Divided Government – Page 5

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 8, 2023

On the fifteenth ballot of the new year, the House finally selected Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), as its new Speaker. What ended the impasse? In addition to the list of “concessions” that we know about, what other promises did McCarthy make to Freedom Caucus?

When selecting a new Speaker, the House operates more like a parliamentary system than America is used to or expects. When the Party in power has a slim majority, and if there is contention within that Party, coalitions must be built, promises are made, and concessions are extracted.

It seems that McCarthy relinquished all the power and authority of the office in order to win the title of Speaker. But a weak Speaker leading a fractured caucus is actually dangerous. The Republican House can frustrate Biden’s legislative agenda. It can conduct endless oversight hearings and investigations. It can restrict government spending.

When you look at the demands of the 20 anti-McCarthy holdouts and consider what he conceded to them, the next two years will be fractious. Over the past four days, they made demands in four areas. First, they object to funding Ukraine. They also object to the size of the omnibus spending bill that passed at the end of the last Congress. Third, they don’t want the US debt ceiling extended. Lastly, they want to hold investigations. Many investigations.

Since the bill funding Ukraine and the omnibus spending bill passed with bi-partisan support in both Houses, any action they try to take on those two are likely to fail. But they have the right to investigate anything and everything, so we need to be prepared for that.

The debt ceiling is a problem. There will be bi-partisan support in both Houses for increasing it, but McCarthy will control whether a clean debt ceiling increase ever gets to the House floor for a vote. There will be a bi-partisan group of House members to support that bill, but if McCarthy goes to Democrats for the needed votes to pass a debt ceiling increase, the anti-McCarthy faction will attempt to remove him from the Speaker position.

It’s very possible that McCarthy will be successfully deposed if Democrats aren’t inclined to save him. It was this kind of behavior that convinced John Boehner to retire.

McCarthy almost certainly made concessions about Ukraine and the debt ceiling and government spending in order to win the job. He will either break these promises, or he’ll lead the country to financial ruin. Or the moderates in the House GOP will try to kick him out. The Republicans have a majority but it’s not a functional one. On to cartoons.

McCarthy’s headaches are just beginning:

He’s a weak GOP Speaker, not a Pope:

It’s way past time for the GOP to hit the target:

Last week was deja vu of Jan 6 two years ago:

Saturday Soother – December 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Pondicherry Park, Bridgeton, ME – November 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Are the Democrats prioritizing the need to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act? Some are worried that amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) might not get done in what remains of Congress’ lame-duck session. If it isn’t done by January 1, it’s unlikely to be passed at all once Republicans take control of the House.

From the WaPo’s Greg Sargent:

“Versions of ECA reform have advanced in the Senate and the House, but it’s hard to see either passing as a stand-alone bill with only a few weeks left in the lame-duck session. That would chew up valuable floor time with much else left to do, including funding the entire government.

So, the most likely option at this point, a congressional aide tells me, is for ECA reform to get attached to that end-of-year spending bill.”

It’s worth worrying that this might not happen. Roll Call reports that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Amy Klobuchar have said that it should be made a part of the must-pass spending omnibus bill.

The pending ECA Reform bill is the most substantial legislative action trying to deal with the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted coup. Citing ambiguities in the ECA, Trump’s supporters argued that Vice President Mike Pence could set aside some states’ results. You know what followed that.

The pending legislation would clarify that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is purely ceremonial, and that s/he does not have the discretion to set aside any state’s properly certified votes. It would also raise the threshold to hear objections to a state’s electors from just one member in each chamber to 20% of both Houses.

ECA reform would also require governors to certify the correct slate of electors. It creates new ways for legal challenges when governors violate that duty, and requires Congress to count the court-sanctioned slate of electors even if a bad-acting state legislature appointed a sham slate.

This is important since right now, we’re seeing Arizona’s Cochise County’s election board simply refusing to certify the results of their midterm election. This shows that election denialism is alive and well in the states and demonstrates the need for ECA reform. Arizona’s GOP is showing us exactly what they plan to do in 2024. We should believe them.

In a future presidential election, a GOP-controlled state legislature could seize on exactly this kind of thing — a local refusal to certify results — as its excuse to appoint a different slate of electors for the losing presidential candidate. If that state’s GOP-controlled House counted those electors, under current law it could lead to a stolen election or major crisis. That must be fixed.

The Democrats are pushing on a string trying to get the bill passed. Attaching the ECA reform to a spending bill is complicated. Right now, 10 GOP Senators support the Senate version of reform, the exact number required to overcome a filibuster. But will those same Senators support the spending bill Sen. Schumer wants to pass in the Senate?

