Category: Culture Wars

Thoughts On The Student Protests

The Daily Escape:

Orca #T99C Barakat breaching very near shore, Point No Point Beach, WA – April 2024 photo by Hongming Zheng. Yes, the Orca was really that close. The photographer says it was about 10’ from shore.

The US media is giving front-page treatment to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across America. From the NYT:

“University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.”

More:

“At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.”

Protesters are saying that their demands include divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.

There are many questions raised by these protests. Does protesting by students against what Israel is doing in Gaza equate to antisemitism? Are the protesting students’ free speech rights being violated by the several universities when they are arrested for peaceably protesting?

Wrongo hates writing about Israel and Gaza. It’s very emotional on both sides, maybe more than for any other topic. It’s possible to be accused of being complicit in a genocide and/or accused of being insensitive to the killing of Jews or of being antisemitic.

From Margret Sullivan:

“Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate.”

Wrongo thinks students have a right to protest. As Robert Reich says:

“The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions, and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions, and values than at a university?”

Non-violent student activism is a great way to learn and to participate in our democracy. While activism shouldn’t violate school rules, if you are a student and your school makes rules about student protests like: “you can’t protest on this lawn or at this time,” and you break that rule, you should be prepared to get suspended or arrested.

The schools are responsible for not making rules that effectively restrict or end student activism. And students are responsible for following all reasonable rules.

But there’s another big question: Why are the media and politicians treating these protests as very important problems? It’s true that the Israel/Gaza war is very important. It could plausibly lead to a regional war or even to a wider war. But what’s happening on college campuses in the US is relatively minor, particularly if they’re compared to the student protests during the Civil Rights era or during the Vietnam era.

Yet, the Israel/Hamas war and the campus protests about it are receiving nearly the same amount of media coverage. We never see headlines that read “Another Peaceful Day On 99% Of US College Campuses” even though that headline could run on any day of the year. This is the shape of the media today, and it’s difficult to understand why so many reporters and politicians are  so deeply concerned with a relatively minor story. More from Robert Reich:

“Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked — stirred, unsettled, goaded — even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks.”

Protests that call for boycott, divestment and sanctions are perfectly rational ways to protest Israel’s war against Hamas. However, getting Columbia (or other universities) to sell an investment in a US defense contractor, or in an Israeli company isn’t going to change anything.

Also, it’s a stretch for protesters to say that any university, its professors or anyone on its faculty are “complicit” in anything Israel decides to do in Gaza. But, non-violent forms of protest offer important objections to policy. And when the university criminalizes or stifles non-violent protests, that often leads to violent protests instead.

In the Columbia University case, its president called in the police (against the vote of the University council) telling the NYPD that the students had been suspended and thus were trespassing. But at that point, the students had not yet actually been suspended, although they WERE arrested. Then Columbia suspended them because they had been arrested:

“The suspension notices that the students received now cite the arrests themselves as part of the cause for suspension. In other words, the logic was circular. They called in the New York Police Department on the premise that the students were trespassing, when they hadn’t yet been suspended…”

Perfectly circular logic. If campus authorities need to act to protect the safety of any of their students, then they should. But when a university is facing pressure from pro-Israel donors and elected officials to shut down the protests, because the powerful find the protesters and their demands offensive, the university goes too far.

If that isn’t bad enough, consider Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR): (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.”

Nascent Pogroms? What is Cotton seeing at Columbia that the rest of us aren’t seeing? Apparently every Republican Senator knows that the military must be called in to end left-wing insurrections, but never for right-wing ones! We should understand that there’s a possibility that any military response might lead to Kent State 2.0.

A final thought. We need to differentiate between protestors who show up and do terrible things and the idea that the current rules of discourse focus mainly on the complainant’s subjective state of mind (“I felt unsafe!”). Without turning this into a rant, once a member of any so-called victim class makes that accusation, the burden of proof falls on the accused to prove they didn’t do something wrong. They have to prove a negative. That’s a game that the accused can rarely win.

That isn’t to say that some students aren’t doing objectively awful things during protests.

