Anger in Politics – Page 3 – The Wrongologist

The Mess That Is Congress

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Henry Driggers Park, Brunswick, GA – December 2023 photo by Kyle Morgan

“Dress me up for battle when all I want is peace
Those of us who pay the price come home with the least”

(from 1976’s “Harvest for the World”, by the Isley Brothers)

There are only 11 days left until Christmas, and there are only three more days this year when the Senate is in session, and just two days left for the House. That schedule could be amended and lengthened if both Houses can reach agreement on anything before they break this Friday.

Prime among the legislation that should/must pass is aid for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy’s in Washington to try to help turn a few politicians to help. From the WaPo:

“The visit — less than three months after Zelenskyy’s last trip to Washington — comes at a critical time for the supplemental appropriations bill….Republicans have demanded that the package include border policy changes, and some Democrats criticized the White House on Monday for being willing to give up too much in those negotiations after Biden said he was willing to agree to “significantly more” to strike a deal.”

Biden says he’s willing to deal, but Congress seems very likely to leave for the holidays without passing any new Ukraine package. From David Frum in The Atlantic:

“The ostensible reason is that they want more radical action on the border than the Biden administration has offered. The whole aid package is now stalled, with potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are literally running out of ammunition.”

“How is any of this happening? On past evidence, a clear majority of Senate Republicans sincerely want to help Ukraine. Probably about half of House Republicans do too. In a pair of procedural test votes in September, measures to cut or block aid to Ukraine drew, respectively, 104 and 117 Republican votes of the 221 (Republicans then) in the caucus.”

Biden’s offer to negotiate with Republicans about the border is meaningful. The fundamental reason for today’s border crisis is that would-be immigrants game the asylum system. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers claiming asylum. Most of those claims will ultimately be rejected, but the processing of each takes years. In the meantime, most asylum seekers will be released into the US.

Biden’s proposal is $14 billion of additional funding that would pay for 1,600 new staff in the asylum system. New hires can speed up the process, reducing the incentive for asylum claimants who get de facto US residency while their claim is pending.

But are Republicans willing to negotiate? It doesn’t seem like they are. The Republicans in the Senate’s position is stated by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who said:

“There’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer….This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”

This is 2023: For some Republicans, what matters isn’t what they get, but how they get it.

That’s also true in the House where Speaker Johnson (R-Bible) told Zelenskyy that the US southern border should come first in negotiations with Democrats over aid for Ukraine.

Clearly the Republican House members are in it to strike poses and television hits. They do not want to make deals. They each want to position themselves as the one true conservative too pure for dealmaking. The only things they’re willing to admit they want are the things they know to be impossible.

It’s a complicated situation, because House Republicans have one set of immigration demands while Republicans in the Senate refuse to say what their demands are.

This means Biden has to make a deal that Senate Democrats won’t want. Otherwise we’re headed to a “no” that will doom Ukraine and disgrace the US in the eyes of the world while doing nothing to remedy the crisis at the border.

If Congressional leadership was ever needed, it’s needed today.

Jon V. Last in the Bulwark lists the two real-world reasons for Biden to give in. First, that Ukraine is more important than our domestic immigration policy:

“The war is a finite event, the results of which will influence global economics and security for years and decades to come. Depending on the outcome, NATO will either congeal or fracture. Peace and security in Europe will either stabilize or destabilize. China will either be deterred or encouraged in its quest to subjugate Taiwan.”

Second, immigration is a perennial challenge for America. Even if we “solved” current immigration problems today, next year, we’d have more immigration problems to re-solve:

“Immigration does need reform. Huge sections of the system are broken, the humanitarian crisis at the border is real, and there are some areas where Democrats and Republicans have similar views of which reforms are needed.”

Jon Last also points out that there are good political reasons for Biden to make a deal. First, a deal makes Republicans co-owners of the border problem. For Republicans, immigration is like abortion: It’s not an issue they want to solve; it’s a political club they want to wield.

Second, Biden can paint Republicans as anti-Ukraine even after making an immigration deal. He can say that Republicans didn’t want to fund Ukraine (which polls well with voters) so he had to take action to make sure they didn’t hand Putin a victory.

Third, an immigration deal shores up Biden’s position with Hispanic and swing voters. Immigration is a very important issue to voters and large majorities of them disapprove of Biden’s immigration policies.

Fourth, Biden can then reinforce his 2024 narrative that the election is a choice between governing, or chaos. He’s going to try to disqualify Trump and make 2024 a contest between a workhorse who gets bipartisan compromises done and a chaos agent who burns everything down.

JV Last says:

“Cutting a deal on immigration in order to get aid to Ukraine lets Biden say (a) “I’m the guy who gets business done by doing bipartisan compromise,” but also (b) “If you don’t like this deal, Democratic voters, then we have to win back the House.”

Good thinking from Last.

Wrongo has generally steered clear of debates over immigration and the Wall because they have a high noise to signal ratio, and neither side is always great on the facts.

It’s curious: You would assume that all Republicans should be pounding on their Congressional representatives to increase the number of immigration judges immediately! But they aren’t since that would conflict with their idea of shrinking the administrative state. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

One way to cut illegal immigration down would be to crack down on foreign remittances. Most immigrants are sending money back home to help the rest of their families survive. If remittances required an ID card that only citizens or those with a valid visa could obtain, remittances would fall.