And if not, will the ECA reform bill get a stand-alone vote? More than a few GOP Senators could seek to derail it with poison-pill amendments. What’s more, a stand-alone vote could subject it to attacks from Trump and other Republicans. That might weaken the support of some of the 10 GOP Senators who are for it.

And the Democrats need Mitch McConnell and other GOP Senate leaders to agree to attach ECA reform to a spending bill, and enlist the 10 GOP Senators to support it. That means the GOP controls whether this bill is enacted.

The threat of election subversion won’t disappear in our lifetimes. As Greg Sargent says, Jan. 6 has caused unusual bipartisan urgency for Electoral Count Act reform. It would be the height of folly to let that slip away.

And now it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about power, politics, and economics for a few minutes, and calm ourselves before we rush headlong into the holiday season.

We’ve gotten through Thanksgiving and are heading towards Christmas. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, the faux Christmas tree is up, the Christmas plates are going into the cabinets, and the caviar and good single malts have been stocked. The first overseas Christmas cards have arrived.

Let’s put on our wireless headphones and watch and listen to Saint-Saëns’s “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28” for violin and piano, played in 2017 by Bomsori Kim on violin, and Jeongwon Kim on piano. The piece was written by Saint-Saëns in 1867 as the finale of his first violin concerto, but its success as a solo composition at its first performance led Saint-Saëns to publish it separately. Her violin is a Guarnieri from 1725:

Bomsori Kim is new to Wrongo and is outstanding.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Thanksgiving Day, Brewster, MA – November 2022 photo by Anne Marie

There was plenty of news over Thanksgiving that Wrongo was itching to talk about, but instead, he decided to take a complete break. Here’s something that’s been on his mind.

Despite all of the self-congratulating by Democrats, the Cook Political Report shows that Republicans received some 3.5 million more votes than Democrats in the midterms. Republicans received 54.13 million votes compared to the Democrats’ 50.79 million votes. Republicans did better in 2022 than they did in the 2018 midterms by 3 million votes, while Democrats got 10.3 million fewer votes than 2018, when they won control of the House by 235–199. Much of this is turnout.

Despite this context, the narrative is that America rejected the far Right by defeating election denier candidates. And most Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins. Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels or assume “the Trump fever has broken”. It hasn’t. America comes out of the midterms with voters evenly divided between the Parties.

Now, there are only four swing states left: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These four only account for 43 Electoral Votes. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster points to the striking “continuity among the elections” since Trump emerged as a national political figure:

“We’ve now gone through 2016, ’18, ‘20 and ‘22 – and all looked pretty much alike….And it has locked in the coalitions.”

So we’re not only evenly divided, but we’re also deeply divided politically.

Looking at the Electoral College, the midterms offered some optimism to Democrats when 2024 comes around. The five states that decided the last presidential race did so by flipping from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Those five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moved more toward the Democrats in 2022.

The Dems won six of the eight Senate and governor races across these states, and Dems could notch a seventh victory if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in a Georgia run-off next month.

But Republicans made Ohio, Iowa, and Florida Redder. Each now appears securely in the GOP’s column for 2024 (and most likely beyond). And the Dem’s perennial hope of turning Texas Blue still looks like it’s another 10 years away after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s double-digit victory against Beto O’Rourke. Republicans again won all of Texas’ statewide offices, continuing a Dem shutout that stretches back to the 1990s.

It appears that the offsetting and hardening partisan strengths of each Party could again give the power to decide the presidency to a few hundred thousand voters, in a very few close counties in a few very balanced states.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein says that a 2024 presidential race with just Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona as true battlegrounds would probably begin with Democrats favored in states holding 260 Electoral College votes (including Washington, DC) and Republicans in states with 235. That means Democrats would need to win just one of Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16), or Wisconsin (10) to reach an Electoral College majority. But that’s far from a certainty.

This division will make for tons of political stress over the next two years. Each Party understands that our nation’s future is now controlled by the choices of a tiny minority of people living in a few contested political districts: White-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas, and the mid-sized communities in Wisconsin’s so-called BOW counties (Brown County, Outagamie County and Winnebago County).

No GOP presidential candidate will concede Michigan or Pennsylvania just because of the midterm results. But the magnitude of those 2022 Democratic wins show how difficult it will be for a Republican nominee to take them in 2024 – particularly if the GOP candidate supports further restrictions on abortion.