The vast majority of student protesters probably are good kids who are horrified by the things they see happening in Gaza. They log onto social media and see heartbreaking videos and feel compelled to do something, even though as individuals they are powerless. That’s a normal human, empathetic reaction to war. War is horrific.

Having that reaction doesn’t automatically make them Jew-hating terrorist-lovers.

What’s past is prologue. Remember how protests morphed into killings at Kent State and elsewhere in 1970? Today’s demonstrators aren’t trying to avoid getting drafted for the Vietnam War; they’re protesting what they see as a genocide in the Middle East.

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Cartoons Of The Week – April 14, 2024

The Daily Escape:

Salt Run, St. Augustine FL – April 2024 iPhone photo by Wrongo. This is a tidal inlet fed by the Atlantic Ocean. The far shore is a protected state park and the ocean is just over the dunes in the distance.

Wrongo has been enjoying the spring weather here in Florida, the second stop on our caravan of sibling visits in the south. This view is from my sister’s home.

Many cartoons this week about OJ’s death, along with lots about Arizona’s new anti-abortion bill. Here’s the best that I found. First, a leftover about the eclipse from earlier in the week:

OJ left the building, but isn’t home yet:

OJ’s running just like back in the day:

Ukraine Will Lose If Republicans Have Their Way:

School voucher money is shrinking public school funding:

With a few exceptions, those private schools that far outpace the public ones have the advantage of being able to pick and choose their students. Also, the public gets the schools it demands.

The Arizona fallout won’t be limited to abortion:

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Crime: Perception vs. Reality

The Daily Escape:

Saguaros and poppies, Catalina SP, Tucson, AZ – March 2024 photo by Paul J Van Helden

From Jeff Asher, a crime analyst based in New Orleans:

“Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.”

We all knew that crime rates skyrocketed between the mid-1960s and the late 1980s. Then they went into a slow 35-year decline. Now, homicide, violent crime, and property crime rates have returned to what they were prior to the latest 20-year increase. This means that if you’re under 55, crime rates have been falling for most of your adult life.

But America perceives that crime rates are high. A Gallup poll released last November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in America than the year before. And 63% felt there was either a “very” or “extremely” serious crime problem — the highest in the poll’s history going back to 2000.

Wrongo doesn’t truly believe the polls since Pew revealed that 12% of people under 30 and 24% of Hispanic people who opt into online polls claim they have a license to operate a nuclear submarine, but here’s a chart:

(This is based on Gallup’s annual Crime survey, conducted Oct. 2023)

The question is, why the disconnect? NPR quoted Jeff Asher:

“There’s never been a news story that said, ‘There were no robberies yesterday, nobody really shoplifted at Walgreens….Especially with murder, there’s no doubt that it is falling at [a] really fast pace right now.’”

One theory you might have is that since the Covid pandemic caused social disorder, dysfunction in our government, and all sorts of problems, including that spike in crime, you might expect crime to remain high even after the country went back to work and school.

Another theory is that when people say “crime“, they don’t exclusively mean “people breaking the law“. Instead maybe they mean “behavior which upsets me“. For example, when the Philadelphia DA tries to focus on eliminating bail for simple drug arrests, while opposing police corruption, he’s said to be soft on crime. Then Republicans (and Trump) tried to impeach him, saying that they’re being “tough on crime” and crime remains a politicized news story.

Another theory is that the narrative around homeless people drives perception of crime. The idea that “homeless people have been violent“, or simply that “homeless people live near me and I don’t want any shelters built nearby,” strengthens the perception that crime is everywhere. For people who feel that way, the statement “Crime is a big problem” is equivalent to the statement “I always see homeless people when I go into town”.

This may explain why crime rates “near me” are perceived to be substantially lower than how national crime is perceived. Few of the homeless are encamped in their suburbs.

If you look back on the 1980s, there were a large number of visible homeless people in Washington DC, and Reagan dismissed them as “homeless by choice“. Today, there are plenty of homeless people on the streets in every city. It’s important to remember that when St. Reagan was governor of California, he released mental patients onto the streets.

This was part of “deinstitutionalization”: The emptying of state psychiatric hospitals that began in the 1950s. As hospitals were shut down, patients were discharged with no place to get psychiatric care. They ended up on the streets, some eventually committing crimes that got them arrested.