All we can do now is hope for cooler heads to make a deal before year end.

War, What Is It Good For?

The Daily Escape:

Garden of The Gods, CO – December 2023 photo by James H. Egbert

It’s another Monday, and the world is still a mess. There is so much division here at home that we forget that the rest of the world is boiling over with wars. Not a world war, but there are wars everywhere around the world. Americans are focused on the Ukraine War and the Israel/Hamas war, but there are local and regional wars we barely hear about.

From Hal Gershowitz:

“Among the deadliest wars so far in this still young century are the Second Congo War, the Syrian Civil War, the Darfur War in western Sudan, the war in Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the war against Boko Harem in Nigeria, the Yemeni Civil War, Russia’s current war against Ukraine, and, of course, the current blood-letting between Israel and Hamas.”

“According to the Geneva Academy….more than 110 armed conflicts are raging worldwide.”

Gershowitz says that in 2022, 237,000 men, women, and children died from organized violence, double the number of armed conflict deaths of the year before. While the bloody toll for 2023 hasn’t been compiled yet, we should expect the numbers to exceed those of 2022.

The Middle East, including North Africa, is the most blood-soaked region of the world, hosting more than 45 shooting wars. We know about the Israel/Hamas fight, but we hear much less about ongoing armed conflicts in Cyprus, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Western Sahara.

There are scores of other active hot conflicts, most of which don’t ever make headlines: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan are among the most dangerous places on the planet for civilians.

War dead in this region alone adds up to between hundreds and thousands every day. Some countries, such as the Central African Republic, have had multiple wars. Last year, the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region accounted for over 100,000 battle-related deaths, according to Oslo’s Peace Research Institute.

Currently, there are 21 separate armed conflicts raging in Asia, two of which are considered international wars (India-Pakistan and skirmishes between India and China). In some countries, such as Pakistan and the Philippines, there are multiple armed conflicts taking place simultaneously. Both countries are host to six separate regional in-country conflicts.

While everyone is familiar with Putin’s war in Ukraine, there are five other European nations (or territories) that Russian armies have occupied, including Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Moldova’s Transdniestria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia (Georgia).

The deaths in Ukraine are adding up. The US estimated in August that there were approximately 300,000 Russian casualties, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 180,000 wounded. Ukrainian losses were estimated at 70,000 deaths and 120,000 wounded. Since those estimates were released, the toll of dead and wounded on both sides has climbed even higher.

In our hemisphere, there are six armed conflicts in Latin America—three in Mexico and three in Columbia.

The 21^st Century is still young, but it’s horribly violent. China is eyeing Taiwan, North Korea is elbowing its way into the nuclear club, and Iran, which follows the Shia form of Islam, is eying all of Arabia, which embraces Sunni Islam.

Back to Israel/Hamas for a few random thoughts: First, at the start of any new armed conflict, the UN, occasionally the US and other nations, call for an immediate cease fire. There hasn’t been a durable cease fire in this century. Yet, Steve Coll in the New Yorker had this to say:

“Even a temporary ceasefire displays the moral power of peacemaking. Last week, as a shaky truce to allow prisoner and hostage swaps and aid deliveries quieted the ruinous war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli families welcomed back more than a hundred children and older adults whom Hamas and its allies had kidnapped on October 7th…..In the West Bank, jubilant crowds waved the flags of Fatah and Hamas as Palestinian parents hugged their teen-age children released from Israeli jails.”

“Ceasefires usually don’t end wars because they don’t address the issues that underlie them. (A study of sixty-seven civil wars published in the Journal of Peace Studies in 2021 found no evidence that ceasefires and prisoner releases led to sustainable peace agreements.)”

Specifically with respect to Israel/Hamas, we can’t see what the end state looks like. Netanyahu visited Gaza during the ceasefire and cited three aims: “eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages, and insuring that Gaza does not become a threat to the State of Israel again.”

As Wrongo said two months ago, it is difficult to see how the second objective can be achieved in tandem with the first. Regardless of what Netanyahu thinks, the third will not be controlled by Israel, even though it may be the most important of Israel’s three objectives.

Another problem is that this war is causing a terrible divide in America. Think about how quickly U of Penn’s president Liz Magill was forced to resign after giving a truthful and legally correct answer to an utterly bad faith question. The question she was asked was, “Is calling for the genocide of Jews always a violation of Penn’s code of conduct in regard to bullying and harassment?”

Now, no rational person is in favor of genocide, but Rep. Stefanik’s question implies that simply speaking out in support of Palestinians is the equivalent of calling for Jewish genocide. Plenty of today’s college students support Palestine, and very few of them think that Jews should be exterminated.

Stefanik’s question asks us to ignore people’s free speech rights when they are awful and noxious. It lands very close to the witch hunting of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Also, it’s clear in Wrongo’s circle that people are afraid to express opinions on the Israel/Hamas war, because whatever is said is sure to offend someone. It could possibly be enough to cause a threatening retaliation. What’s worse is that not a single person will live or die in the Middle East because of anything anyone says or doesn’t say at the University of Pennsylvania or in Wrongo’s hometown.

There is nothing at stake in the performative rage about what’s said at college demonstrations. It’s all empty theater.