It’s likely that Democrats will target North Carolina to expand their roster, while Republicans will target Minnesota and New Hampshire. But flipping any state will be difficult, depending upon candidate quality.

This shrinking list of competitive presidential states could increase political tensions for the next two years. Time to wake up America! Think about how your indifference to politics and to voting in our elections has put the country on a knife edge. The threat posed to America by the MAGA extremists remains very real.

It’s going to take tremendous effort in every single election until this dynamic shifts. And that could take a full generation. To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It hit the top of the R&B charts after its original 1965 release by The Impressions.

It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and here in 2009 by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Beck’s reaction when Stewart comes on stage is priceless. Stewart served as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group back in 1969:

Sample Lyrics:

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

Saturday Soother – House of Representatives Edition, November 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Verbena and sunset, Anza Borrego SP, CA – November 2022 photo by Paulette Donnellon

We start Saturday with a reflection on the outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Many think that she ranks as the best House Speaker in modern times.

Wrongo remembers her for standing up to Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel during the debate over the shape of the ACA. There was much concern about how far the Democrats could go with the bill. Emmanuel wanted to tone it down to meet objections from the GOP and from moderate Dems.

Pelosi met with Obama and his aides and said that she wouldn’t support anything but the full monte. That caused the White House’s effort to find a more moderate way forward to crumble. And America made its biggest single step toward providing health insurance to all Americans.

At the end, It was Pelosi not Obama, who made it happen. It was her ability to deliver her caucus that gave Obama et.al a spine.

Wrongo recently learned that when Nancy Pelosi was a teen and her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was mayor of Baltimore, she maintained his “favors book”. That explains much about her effectiveness when she finally got to Congress at age 47. At the point when she took office, she had five kids. Wrangling them, plus learning to keep a “favors book” was probably ideal preparation for being the first woman House Speaker.

This week, control of the US House has passed to the Republican Party. That means two things: First, that Republicans will now say that compliance with House subpoenas is mandatory, even though they purposefully ignored them for the last two years.

Second, Americans should prepare for investigations of the Biden administration by grandstanding GOP Congresscritters. James Comer (R-KY) held a press conference saying that he will be looking into Hunter Biden, his laptop, and his father. Comer, the incoming Oversight Committee chair, has said an investigation into Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and associates will be a priority. His idea is to try and position the president as having compromised national security.

If that seems to echo the FBI/DOJ investigations into Trump, well, that’s purely a coincidence. Be prepared to see absolutely nothing get done over the next two+ years that might improve the lives of the American people.

Let’s spend a minute on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Last March, the WaPo did a story on a security review it had authorized of the disk drive on the “Hunter Biden laptop”. The WaPo asked security experts Matt Green and Jake Williams to review the drive to see what they could authenticate. From the WaPo:

“In their examinations, Green and Williams found evidence that people other than Hunter Biden had accessed the drive and written files to it, both before and after the initial stories in the New York Post and long after the laptop itself had been turned over to the FBI.”

So people had kept adding content to the “laptop,” making it impossible to say what was on the “laptop” when it was originally provided to the Delaware computer repair shop.

Saturday Soother – Midterms Edition, November 12, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Colorado River with the Fisher Towers and the La Sal mountains in background, UT – November 2022 photo by Benjamin Williamson Photography

Wrongo can admit to being anxious and a bit depressed during the two weeks leading up to the midterms. But it wasn’t the blowout that America’s BS pollsters and the slavish media had been predicting. So he’s feeling better.

While it’s still too early to know what the political landscape will be in 2023, we can be reasonably sure that the Republicans will control the House and the Dems the Senate.

If that happens, what should Biden’s strategy be? It’s likely that he will retool the White House into a more overtly political operation with a focus on 2024. Axios reports that Biden’s considering bringing on a business leader to improve Democratic relations with the business community. That becomes more important if the US is heading into a recession sometime before the 2024 presidential election.

The idea is for Biden to stay in front of any potential financial crises. His team wants to be sure he’s getting a 360-degree view of the economy, even if that means angering the Party’s progressive wing.

Biden also plans to sharpen the contrast between Democrats and Congressional Republicans. It’s certain that the GOP will at best, hold only a narrow margin in the House. Some Republican Congress Critters are already considering mounting a challenge to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House Speaker.

That’s likely to leave Republicans with an unwieldy and possibly chaotic majority, which should give Democrats an opening to be on offense. If Democrats keep their minimal Senate majority, Biden could promote his agenda in the Senate and then continually ask why House Republicans are stalling it.