In 1963, JFK signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act. (It turned out to be the last bill Kennedy would sign.) The law was designed to replace “custodial mental institutions” with community mental health centers, thus allowing patients to live—and get psychiatric care—in their communities.

However, a sufficient number of community mental health centers were never built.

In 1965, Medicaid accelerated the shift from inpatient to outpatient care: One key part of the Medicaid legislation stipulated that the federal government would not pay for inpatient care in psychiatric hospitals. This further pushed states to move patients out of their state facilities.

That’s when homeless people began to be visible to most of us.

Later, in the 1970s, Nixon declared a war on drugs, setting the stage for tough-on-crime policies. Laws, like mandatory minimum sentences for possession and other drug-related crimes, disproportionately affected people of color and pushed incarceration rates to record levels. Between 1972 and 2009, America’s prison population grew by 700%.

The homeless get blamed for the bad behavior of a small minority of their group. But since an awful lot of the dysfunctional are homeless because their families or friends couldn’t cope with their behavior, it’s logical that the general public would also find their behavior a problem.

And it’s more than just the homeless. In Wrongo’s small Connecticut town, long-time residents resent people who have moved in recently. They are appalled by the occasional drug arrest or stolen car that was left unlocked in a driveway.

This scales up to people in our town bellowing about CHICAGO!!!! Or LA or Portland, OR. They see the far enemy as young Black/Hispanic men in certain zip codes destroying each other. And just possibly turning their attention to our tight, white community here in the Litchfield Hills.

It’s a good thing that overall crime and especially violent crime rates are much lower than they were 30 years ago. But we’re still faced with the overriding perception that people see their families at greater risk now.

This has spilled over into how parents treat their children. NO parent today would allow their kids to get on a bike and roam miles from home. Everything is monitored. If you ask why, the near-universal response is: “It just isn’t safe out there. Not like it used to be.”

Used to be? Most kids were tooling around on their bikes Goonies-style during the 1980s, when crime nationwide was at its peak.

People just seem hell bent on seeing the world as a massively scary place, one filled with predators.

There are major political implications, when data aren’t facts, when truths are lies.

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Cartoons Of The Week

Welcome to a week that included TikTok, March Madness and St. Patrick’s Day!

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation to ban TikTok:

But will it ever become law?

Trump said the quiet part out loud:

Insulin remains under threat:

Yes, Big pharma is suing the Biden administration for making insulin affordable. They say his actions are “unconstitutional“. It’s important to remember that they didn’t invent insulin and it is cheap to make.

The GOP’s double standard on documents:

The mystery surrounding Princess Kate isn’t going away:

Boeing is so badly broken it’s hard to see how it recovers:

March madness has many meanings:

Wrongo’s favorite St. Paddie’s Day cartoon:

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State Of The Union Speech Mop-Up

The Daily Escape:

Morrow Bay, CA – March 2024 photo by Slocoastpix

(This is most likely the only column this week, as Wrongo is working on an outside project.)

Today let’s cover a few disparate topics that are about clean-up from the Biden State of the Union address. The Hollywood Reporter reports on Biden’s viewership ratings with this headline:

“The 2024 State of the Union address drew a larger TV audience than the 2023 address.”

Biden’s speech averaged 32.23 million viewers across 14 broadcast and cable outlets, almost 5 million more viewers than the 2023 State of the Union. Viewership rose on all of the largest outlets by about 18%.  More:

“The vast majority of viewers — 28.47 million — watched the State of the Union on the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and the three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). All seven outlets drew a bigger audience than they did for last year’s address.”

So much for viewer apathy. One big surprise to Wrongo is that Fox News led with 5.84 million viewers, beating out the 5.24 million for ABC, which had the largest viewership among the broadcast networks. NBC’s 4.47 million viewers finished third, followed by MSNBC at 4.43 million, (its largest audience ever for a State of the Union).

Why would Fox have more viewers when their network demographics skew far more to the Right than the others? Did they tune in hoping to see a Biden senior moment?

Second, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Jesus) lied in her rebuttal for the GOP.