Time to wake up America! If Republicans and other hardliners are able to make criticism of Israel a forbidden topic in mainstream society, that means our democracy will die right along with the many more deaths we will see in the Middle-East.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a globally produced cover of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” by the people behind Playing For Change. This song came out in 1971 when the Vietnam war was still going on. Here it features Sara Bareilles among many other talented people:

Sample lyric:

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today…

Cartoons Of The Week

It’s the start of a brand new week with shopping opportunities! And you can watch our Senate and House members leave for their undeserved vacation without doing much. Try that at your house. On to cartoons.

Trump told us what he plans to do:

Trump thinks he has an “It’s Easy” button:

Voters then and now:

The Republican Party sleeps through a real crisis:

The MAGAts are all in:

The economy sucks and the checkout lines are too long:

Tuberville feels he’s entitled to more obstruction:

America’s Confusing Opinion Polling

The Daily Escape:

Oak Creek, Sedona AZ – November 2023 photo by Jim Lupton

Over single malt and martinis, our Thanksgiving guests talked about what a confusing time we’re living in. Americans are angry and anxious, and the polls continue to show problems for Biden across the board, despite that overall, the economy is fine.

Inflation has slowed significantly. Wages are increasing. Unemployment is near a half-century low. Job satisfaction is up. Yet Americans don’t necessarily see it that way From the NYT:

“In the recent New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six swing states, eight in 10 said the economy was fair or poor. Just 2% said it was excellent. Majorities of every group of Americans — across gender, race, age, education, geography, income and party — had an unfavorable view.

To make the disconnect even more confusing, people are not acting the way they do when they believe the economy is bad. They are spending, vacationing and job-switching the way they do when they believe it’s good.”

Continuing with the confusion, the new WSJ/NORC survey of the American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead regardless of their background, has moved out of reach for many Americans. Only 36% of voters in the survey (conducted between Oct. 19-23 with a margin of error of ± 4%) says that the American dream still holds true: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The American dream seemed most remote to young adults and women in the survey…..46% of men but only 28% of women said the ideal of advancement for hard work still holds true, as did 48% of voters aged 65 or older but only about 28% of those under age 50 agreed.”

And people think the dream is growing more remote. When last year’s WSJ poll asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead, 68% said yes—nearly twice as many as in this year’s poll (36%). More from the NYT:

“Economic difficulties are greater for those without a college degree, who are the majority of Americans. They earn less, receive fewer benefits from employers and have more physically demanding jobs.”

Voters without a college degree are Trump’s strongest cohort.

Adding to the cloudy forecast, the Economist/YouGov weekly tracking poll of registered voters says most people are happy with their jobs:

Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the way things are going in your life today? Satisfied 64%, Dissatisfied 35%
How happy would you say you are with your current job? Great deal/somewhat 80%, A little/not at all 19%.
Do you consider yourself paid fairly or underpaid in your job? Paid fairly 56%, Underpaid 38%.
Do you think your family income will increase or decrease in 2024? Increase 45%, stay the same 41%, decrease 15%.

But the same Economist/YouGov poll gives a different impression when you ask about the American economy more broadly:

Do you think the economy is shrinking or growing? Growing 22%, staying the same 25%, shrinking 37%. That’s 47% thinking its growing or staying the same. (The reality: The economy has grown at 3% on average under Biden, the highest for any President since Clinton.)
Are the number of jobs in the US increasing (42%), staying the same (36%) or decreasing (22%)? (The reality: 14 million new jobs have been created under Biden.)
How would you describe the current state of the American economy? Excellent/good 30%, fair/poor 64%. (The reality: We’ve had the fastest job growth perhaps ever, very strong GDP growth, inflation is way down, wage growth is very strong, and the annual deficit is way down from Trump’s presidency.)

What’s going on here? These data suggest something tragic – either the American people have no idea what is happening in the country, or what they do know is deeply wrong.

A final nail in this conundrum. Ed Kilgore in NY Magazine says that the youth vote is swinging against Biden:

“Until recently, Democrats’ biggest concern about the 2024 youth vote was that millennial and Gen-Z voters …might not turn out in great enough numbers to reelect Joe Biden. Young voters were…the largest and most rapidly growing segment of the Democratic base in the last election. But now public-opinion surveys are beginning to unveil a far more terrifying possibility: Trump could carry the youth vote next year.”

The latest national NBC News poll finds President Joe Biden trailing Trump among young voters ages 18 to 34 — with Trump getting support from 46% of these young voters and Biden getting 42%, while:

“CNN’s recent national poll had Trump ahead of Biden by 1 point among voters ages 18 to 34.

Quinnipiac University had Biden ahead by 9 points in that subgroup.

The national Fox News poll had Biden up 7 points among that age group.”

Hard to know what to believe from those surveys. More from Kilgore:

“According to Pew’s validated voters analysis (which is a lot more precise than exit polls), Biden won under-30 voters by a 59% to 35% margin in 2020. Biden actually won the next age cohort, voters 30 to 49 years old, by a 55% to 43% margin.”

So, what’s wrong? It’s important to note that yesterday’s younger voters aren’t today’s. From Nate Silver:

“Fully a third of voters in the age 18-29 bracket in the 2020 election (everyone aged 26 or older) will have aged out of it by 2024, as will two-thirds of the age 18-to-29 voters from the 2016 election and all of them from 2012.”