And when it comes to House Republicans spending time investigating the Biden administration, Biden and his team should use similar delay and deflect tactics as the Trump administration did.

The MAGA fringe in the House will also try to hold the country hostage to increases in the debt ceiling. It’s logical that a Dem + responsible Republican faction will work on a bipartisan basis to stave off the MAGA effort to burn up America’s credit rating.

Wrongo would urge the Senate and the House to try to get two big things accomplished in the lame duck session. It MUST complete its reforms of the Electoral Count Act. Over the summer, a bipartisan group of senators reached a deal to make it harder to overturn a presidential election. The proposal still needs to be approved by both chambers. The Senate proposal has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The House has passed a slightly different version, but if it doesn’t get done by January you can kiss these reforms goodbye.

Second, the Senate should attempt to use the budget reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling to preclude House Republicans from threatening default on the national debt as pretext for extracting concessions on Social Security, Medicare, and possibly, Veterans benefits.

If Biden can have success with working across the aisle on the Electoral Count Act along with the budget and debt ceiling, that will position Democrats (and Biden) as the adults in DC politics. To the extent that inflation continues to fall, and we avoid a deep recession, Biden can claim the Democrats are doing a good job on the economy.

Since it’s Saturday, welcome to our Saturday Soother. Wrongo invites all readers to pause for a few hours, (or more) to recharge after escaping the phantom red wave. It is imperative that we prevent burn out because there’s much more to do before the new Congress is sworn in, in January.

For Wrongo, that means going outside and doing yard work, or simply wandering around the fields of Wrong.

Wrongo and Ms. Right started this early on Friday by taking a walk in a nearby town park. The leaves on the park’s trees are down, but the grass and plants remain green and the air was warm. Despite being a national holiday the park was nearly empty, making for a delightful escape.

To help you pause, grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Telemann’s “Sonata in D major, TWV 44:1” played here by the Bremer Barockorchester (Bremen Baroque Orchestra). It was performed at the Unser Lieben Frauen Church in Bremen in October 2021. It features a very interesting performance on a 3′ long natural trumpet, which is valveless. Julian Zimmermann is the great musician making this solo trumpet performance:

Saturday Soother, London Edition – October 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

The Old Floral Hall, Covent Garden, Royal Opera House, London UK – October 2022 iPhone photo by Wrongo

We’re nearing the end of our week in London. Yesterday, we visited the Royal Opera House (ROH) in Covent Garden. We got to watch ballet rehearsals by the Royal Ballet Company which shares the ROH, and briefly listened in on a rehearsal by Lisette Oropesa who plays the title role in “Alcina” by Handel. Alcina turns her male lovers into plants, an idea that inspired much mirth from Ms. Right.

Wrongo saw Nureyev perform at the ROH in 1976, when he was working for the big American bank. That was ages before the remodel of the ROH which added a huge addition in 1997-1999. In the 1970s, the Old Floral Hall in the photo above was at street level. Now it has been refurbished, halved in size, and raised to the second floor inside the ROH addition. It is used as an event space and cocktail bar.

We heard over here about the good US economic news. And it wasn’t just about GDP growth. There was also good news on inflation. The Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) price index, which the Fed watches closely, increased by 4.2%, down significantly from 7.3% last quarter. And the CPI for the last three months rose by 0.5%, equating to an annual rate of 2%. If it were to keep up for the next nine months, that’s at the Fed’s inflation target. Pity that the media aren’t talking about this, but mostly about how the economy is still slowing.

One thing that caught Wrongo’s eye from abroad was Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government’s release of its 44th youth poll: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A national poll released today by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School indicates that 40% of 18-to-29-year-olds state that they will “definitely” vote in the November 8 midterm elections, on track to match or potentially exceed the record-breaking 2018 youth turnout in a midterm election. Young voters prefer Democratic control of Congress 57% to 31% (up five points for Democrats since spring), but 12% remain undecided.”

John Della Volpe, Kennedy School director, believes we will see a Gen Z wave in November:

“Youth today vote at levels that far exceed millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers when they were under 30.”

In the 2020 presidential election, voters 18-29 voted in even greater numbers than in 2018: closer to 50%. Yet, if turnout by younger voters is in the 40% range, that’s not something to celebrate. It means that younger voters are leaving a lot of political power on the table.

According to the US Census, people over 65 outvoted them by over 15 points in 2018. Political power is right there waiting for people to grab it. That only will happen if more people turn to vote.