Third, Umir Haque’s newsletter, the issue has some good insights that Wrongo hasn’t seen elsewhere. About leadership: (emphasis, parenthesis and brackets by Wrongo)

“We recently discussed the difference between occupying a leadership position—and being accepted as a leader. This Biden’s been hid[den] away by the Democratic machine….Those roaring, electrified [people attending the speech)? Those surging positivity ratings? That’s…going from merely occupying the position, to being accepted as a leader.”

More:

“Biden quietly proposed something very much like a new America. A new American social contract. The ideas came so fast and furious that they were almost easy to miss, sandwiched between philosophy and persuasion.”

More:

“…most State of the Unions aren’t like that. They’re pretty boring because Presidents tout their accomplishments. They’re backwards looking…sort of performance reviews….This one really was…profoundly different.”

Haque who lives in the UK, says that the ideas Biden put forth, are very popular in Europe:

  • Taxing billionaires, which is part of a new movement, arising mostly in Europe, to reduce inequality, by having a global tax on the ultra-rich.
  • Taxing executive compensation on salaries over $1 million by making them no longer tax deductible. This is also linked to recent moves by European nations to make economies more equal again.
  • Giving home buyers tax credits. This is a first step towards fixing America’s badly broken housing market…..many European nations are trying to fix that through incentives like this.
  • Lowering drug prices. One of Biden’s most revolutionary policy ideas was to let the government negotiate prices for many more drugs—this is a big deal, because of course Americans are ripped off incredibly badly by their version of “healthcare.” This would bring the US in line with other Western nations.

More: (brackets by Wrongo)

“if you read between the lines….Biden [is] recognizing how badly broken many aspects of the American social contract [are] —healthcare, housing, inequality, salaries, taxes—and how all that adds up to an incredibly precarious life even [if you are] at or above the median [income].”

More:

“Taxing billionaires, limiting salaries, intervening in broken markets, giving people actual support—none of these are ideas we associate in the slightest with…American politics. They’re the stuff of social democracy, and Biden’s setting out a sort of lightweight…social democratic vision. It’s not quite one fully, but what it does…is begin to put America on the path to becoming one, like the rest of the Western world.”

This sets a clear distinction between the Parties in 2024. Democrats since Bill Clinton have not had a clear definition of what they stand for: What do they stand for? What’s their overarching idea? Are they after a just society, and a good life for all Americans?

This theory of the good life, the just society, and how they’re linked now has Biden championing a politics that isn’t simply another version of “life’s about winners and losers”. Haque thinks this is an incredibly important evolution in US politics.

Will Biden’s move leftward bring enough votes to win in November? We have to hope it will. Conservative Republican Peter Wehner in the NYT reminds us that there’s just 34 weeks to the election:

“The next 34 weeks are among the more consequential in the life of this nation. Mr. Trump was a clear danger in 2016; he’s much more of a danger now. The former president is more vengeful, more bitter and more unstable than he was, which is saying something…..He’s already shown he’ll overturn an election, support a violent insurrection and even allow his vice president to be hanged. There’s nothing he won’t do. It’s up to the rest of us to keep him from doing it.”

It’s time on this Monday morning, to wake up America! IF he gets to run the country, Trump will act like a juvenile delinquent, flipping over as many of the cafeteria lunch tables as he can. In a nutshell, that’s his MAGA platform. And like the Zombie Apocalypse come to life, sooner or later all Republicans who hold public office will endorse him.

The rest of us have to put aside our ideological differences and support Biden. To help you wake up watch and listen to The Clash perform “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais” from their 1979 album “The Clash”. This is far from their best, but it’s on point for today’s column:

This song is from a time when the youth began to realize that sticking together was actually a better idea than allowing themselves to be divided. That has to come back.

Sample Lyric:

White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution

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Jokers To The Right

The Daily Escape:

Stormy night, Portland, OR – March 2024 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

“Democrats want to do something for you. Republicans want to do something to you.” – Tom Sullivan

Super Tuesday is in the rearview, and Nikki Haley announced her exit Wednesday. Haley was a useful person for the Democrats for as long as she was campaigning against Trump. Think about the picadors in bull fighting: Their primary role is to weaken the bull by piercing its neck muscles and tissues, making it easier for the matador to ultimately kill the bull.