Silver says, So if you’re thinking “did all those young voters who backed Obama in 2012 really just turn on Biden?” Those voters have aged into the 30-to-41 age bracket.

We need to remember that today’s young voters share the national unhappiness with the performance of the economy, and many are particularly affected by high cost of living and higher interest rates that make buying a home or a car difficult. Some are angry at Biden for his inability (thanks to the Supreme Court) to cancel student-loan debts. And most notoriously, young voters don’t share Biden’s strong identification with Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas (a new NBC poll shows 70% of 18-to-34-year-old voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war).

And there’s this tidbit from the NYT:

“Younger people…had concerns specific to their phase of life. In the poll, 93% of them rated the economy unfavorably, more than any other age group.”

What exactly are kids in their 20’s supposed to be feeling at this stage of life? Unless you come from money, your 20’s are a financial struggle. Wrongo’s certainly were, and that’s decades ago when the economy was great. This isn’t to dismiss today’s very real economic uncertainties. Wrongo’s own grandchildren run the gamut of (relative) struggle financially.

The single most persuasive way to convince young people that Trump isn’t the right answer is to show them what he’ll do in his own words. Many of them are too young to know much about Trump. Some of today’s college freshmen were just 14 or 15 when he was in office.

It’s Monday, and it’s time to wake up America! People need to pay attention. Once again, it will come down to effective messaging for the Dems. They must help voters understand who will serve their interests and who will literally crush their interests.

To help you wake up watch and listen to William Devaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got”. It sold nearly two million copies in 1974. It takes us back to a time when there was more optimism in America. If you lived or worked in NYC in the1970s, the video will also take you back to a difficult period in the city’s history. In its own way, it’s a great Thanksgiving song:

What Is It With These Freaking Polls?

The Daily Escape:

Yellow Ocotillo in bloom, Anza-Borrego SP, CA – November 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon

Today is Election Day in the US. If you are eligible to vote, you should get to your local polling place and do your duty as an American. Wrongo and Ms. Right live in Litchfield County, CT. The county skews right, having voted for the Republican in the last three presidential elections while going for Obama in 2008, but not in 2012. Litchfield was the only Connecticut county to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Tomorrow, we’re electing a mayor, town council, school board, zoning board and several other offices. Like in most off-year elections, turnout in our town is expected to be much smaller than in presidential years. Wrongo always wonders why turnout is low, when the stakes for what happens in your town are so high, regardless of whenever it’s an off-year election. Wrongo and Ms. Right plan to split our tickets.

By Wednesday morning, we’ll know which state elections across the country look like they are a bellwether for the 2024 election which is just under a year away. Will Virginia’s Republicans take full control of the state legislature and clear a path for Gov. Youngkin to enact his far-right proposals on abortion and education?

In Ohio, voters will decide whether to approve Issue 1 and Issue 2. Issue 1 would enshrine the right to an abortion and other reproductive health care in the state constitution. Issue 2 would legalize marijuana for adults over 21.

2023 has been a very good year for Democrats, and we need to close strong. So, by Wednesday, we’ll know more than we do today.

Despite that, this week, the NYT is out with a poll predicting a future they can’t possibly know. Their poll shows Trump leading Biden in five critical swing states:

“President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues….Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.”

According to Simon Rosenberg, Republican presidential candidates have only topped 48% and won the popular vote once since 1988 (Bush 2004 re-election). Trump received 46.1% and 46.8% of the vote in his two elections. Polls finding Trump in the high 40s or with large leads over Biden place him in territory he has never achieved with voters.

If Wrongo hasn’t convinced you, remember that the NYT poll was of 3,662 registered voters. It was conducted by telephone using live operators from Oct. 22-Nov. 3. Picture it: People answering a phone call from an unknown caller. Do you know anyone under 50 who answers a call from numbers they don’t recognize? Apparently, the NYT has admitted that they overweighted Republicans and later attempted to “smooth” the results statistically.

After all the smoothing, the margin of sampling error for each state is from 4.4 to 4.8 percentage points. In other words, the overall results that show Trump waxing Biden are within the margin of error.

Voters also told the NYT:

56% have a somewhat unfavorable or somewhat unfavorable view of Trump.
Asked who would be better for “democracy,” voters give Biden a 48%-45% edge.
51% say that following the 2020 election, Trump “threatened democracy.”
54% believe Trump has committed “serious federal crimes.”
52% say they do not think he will be convicted of any crimes.
- Yet if he is convicted and sentenced to prison, then suddenly Biden goes to 49%, vs. Trump at 39%.
Asked if it would be “bad for the country” if Biden or Trump won:
- Biden would be bad for the country: 44%
- Trump would be bad for the country: 46%
Again: The net voting preference in this poll is Trump 48%, Biden 44%. With a 4.45-4.8% margin of error.

Does this picture fit together with the NYT’s overall results?

It’s useful to remember that Congressional polling is encouraging for Democrats. The current Economist/YouGov tracker has Congressional favorables/unfavorables for Congressional Democrats at 44%/51% (-7%) while Congressional Republicans are at 35%/59% (-25%).