Wrongo got an email from his Democratic Congressperson Jahana Hayes, saying that she was trailing by one point in the highly respected Emerson College poll which says:

“The economy is the most important issue for 46% of Connecticut 5th District voters, followed by abortion access (16%), and threats to democracy (14%).”

Hayes is a first-term Representative who was comfortably elected in 2020. While the results are within the ± 4.3% margin of error in the poll, this isn’t a seat the Dems thought was in play. This is more proof that the Dems are flailing with their messaging on inflation and the economy, despite the fact that inflation is falling and the economy is still growing.

But we also have to remember that if the GOP takes the House, they’ll have absolutely no incentive to even try to help make economic conditions any better.

In fact, they are actually incented to try to make it worse. Why? Because the Democrats will still control the White House and may also control the Senate for the next couple of years. It’s a safe bet that Republicans will do whatever they can to increase the chaos on the economic front, so that they can continue to blame Democrats when Trump runs again in 2024.

But we really have no idea which Party will control the House and Senate, and we may not know for sure until a week or two after November 8.

With Wrongo and Ms. Right in London, you’re on your own for how to relax on this Saturday. To help with that, watch and listen to Sinfonity TV Guitar’s incredible performance of Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue”, recorded live in Segovia, Spain. To watch 15 rock guitar musicians playing it in unison is astounding. Take your collective hats off to the musicians who play it:

Who says rock and classical music don’t mix?

Can We Become A Representative Democracy Again?

The Daily Escape:

Toroweap Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon NP, AZ – August 2022 photo by Andrei Stoica

Our democracy is teetering. Minority states representing a fraction of the whole population of the country, have an outsized representation in the Electoral College and in the Senate. This has helped ignite an acute threat to American democracy that’s based in Red State America. The NYT’s David Leonhardt quotes Harvard’s Steven Levitsky:

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,”

One reason is that the more populous states over the past century have grown much larger than the small states. That means the bigger state residents now hold (relatively) less political power in the Senate and the Electoral College than they did in the 1900s.

This was something that the founders understood and agreed on. At the time, there was an alternative discussion about maintaining proportional representation in the House. In the first US Congress, (1789-1791), James Madison had proposed 12 potential Constitutional amendments. We all know that ten amendments were quickly ratified as the Bill of Rights. Another amendment was ratified in 1992 as the 27^th Amendment which prohibits salary increases for House and Senate members to take effect before the next election.

The only one of the 12 amendments passed by Congress that wasn’t ratified is the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (CAA). The CAA was designed to let the number of seats in the House grow to meet future population growth.

A majority of the (then) states ratified the CAA. But by the end of 1791, it was one state short of adoption. No other state has ratified this potential amendment since 1792. Here’s the text of the proposed CAA:

“After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.”

The CAA lays out a mathematical formula for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives. Initially, it would have required one representative for every 30,000 constituents, with that number eventually climbing to one representative for every 50,000 constituents.

But the amendment wasn’t added to the Constitution. Today, Congress controls the size of the House of Representatives. They had regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until 1911, when it fixed the number of voting House members at 435. Today, that’s about 761,000 Americans per House seat. Miles away from 50,000.

Delaware leads in the malapportionment with 990,000 people per representative, about 250,000 more than the average state. Rhode Island has the most democratic apportionment with 548,000 people per representative. Both are small, Blue states.

The small Red state Wyoming has 578k/representative. All of the big states are higher than the average: NY has 777k, and CA has 761k, while Florida has 770k and Texas has 768k.

This also impacts the distribution of Electoral College votes, which equal the apportionment of House seats. As a result, the Electoral College is also becoming less representative. David Leonhardt points out:

“Before 2000, only three candidates won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only a single term.”

But two of the past four presidents (Trump and GW Bush in his first term) have become president despite losing the popular vote. Small states represent a fraction of the whole population of the country yet, absent something like the CAA, have an outsized representation in both the Senate and the Electoral College.

This was on purpose. But when the filibuster was added in the Senate’s rules, it changed everything. The filibuster has been part of the Senate in many forms, but in 1975, the Senate revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of Senators (60 votes out of 100) could limit debate.

With the Senate roughly equally divided, each Party has about 50 votes it can count on, but it needs 60 to pass most legislation. This means that the small states have more power in the Senate than they had before.

Using the 2010 US Census as an example, the US population was 308.7 million. If the CAA was in effect, the number of representatives in the House would be more than 6,000. That’s surely unwieldy, but is there a number of House seats between 435 and 6000 that would be more representative?