That was Nikki, weakening Trump for the past few months. Wrongo reported that Haley overperformed in the GOP primaries:

“We’re seeing Trump consistently underperform the polls by 7-8 points. Worse for Trump, Fox News’ John Roberts talked about an alarming exit poll finding that 59% of Haley voters in South Carolina last night (equal to 40% of the electorate) would not vote for Trump in the general election.”

Depending on the state, between 25%-40% of Republican and conservative independents voted for her.

But now she’s left the ring, ceding the Republican nomination to Trump. You know, the guy who drove the American economy into a ditch, mismanaged a pandemic resulting in hundreds of thousands of excess American deaths, was found guilty of both sexual assault and fraud in two American courts, and is currently facing charges for mishandling national secrets and fomenting a coup.

Haley earned the votes of millions of Republican voters in her brief time in the spotlight. But she’s made a business decision to try and remain relevant to the MAGA world in case Trump cannot go forward with his campaign. JVL reports Haley said this:

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party who did not support him, and I hope he does. This is now his time for choosing.”

Sounds good, right? But JVL calls Haley out about the above:

“If there’s been a more cowardly statement over the last year, I can’t think of it. Haley refuses to acknowledge that she was supported by a broad coalition of voters—Republicans, independents, and Democrats. She claims that she is rooting for Trump to win over only the Republican voters who supported her. And instead of leading and standing for the Constitution, she fobs off all questions of agency to Trump. It’s not time for Nikki Haley to choose.

She believes that she’s preserving her political viability by seeming to put Trump in a box, making winning her supporters Trump’s job to succeed or fail to do. It won’t be long before Haley endorses Trump, becoming just another useful tool for MAGA world.

Biden on the other hand immediately invited Haley supporters to join his campaign. From The Hill:

“It takes a lot of courage to run for President — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump….Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.”

“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign…”

Then there’s the hot steaming pile of Mitch McConnell. From the WaPo:

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States…It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

From Norm Orenstein:

“…McConnell, once again, demonstrates a level of moral cowardice that is destructive and pathetic. He was responsible for letting Trump off the hook and having him as the Republican nominee when he deep sixed impeachment trial. Now he endorses the vicious autocrat. Shame.”

Why do these Republican hacks support a guy who has attacked their wives? Mitch does it, Cruz did it. Trump attacked Haley’s husband. She’ll most likely endorse him as well.

Finally, there’s Elon Musk who jetted to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. From Judd Legum:

“On Tuesday…Musk told his 175 million followers on X that President Biden had committed “treason” by “secretly” flying “320,000 illegal immigrants” from Latin America to US airports:

Nearly everything said above by Musk is a lie. Then Trump said that Biden “flew in 325,000 immigrants” into the country.

Musk was retweeting Collin Rugg who references a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) about a program expanding humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. CIS is a notorious anti-immigrant think tank.

Nothing about the expanded humanitarian parole program is “secret.” Biden announced it in a White House speech on January 5, 2023.

“…Today I’m announcing that my administration is going to expand the parole program for people not only from Venezuela but from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti.”

The program was then detailed in a White House press release. The release specifies that the program allows:

“…up to 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries.” To qualify, individuals must have an  “eligible sponsor and pass vetting and background checks.”

Musk was amazed that the Biden administration was able to keep the program secret when it involved chartering thousands of planes, flying to dozens of airports. Wrong again. The reason why no one noticed all the planes chartered by the Biden administration is that they didn’t charter planes.  The parole program requires the individuals to purchase their own flights to the US.

Musk says that this program constitutes “treason”. But it is fully within Biden’s legal authority. Every president has used parole authority since it was established in 1952, except Trump. Somebody in Washington ought to look into what the consequences should be when a major defense contractor like Musk says the Commander-In Chief is committing treason.

The silly season is upon us.

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Osnos Finds Biden’s Sharp Despite His Age

The Daily Escape:

West Quoddy Head Light, Lubec, ME – February 2024 drone photo by Rick Berk Photography

Wrongo has lots of time for Evan Osnos, a writer for the New Yorker. Osnos wrote a great book “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury”, a detailed look at America’s reactions to 9/11 and to the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol. He follows the lives of a few people that reveal how we lost the ability to see ourselves as part of a cohesive society. Highly recommended.