And a new poll from Navigator Research shows that in battleground House districts, it found terrible numbers for Congressional Republicans:

If this data holds: 1) Democrats will be the clear favorites to win the House and 2) The declining GOP Congressional brand could drag Trump down along with the overall GOP brand in the Presidential battleground states. And this poll was taken before voters learned how extreme the Republican’s new Speaker is!

Dan Pfeiffer has a nice article; “How to Respond to the Very Bad NYT Poll.” If you are worried about the poll, Pfeiffer adds detail:

“Perhaps the simplest explanation of Biden’s political challenges is that he has done a lot of good, popular things, and almost no one knows about them. Navigator tested a series of messages about Biden’s various accomplishments, including allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs, the bipartisan law to rebuild roads and bridges, and efforts to create more manufacturing jobs in the US

Guess what? All of this stuff is super popular.”

“Medicare negotiating drug prices is supported by 77% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans. The bipartisan infrastructure law has the support of 73% of Americans and a majority of Republicans. Every accomplishment tested in this poll had majority support. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is in a deeply divided, highly polarized country at a time when the President’s approval ratings are in the low 40s.”

According to the NYT poll, a majority of Americans heard little or nothing about these accomplishments, so there’s a yawning knowledge gap. But the poll also shows that when people are told about what Biden has done, his approval rating goes up.

The NYT poll reminds us that everyday people like you and me can have an outsized impact if they focus on letting friends and family know about Biden’s accomplishments. That is so much more valuable than worrying about polls a year in advance.

It’s time for a rare Tuesday Wake Up Call. Wake up America! We will be dealing with polls that skew reality, and with negative press from now to next November. To help you wake up, listen to Rachel Platten perform her big hit, “Fight Song”, live on New Years Eve in 2016:

This is to help heal you from the bad polling news. Now, get up off the floor and do what you have to do.

Sample Lyric:

And all those things I didn’t say
Were wrecking balls inside my brain
I will scream them loud tonight
Can you hear my voice this time?

[Chorus]
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I’m alright song
My power’s turned on
Starting right now, I’ll be strong
I’ll play my fight song (Hey)
And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me

More Chaos

The Daily Escape:

Lenticular clouds over Mt. Adams, WA – October 2023 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

The news is awful and the time to cover it is short. So here’s a few thoughts on the fly:

First, about Lewiston. This is another American tragedy caused by the AR-15. The effort to paint the problem as another mentally-ill person who unfortunately happened to snap has already begun.

And on average, more than one gun per capita is owned by Americans. The Framers couldn’t have conceived of such violence from one gun. Wrongo is fully aware that it is highly unlikely that guns will ever be brought under better control, unless we happen to become the autocracy that many on the Right want us to be.

The Supreme Court’s ideas about originalism and what was meant by a “well-regulated militia” back in the 1770s, made Wrongo take a look at the demographics of the era. In 1790, the US population was around 3.9 million people, excluding Indians and slaves (as they did back then).

And if you try to determine what a rifle owned by one of America’s well-regulated militia cost in the 1770s, you uncover an almost insoluble problem. There was no national currency, each state had its own. Most were expressed in pounds, but each varied in value in relation to the English pound that they were based on.

Despite all of the problems of comparisons, in 1775, a week’s wages for a Massachusetts agricultural laborer were about 3.75 MA pounds. Across the colonies, a long rifle of medium quality cost between 4-7 pounds, so an average worker could acquire a rifle for less than two week’s wages.

That probably meant that like today, there were at least as many guns as men in colonial America.

The well-regulated militia as a deterrent to tyranny made sense until the time of muzzle loaders came to an end. From roughly 1500 – 1850, militias could fight on relatively equal ground with professional soldiers. But once artillery got good enough to chew up massed formations with only a few cannons, the rifle and other small arms became of secondary value in the fight against tyranny because citizen militias could no longer stand up to formal militaries.

Today, small arms play a different role in combat than when the Constitution was written. If the Second Amendment people were serious about wanting to be able to fight off their government they should be arguing to legalize artillery and explosives. They should conduct anti-armored drone drills, weekend artillery practice, and crowd-fund air defense systems.

Think of it as: Today, guns are worthless for fighting tyranny, but they’re perfect for imposing it.

Now, onward to the House of Representatives, and the new Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, (R-LA). We now have an insurrectionist religious fundamentalist conspiracy theorist who’s second in line for the presidency should something happen to Biden. The House GOP caucus just unanimously elected a traitor.

This needs to be on billboards nationwide.

The election of Johnson represents the surrender by the remaining non-MAGA Republicans to the minority MAGA fringe of their Party. It is a debacle for what the GOP used to stand for in America. And given that funding for the government runs out in a few weeks, a fight between what is now a fully-controlled MAGA House and the House Democrats is inevitable.

To say you’re a Republican in America in 2023 but don’t support Trump makes about as much sense as saying you’re a Communist Party member in the USSR in 1950 but don’t support Stalin.

We should expect a very long shutdown.

House Democrats have to make their fights with House Republicans as loud as possible. They need to make public remarks every day, regardless of their impact on private negotiations. Dems need to make sure everyone knows what the demands by Johnson and the MAGA extremists he leads mean to citizens.

We have to expect that Beltway pundits and the editorial boards of the WaPo and the NYT will attempt to push Biden and Democrats to work with the new Speaker. But, that is a lost cause. House Democrats should work in a bipartisan manner with the (slightly) more reasonable Senate and then turn the fight back to the GOP House in a big public event.

