matter of time until they ordain homosexual pastors….”

That’s probably true, but these people really have nothing to fear but fear itself.

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Where Is The GOP’s War Of Words Taking Them?

The Daily Escape:

Rain, White Sands NP – June 2023 photo by Dawood Afzal

(Wrongo and Ms. Right want to give healing thoughts and condolences to John & Janis S., who have just experienced a terrible loss.)

The NYT reported on Trump’s speech in Columbus, GA, where he was pretty chatty about the US government and the DOJ indictment:

“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists…”

He was referring to Democrats. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.” Trump also described the DOJ as:

“…a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,”

He called the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.” He then went on to say, “This is the final battle”. And by that, he doesn’t mean the final court case against him. All of this was said in a speech to several thousand people and delegates of the Georgia Republican Party who met in a brick building that was once a Civil War ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army.

Trump calling his Democratic opponents “Communists and “Marxists” isn’t connected to today’s politics. the number of either in the US is vanishingly small. It barely makes sense, but in today’s GOP, it really doesn’t have to make sense. Trump and the GOP would never actually articulate what it is they’re opposing. That would make explicit that they’re really against America becoming more of what it is: An increasingly pluralistic and multi-ethnic country.

But many on the Right are deliberately going much further. The NYT reported that in Georgia, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, said:

“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden….If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA”

Well, that’s a threat. The same NYT article says:

“In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of…Trump…including a member of Congress…have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons.”

And all of these threats against Democrats, LGBTQ+ people, the FBI and the DOJ are more than rhetoric. They’re step one in a process known as stochastic terrorism. The idea is that a person or group are demonized, and violent actions against them are suggested by a leader with a large following:

  • The leader doesn’t ask or arrange for a specific person to carry out the violence, but they know in advance that somewhere among their followers are people who will.
  • And it only takes one.
  • The leader accomplishes their goal of violence without formally arranging for it.
  • There isn’t any paper trail, or phone records, or texts, or secret payments that could eventually show up in a court of law.

But the intent is clear even if, by design, there’s no direct accountability.

Wrongo saw a quote attributed to Anand Giridharadas:

“…Donald Trump…has clearly decided that his movement, and the Republican Party that he leads, is going to be the movement of resentment against the future. It is going to be a movement of people who don’t want to live in the future.”

Trump represents people who are in a state of constant rage at the thought that the world is changing in ways they hate and can’t actually stop. The horrible part of their dilemma is that no time that actually existed is a time that they want to live in.

Trump will try to “blanket the zone” with constant misinformation that may make it difficult to empanel a south Florida jury. It will be very difficult to find prospective jurors who say truthfully that they haven’t heard about the indictments and/or formulated an idea about it.

The best way to beat back the misinformation being spread by Republicans and MAGA sympathizers is to televise the trial. Take the trial away from social media pundits and let the MAGAverse see their hero squirm, bluster, and lie with their own eyes. They’ll see his complete lack of a legitimate defense unfolding in real time. Of course, that would take a judge other than Aileen Cannon to preside.

Let’s close with a tune that’s not among the normal music flavor here at the Wrongologist. It makes the point that some Americans don’t want to live in America if it’s going to change. It shows that you don’t have to wear MAGA to be MAGA. It doesn’t mention anything overtly political, but it could be a theme song for Trump’s campaign:

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