Apparently, Osnos is one member of the media that Biden is willing to spend time with. In a New Yorker article, Osnos offers a look into Biden’s state of mind as the 2024 election silly season begins. Osnos writes:

“If you spend time with Biden these days, the biggest surprise is that he betrays no doubts. The world is riven by the question of whether he is up to a second term, but he projects a defiant belief in himself and his ability to persuade Americans to join him….”

More:

“Now, having reached the apex of power, he gives off a conviction that borders on serenity—a bit too much serenity for Democrats who wonder if he can still beat the man with whom his legacy will be forever entwined. Given the doubts, I asked, wasn’t it a risk to say, “I’m the one to do it”? He shook his head and said, “No. I’m the only one who has ever beat him. And I’ll beat him again….”

Osnos thinks that for Biden, going against Trump is personal. After all, Trump tried to steal the presidency from him. Biden knows that Republicans have sold imaginary voter fraud to its voters to undermine the democratic process. Biden’s certain that he’s the best person to hold them at bay.

Biden knows that what Trump and the GOP are planning this fall is exactly what they did on Jan. 6, but with better planning.

The balance of the Osnos report is about Biden’s view of the upcoming election, about his view of Trump’s weaknesses, and about the negative polling on Biden’s policy stances and economic measures. Osnos asked Biden if it was possible for him to convert Trump supporters and others, given that he’s behind in the polls:

“Well, first of all, remember, in 2020, you guys told me how I wasn’t going to win? And then you told me in 2022 how it was going to be this red wave?….And I told you there wasn’t going to be any red wave. And in 2023 you told me we’re going to get our ass kicked again? And we won every contested race out there….In 2024, I think you’re going to see the same thing.”

Biden wants to make certain that we’re not going to buy into the 2022 red wave again. The NYT helped to push that narrative back then too just as it is today. Osnos, who wrote a book about Biden’s 2020 win, reflected on the changes brought about by age:

“For better and worse, he is a more solemn figure now. His voice is thin and clotted, and his gestures have slowed, but, in our conversation, his mind seemed unchanged. He never bungled a name or a date.”

Please. Will the American media just give Biden’s age a rest? John Harwood tweeted that the Osnos interview, like Harwood’s own last fall, “shows talk of his alleged mental decline as utter bullshit.”

No one should be a Pollyanna about Biden’s reelection chances – 2024’s gonna be a fight. Osnos reminds us:

“Biden should be cruising to reelection. Violent crime has dropped to nearly a fifty-year low, unemployment is below four per cent, and in January the S&P 500 and the Dow hit record highs. More Americans than ever have health insurance, and the country is producing more energy than at any previous moment in its history.”

But today, the two Parties have wildly different intentions for the country and have very similar levels of support. In 2020, seven states hinged on a difference of less than three percentage points. Everything will come down to improving turnout on the margins.

Osnos also talked to a Biden campaign staffer, Mike Donilon, about a “freedom agenda”:

“It’s easy to miss how unusual a “freedom agenda” is for a Democratic Presidential campaign. Since the nineteen-sixties, Republicans have held fast to the language of freedom—from the backlash against civil rights to the Tea Party to the Freedom Caucus. But….he sees an opportunity for Democrats to…lay claim to the freedom to “choose your own health-care decisions, the freedom to vote, the freedom for your kids to be free of gun violence in school, the freedom for seniors to live in dignity.”

He also interviewed Bruce Reed, a close Biden aide who talks about how to bridge the ideological divide:

“We live in abnormal political times, but the American people are still normal people. Given a choice between normal and crazy, they’re going to choose normal.”

This is a distilled message that Biden can use in the election: Trump and his anti-Constitution, anti-rule-of-law, anti-democracy cult will sure as hell try to steal your vote this fall to install Trump. Remind voters that it’s not just an abstract: Democracy is certainly on the line this fall, and if Trump returns to power, he intends to gut your freedoms.