Here’s a tweet by Politico’s Jonathan Martin:

Martin sees this as giving a political advantage to Democrats, but the problem he ignores is the chaos. Is it possible that any order can come out of the MAGA chaos? Johnson is still vulnerable to the rule that a single disgruntled Republican House member can initiate the process to oust him, just as Matt Gaetz (R-FL) did with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

If four of the other 220 House Republicans agree, he will lose his job. So a reasonable view is to expect more Republican chaos.

Buckle up, it’s going to be a roller coaster ride from here to next November.

We Can’t Give Up Hope

The Daily Escape:

First snow, Great Balsam Mountains, Canton, NC – October 2023 photo by Brandon Montgomery

“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.” – Thomas Merton

Everyone’s talking about Hamas, the Gaza hospital and Jim Jordan. Wrongo is certain to write more about those issues, but today, let’s talk about two polls that seem to be telling us a lot about what Americans are feeling right now.

First, the survey by Pew Research “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics” confirms that millions of Americans are feeling so exhausted and depressed by American politics that they are disengaging from it just when its important to fully engage. Some highlights:

65% of respondents describe themselves as “exhausted” when thinking about politics.
55% say they are “angry” about American politics.
Only 4% say politics makes them feel hopeful.
Pew also asked people to describe American politics in one word. The second most common description was “corrupt”—behind the first-place finisher, “divisive.”

Here’s the tag cloud from Pew:

Notice that there aren’t any positive words that made the cut from the responses. From Robert Hubbell:

“It is no wonder that people want to disengage and look away. Exhaustion is the point of MAGA extremism.”

Hubbell goes on to point out that Republicans turn every issue into an attack:

“Impeach Trump? We’ll impeach Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Christopher Wray.

Indict Trump? We’ll indict Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.

Protect Americans from a deadly virus? We’ll undermine trust in science.

Fight human-caused climate change? We will make it illegal to discuss climate change in the classroom.”

These responses are part of a mind game designed to make Democrats and Independents give up and go away. But his great idea is this:

“We have one job: To endure, to abide, to keep the faith until this moment of reactionary extremism subsides. If we can do that, we will leave to our heirs a healthier, stronger democracy.”

John Dean Also wrote about this:

“…I was thinking about how Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. The first thing that came to mind was his iconic poster with his image and the word “HOPE.” That differentiated Obama from his Democratic party competitors…and his Republican rival, John McCain. Obama embraced hope and the future, and he won.”

Some people attribute the negative messages offered by current candidates to the fact that today’s world is troubled. But as Dean points out, the world was also deeply troubled in 2008 and only Obama was offering hope. He won two terms.

Thoughts About The Israel/Hamas War

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Town Cove, Eastham, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

Wrongo and Ms. Right returned today from another fine stay on Cape Cod. Time with family and friends in a special environment is always fun and refreshing. It almost made us forget that we’re in the midst of a global hysteria surrounding the Israel/Hamas war.

What has happened so far and what may happen soon should be revolting to anyone who can empathize with other humans. Wrongo has a few thoughts for today’s Monday Wake Up Call: First, as terrible as the Israel/Hamas story is, we and the media shouldn’t obsessively focus on it to the exclusion of other important events. There are other problems that we need to keep a focus on.

And while it’s important to stay current, no one should subject themselves to watching the hostage videos that Hamas says they will be broadcasting of the hostages. Watching people suffer won’t make them suffer less. You can’t unsee these things. Moreover, you shouldn’t play into Hamas’ hands.

Second, Biden has been doing a reasonably good job in this crisis. From Dan Pfeiffer:

“Biden has been astride the world stage — speaking with strength, empathy, and moral outrage about the horrendous terrorist attack in Israel. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Republicans have been involved in an embarrassing spectacle of self-sabotage and narcissistic incompetence.”

Axios reported that on Sunday, Israel resumed supplying water to the southern Gaza Strip after strong pressure from the Biden administration.

But here at home, we still have the problem of Republicans fighting amongst themselves:

“Electing a Speaker is the most basic Congressional function, yet the Republican Caucus seems incapable of doing so. The dysfunction among House Republicans has left the U.S. with only one branch of Congress. Without a Speaker, Congress cannot pass a bill to keep the government open, send military aid to Israel or Ukraine, or even name a post office.”

Third, people often say horrible things in the aftermath of an attack. But shouldn’t political officials be self-censoring? That wasn’t so with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. He said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated:

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

Herzog is asking: Why didn’t the people of Gaza rise up and overthrow Hamas? He implies that if they had, Israel wouldn’t have to attack them. The thought of a politician holding civilians in any country (half of whom aren’t adults) collectively responsible for atrocities committed by a unaccountable minority should be carefully parsed.

And using this as justification for destroying neighborhoods, for cutting off fuel and electricity to an entire population while ordering the mass evacuation of over a million people, seems to Wrongo to be a disproportionate response. There are a few ethicists who follow the Wrongologist Blog. Hopefully they will weigh in on Herzog’s justification for invading Gaza, and the ethics of targeting civilians in war.

From a political viewpoint, if Israel acts in a restrained way and doesn’t respond with overwhelming force, then Israel looks weak both to its citizens and to the Arab world. That’s likely to encourage more attacks, perhaps by other Middle East actors.

If Israel responds with overwhelming force, then lots of Palestinian civilians will die. Israel will be condemned and possibly other Muslim countries will join in an attack on Israel. So, perhaps Hamas’ attack wasn’t to create maximum casualties in Israel, but to trigger this lose/lose set of options for Israel’s response.

Finally, no one has a serious idea on a way to reach across the mammoth void between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Wrongo found a quote that may offer a way to think about a future for the region:

“At the end of 1918, Marshal Foch was in his Luxembourg headquarters examining with his international staff how to deal with Germany and the Germans. He had this thought: “The Germans, we either exterminate them, or we get along with them. Exterminating them is impossible. So, gentlemen, let’s work out how to get along with them.”

That didn’t work in WWI. It hasn’t worked in the Middle East. Yet, people are the same all over the world. They all want family, friends, a dependable job, and a secure place to live. That’s certainly true for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The question is: What must be sacrificed by either side to achieve it? And is either side capable of making a sacrifice today that will largely benefit their children’s grandchildren?

Time to wake up America! Do we ever take the long view? We seem to have forgotten how to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. It’s possible that the Gazans are invoking such a sacrifice right now.

This shouldn’t be a foreign idea to Americans, particularly to Christians. Much of Christianity’s beliefs involve sacrifice. For example, Christians believe that Jesus endured the sacrifice of torture, crucifixion and death for their redemption. That sacrifice is remembered in most Christian Sunday services.

There’s a major difference between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice about to be imposed on the men, women and children of Gaza. Christ sacrificed himself for others while Hamas is forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to endure sacrifice for them. Those tens of thousands aren’t choosing to be sacrificed. It’s doubtful that Israelis want to be sacrificed: They’re just wishing the Palestinians would go away.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “Zombie” by The Cranberries from 1994. The song was written by the late Delores O’Riordan, about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the decades-long conflict between nationalists (mainly Irish or Roman Catholic) and unionists (mainly British or Protestant).

The Troubles ended, while the Israel-Palestinian standoff continues.

The song was written in response to the death of two young boys, Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball, who were killed in an IRA bombing when two IRA-improvised explosive devices hidden in trash bins were detonated in Warrington, England. Ball died at the scene:

They Have No Plan Except To Fight Each Other

The Daily Escape:

Nauset Beach, Orleans, MA – October 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo

It’s already been a long year…and there are still 3 months left! Two issues dominated this week: the Hamas war on Israel and the Republican intramurals in the House.

Let’s start with the Republicans. Semafor reports that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) gave up on his quest to become Speaker even though he had been nominated by his caucus as their candidate:

“Scalise withdrew himself from the speaker’s race just one day after colleagues narrowly nominated him for the job, as it became clear he lacked the 217 votes necessary to secure the chair. But there are serious doubts that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scalise’s top rival, can pull together the support necessary for a win — in part due to the bad blood over his contest against Scalise.”

This isn’t a time for Republican arm wrestling. The country and the world need attention. As AB Stoddard says at the Bulwark:

“THE REPUBLICANS WHO CONTROL the House of Representatives cannot respond to a new war waged against Israel. They have rejected new aid to support Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. They have no plan to keep the government from shutting down on November 17 when funding next runs dry.”

Right now, there’s no path forward. While many things in this world are broken, this isn’t a case of American politics being “broken”. If as many pundits say, American politics are broken, we’d have seen things just like this when Democrats controlled the House. But they didn’t. What’s broken is the Republican Party.

A few House Republicans have suggested that their only choice might be to strike a bargain with Democrats. But behind closed doors, there hasn’t been a real effort to hatch a bipartisan deal, writes Semafor’s Kadia Goba: (brackets by Wrongo)

“I don’t think there has been legitimate outreach….Sure, those members talk to the press, but not to Hakeem Jeffries [the Democrats’ Majority Leader] or leadership.”

The potentially disastrous consequences of a broken House of Representatives are real, and some Republicans understand that. GOP Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said the following after Scalise withdrew his name from consideration:

“We are living in a dangerous world, the world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do — and quite frankly, they like it. I see a lot of threats out there. One of the biggest threats I see is in the [GOP caucus] room, because we can’t unify as a conference and put the speaker in the chair…”

Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, summed up where the GOP is at with his post on Xitter:

“The fact that ALL Republicans would rather fight over Scalise (who attended a neo-Nazi event) or Jordan (who allegedly covered up rampant sexual abuse) rather than simply work with Democrats to elect a Speaker says it all.”

There are two possible paths forward: Either the Republicans unite behind one candidate for Speaker, or they accept that it will take some Democratic votes to elect a bipartisan candidate. “Bipartisan” is a dirty word among many House Republicans. They have broken the House and have zero intent to fix it.

They must be stopped before they break us all.

The murderous rampage by Hamas last weekend against Israeli civilians and Israel’s sharp response will reverberate for years to come. Eric Levitz wrote in New York Magazine:

“This weekend in Israel, a far-right Islamist group perpetrated the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust, murdering entire families, including babies…and slaughtering 260 concertgoers. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in all, and over 100 others taken hostage.

Israel’s far-right government predictably responded by choking off all food, electricity, and fuel to Gaza’s 2 million residents and then preparing a military assault more untempered by concern for civilian casualties than ever before.”