We could all help Biden by asking our friends what are they prepared to do?

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Cartoons Of The Week

Lots of interest in McConnell’s career move this weekend. On to cartoons.

Biden says goodbye to Mitch:

Mitch was a good soldier for the 1%:

Mitch leaves a legacy:

Trump’s delaying tactics are working:

Mike Johnson has no heart or courage:

Embryos get religion:

Michigan voters send a message:

Nikki and Thelma the elephant take a joy ride:

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Russia. China And Iran, And Other Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

Snow at sunrise, Grand Canyon NP, AZ – February 2024 photo by John Fecteau

Welcome to another Monday Wake Up. Wrongo wants to touch on a few different ideas today. First, a non-trivial topic that Wrongo plans to return to this year. When we look at the geo-political landscape today, the US is confronting a growing alliance between three countries, each of which holds ill-will towards us and towards our western allies. Those three are China, Russia and Iran.

We’re confronting them separately and also in the case of the Ukraine War, jointly. This is an excellent time to harken back to something that Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1997. He had formerly (through 1981) been Carter’s National Security Adviser:

“Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition, united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. . . . Averting this contingency . . . will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

Today’s geopolitical landscape reflects exactly what Brzezinski feared more than two decades ago. Is the world heading toward what the late Brzezinski referred to as “the most dangerous scenario”? What should America be doing now to head off what we’re seeing from our three rivals? Or is it already too late?

Which presidential candidate will do the better job of blunting this potential power conflict ?

Second, what did the weekend’s South Carolina Republican primary tell us? Trump won by a wide margin. As of this writing, the tally has Trump at 59.8% and Nikki Haley at 39.5%. The media is treating this as a significant triumph. When you win by 20 points, that’s true.

The real story, however, is that Trump underperformed expectations and failed to expand his coalition beyond his base. If you doubt that, take a look at the polling group 538’s polling vs. actual results for Trump across the three Republican primaries:

We’re seeing Trump consistently underperform the polls by 7-8 points. Worse for Trump, Fox News’ John Roberts talked about an alarming exit poll finding that 59% of Haley voters in South Carolina last night (equal to 40% of the electorate) would not vote for Trump in the general election.

From Simon Rosenberg:

“It’s my view that something broke inside the GOP when Dobbs happened. That even for many Republicans, it was just too much, the party had gone too far, had become too ugly and dangerous.”

Trump and the GOP are showing signs of deep institutional weakness. They had disappointing elections in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. They’re replacing the entire leadership team at the RNC due to their ongoing fundraising struggles. Today’s RNC is broke:

In addition, the GOP’s state parties have atrophied in some key battleground states. Trump is burning through cash at unprecedented rates to fund his many lawsuits. Even Nikki Haley out raised him last month.

Wrongo thinks that we’re finally seeing “Trump Fatigue”. Everybody has seen his act and has zero need to ever see it again. The assertion that Trump is strong beyond his die-hard MAGA base seems to at last, be untrue. But what does Wrongo know? When he retired from the F500, he thought he would go into private equity. But he was seduced into online journalism by the promise of very small paychecks and zero job security.

Our third story is for the birds. The Guardian reports that:

“The Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco, which escaped New York City’s Central Park Zoo last year, has died after crashing into a building in Manhattan, officials said late on Friday.”

Here’s Flaco in happier times:

More:

“Flaco was rescued by the zoo in 2010, when he was less than a year old. He was reputed to be the only owl of his kind in the wild in North America, and there were widespread fears he ultimately wouldn’t survive for long outside captivity.”

The Eurasian eagle-owl is one of the larger owl species. Flaco’s wingspan was reported to be about 6 ft. Ornithologist Stephen Ambrose wrote on LinkedIn that there was evidence light glare from city buildings’ windows could blind owls momentarily and increase their risk of crashing into the structures, especially at night.

This raises the evergreen question of how to keep birds safe in US urban areas. Federal officials estimate that one billion birds in the US die annually after accidentally flying into building windows. Wrongo and Ms. Right had this happen to us years ago when a hawk crashed through our lakefront cottage living room’s wall of glass. He was dead when he hit the floor. It doesn’t only happen in high-rise buildings.