The Israeli Ministry of Defense just notified the UN that Palestinians living in Gaza City should evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. But more than 1 million Palestinians live in this area. How is it possible for so many people to move, even if they had months to do it?

If you are a member of the center-left, It is difficult to see any positive influence on this situation. It shouldn’t be a question of whether you’re for Israel or against it. Terrorism directed at civilians is abhorrent regardless of who’s doing it.

And here at home, conservative pundits exploited Hamas’ attack to fearmonger about immigrants in America. Several right-wing media figures have baselessly warned that Hamas or other “sleeper cells” are lying in wait to attack major American cities, calling October 13 “Day of Jihad”. They also used this lie against American Muslims after 9/11.

What’s happening now between Israel and Hamas makes you want to throw up your hands in despair. It’s impossible to think of or see a solution that can satisfy all sides. Despite that, we need to take a break from so much frustration. We need our Saturday Soother. We need to stiffen our spines for what will be yet another week of horror and nonsense.

Here on Cape Cod, the weather is seasonably crisp, so we will be wearing jackets to today’s Wellfleet Oysterfest. Later, we’ll go to the beach to watch the sunset that is coming earlier every day.

To meditate for a few moments on the Hamas/Israel war, grab a comfy chair and listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine” from his 1971 album of the same name. Released during the heart of the Vietnam War, Lennon asks us to envision a world of peace and unity. “Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too”:

Sample Lyric:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Is The Palestinian-Israel Problem Solvable?

The Daily Escape:

Early Autumn, Telluride, CO – October 2023 photo by Steven Carr

We wake up this Monday to yet another conflagration in the Middle East. Israel officially declared war Saturday night after Hamas terrorists launched a surprise barrage of thousands of rockets into southern Israel. It is Israel’s first declaration of war since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. On Sunday, another Iran-backed group, Hezbollah, attacked military targets in northern Israel from its positions in southern Lebanon.

From the WSJ:

“Thousands of rockets were fired into Israel early Saturday to begin what Hamas called ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,’ Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s secretive military chief, said”.

The WSJ also reported that Deif blamed an Israeli “desecration” of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, located on the site known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews. It is the most sacred site for Jews, among the holiest for Muslims and one of the most fought-over pieces of land in the world.

But there’s more to Deif’s assertion than has been reported in the US press. The New Arab reports that on October 5:

“More than 800 Israeli settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday morning under the protection of Israeli forces.”

We know that the Hamas attacks on Israel began two days later on October 7. From the WaPo:

“The events of the weekend come in the context of 75 years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. For Palestinians and supporters across the Middle East who poured into the streets in Tehran, Beirut, Istanbul and Sanaa, Yemen, to celebrate the Hamas attack, the violence was a response to decades of Israeli restrictions, harassment and violence against Palestinians living under Israeli control.”

Even if the Palestinians lose again, which is almost certain, they’ve won. They were able to achieve complete surprise against the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). They overran IDF positions and dragged away IDF soldiers. Video has shown Palestinians driving IDF vehicles. Hundreds of rockets were able to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. The vaunted Israeli intelligence agency apparently didn’t catch wind of an operation that must have taken months to plan, possibly involving hundreds if not thousands of people.

And Netanyahu, whose main claim to fame is that he’s kept Israel safe, is overseeing the country’s worst military debacle in decades. And against Hamas, who has been seen as largely ineffective.

And the one thing that’s already clear is that Israel, (assuming it wins this fight, which is probable), will exact a terrible price from the Palestinians.

Israel is never far from another election. Each of the recent governments they have elected have been coalitions among far-right parties. In one sense the Hamas attack gives the Israeli hardliners a win. And if they get more powerful, the Israelis will grab more land, they will “cleanse” the land they grab, and as a country, become more theocratic.

So yes, Hamas has scored a short term victory. Let’s see how it plays out two years from now.

In paging through comments on the attack on multiple news services, is appears that it’s impossible to simultaneously condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while also pointing out that Hamas’ attack on Israel is indefensible. Partisanship prevents a reasoned view.

But the performative knee jerk support by partisans on both sides seems misplaced just now. Two things can be true: The Israeli government and the settlers have been cruel and provocative. They have contributed to the dispossession of the Palestinians; and Hamas is a corrupt anti-democratic institution that does very little for its citizens, and whose attack on Israeli civilians is unjustified and lacks a moral foundation.

Here in America, the Right supports Israel without question. This weekend some were even saying that Biden is funding Hamas, an outright lie. Many Democrats see Israel as a religious-based apartheid power. But few in the US see the Palestinians as freedom fighters.

Time to wake up America! While it may feel good to call the Palestinians simply another group of Islamic terrorists, that provides zero clarity or a solution to the conflict itself. The Palestinians deserve human rights and a say in how they live.

Israel deserves peace and security.

These objectives must shape any discussion of a cease fire. Unfortunately, as elsewhere in the Middle East, air strikes, rocket attacks and the killing of civilians drowns out dialogue.

America is staring down some major shit with short and longer term global consequences. But some treat it as just another day in the neighborhood. This is a good time to remember that when you throw a stone in the pond, the ripples reach all the way to the shore.

The Wrongologist

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Is The Palestinian-Israel Problem Solvable?