Time to wake up, America! There’s glare everywhere, including in the media’s silly discussion about how overwhelming Trump’s electoral chances are vs. Biden. Trump has a very small chance of being elected in 2024. To help you wake up, watch this great video of England’s Prince William singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” with Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift at the Winter Whites Gala charity ball at Kensington Palace. This is fun and worth your time:

The future King of England singing with the current Queen of Americana.

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Florida Lets Measles Run Free

The Daily Escape:

Highland Lighthouse, North Truro, Cape Cod, MA – February 2024 photo by Barbra A. Bentley

Let’s take a break this Saturday from a) Russia’s infiltration of the Republican Party and b) the growing realization that unless House Speaker Mike Johnson Johnsonless whips his members into shape before March 1st, we’ll have a government shutdown. Instead let’s focus today on Measles.

You are a witness the continued collapse in US public health standards since Florida’s Surgeon General has said its ok for unvaccinated kids to attend public school even though there are measles outbreaks. From KFF News:

“With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.”

More:

“The Department of Health ‘is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance,’ wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo’s in the letterhead.”

With his brief memo, Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that’s long kept measles outbreaks under control. This is where you wind up after decades of indoctrination of libertarianism and neoliberalism, where “freedom” becomes anarchy, a rejection of the ability of the state to impose restrictions, even in the name of public safety.

Everyone in America knows that measles is highly contagious, that it kills, and can do lasting damage. More from KFF:

“Most people who aren’t protected by a vaccine will get measles if they’re exposed to the virus. This vulnerable group includes children whose parents don’t get them vaccinated, infants too young for the vaccine, those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons…”

The CDC advises that unvaccinated students stay home from school for three weeks after exposure. About 1 in 5 people with measles end up hospitalized, 1 in 10 develop ear infections that can lead to permanent hearing loss, and about 1 in 1,000 die from respiratory and neurological complications. They reported that in 2023, childhood immunization rates had hit a 10-year low.

Worse, only about a quarter of Florida’s counties had reached the 95% threshold at which communities are considered protected against measles outbreaks, according to data posted by the Florida Department of Health in 2022.

Rebekah Jones, a data scientist who was removed from her post at Florida’s health department in 2020, over a rift regarding Coronavirus data, said:

“I think this is the predictable outcome of turning fringe, anti-vaccine rhetoric into a defining trait of the Florida government,”

A strategy of letting measles spread (which can wipe out your body’s immunity memory) while Covid is still pin-balling its way around the country? Sounds legit.

The way that things are going with public health in the US, it’s only a matter of time until the health departments of other western countries start issuing travel health notices for their citizens wanting to visit the US, advising them of the diseases that are being left to run free, particularly in Florida.

From The Nation:

“In 2022, Georgetown University political scientist Donald Moynihan wrote a piece on how to undermine the administrative state….No country becomes a world power without a capable public service.”

Perhaps the corollary, as stated by The Nation’s Gregg Gonsalves is this:

“No country becomes healthy without a capable public health system.”

That describes America today. More from The Nation:

“We did terribly on Covid…part of the reason was that our fundamentals were weak, but our politics are also set up to undermine public health….This has implications well beyond…the pandemic. It’s about how we expect to survive and thrive in America….This is a disaster in slow motion, and we’re watching it unfold as bystanders.”

There you have it: another thing to lose sleep over, and the election is still 7+ months away. Will there be enough infant deaths to generate sufficient outrage to roll this decision back?

Highly doubtful.

Wrongo is leaving you with that thought and is segueing into our Saturday Soother, where we take a break from doom scrolling and spend a few stolen moments alone with our thoughts. Here on the Fields of Wrong, there is still snow on the ground. So while we hope that spring is just around the corner, there’s little evidence to support it.

To help you relax, grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, played here by the Vienna Philharmonic, and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. This performance was a part of the annual free Vienna Summer Night Concert in 2019.

This is the fourth time Wrongo has featured this composition, although you are seeing this particular version for the first time.

Barber finished the Adagio in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber. Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it!

It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here, it is conducted by Gustavo Dudamel in 2019, like Toscanini did, without a score:

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