Our form of proportional representation needs an overhaul. Some changes to consider:

Better proportional representation in the House (via the CAA?) to help make the Electoral College more representative than currently
A version of ranked choice voting for all state-wide races
Overturning Citizens United
Ending gerrymandering by using independent commissions to establish district lines

Since only a few hundred people currently control the democratic direction of our country, can these ever be addressed?

Saturday Soother – July 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned homestead, Sanpete County, UT – photo by Jon Hafen Photography

Wrongo hates writing about dysfunction among Democrats, but lately, they seem to be all too willing to assemble the circular firing squad. And they’re doing it at a time, as we said yesterday, that the Dems seem to be getting back in the mid-terms race.

Wrongo heard an NPR reporter asking if Democrats were angry with Biden because he wasn’t doing more after the Dobbs decision. The point was that many Dems seem to think there’s a magical way of reinstating the Constitutional right to abortion when Democrats have at best, barely nominal control of Congress. Here are some media comments:

The WaPo reported that “some Democrats” think Biden “risks a dangerous failure to meet the moment” and quoted a Democratic consultant lamenting Biden’s “leadership vacuum.”
Politico reported that “Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated at what they perceive has been the White House’s lack of urgency” and “Biden’s seeming lack of fire.”
CNN reported: “Top Democrats complain the president isn’t acting with … the urgency the moment demands.” Anonymous Democratic lawmakers called the White House “rudderless,” with “no fight.”

Is it time to remind Democrats that the radical change in the Supreme Court was a self-inflicted wound? It was Democrats who failed to turnout in Obama-strength numbers in 2016 for an admittedly weaker candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Also, by not electing a few more Dems to the Senate in 2020, Democrats gave their majority over to Manchin and Sinema, and by extension, gave Republicans more control than they had earned.

As Dana Milbank said in the WaPo:

“The fratricide is…stoked by the press, which likes a “Dems-in-disarray” story and would love a presidential primary. Democrats are habitually more self-critical than their Republican counterparts…. And there’s genuine frustration that more can’t get done.

But that’s the fault of Joe Manchin, not Joe Biden — and of a broken political system that protects minority rule. What’s depressing Biden’s (and therefore Democrats’) poll numbers isn’t alleged timidity…but inflation and gas prices.”

One issue that is particularly galling to Wrongo is that many Dems want Biden to do more about Britney Griner, a WNBA basketball player who was arrested in Russia on a drug possession charge. She took vape vials containing cannabis to Russia, and was arrested when she tried to leave the country with them. She has now pleaded guilty to the charges.

While Wrongo and all Americans can feel sorry for her plight, her decision-making was terrible. As a Black lesbian American celebrity athlete, she became a perfect target for the Kremlin. Now she’s placed the US government in a difficult position, and many Democrats are pushing on Biden to do something. But his calculation has to be based on geopolitics. Her decisions aren’t Biden’s fault.

Once again, we’re seeing that Democrats are a herd of cats and Republicans are a herd of cattle. Republicans are satisfied to follow the bell cow, while Dems want to change the world to reflect their individual needs on the first day we get in power.

Republicans worked 50 years to achieve what they have today. They never gave up. Democrats always look for a shortcut to power, and then are angry when that door isn’t opened immediately. All we do is complain.

It’s fair for Democrats to ask whether they should re-nominate an 82-year-old man for the 2024 presidential election. But right now, we need to bear down and add to our Senate majority in November.

Holding on to the House isn’t a bad idea either.

Enough politics, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, those few moments stolen from our overly-scheduled lives when we can prepare ourselves for the trouble to come. If you are feeling exhausted by the news and the lack of action on the part of politicians, it’s understandable. But right now, we must recharge our batteries and throw ourselves back into the fray on Monday.

We’re back on the Fields of Wrong from 10 days in the south, including a stop on July 4 at Monticello. The fourth is also the date of Jefferson’s death, in 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Here’s a photo of Jefferson’s gardens and his view to the east in Virginia. The white building is the textile workshop:

July 2022 iPhone photo by Wrongo

To help you prepare for what’s coming, listen to Rossini’s Overture to “La Gazza Ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”). Rossini hadn’t finished the overture to the piece on time, so the day before the premiere, the conductor locked him in a room at the top of La Scala with orders to complete it. He was guarded by four stagehands whose job was to toss each completed page out the window to a copyist below. The opera was first performed in May, 1817. Here, it’s performed in 2012 by the Mannheim Philharmonic, a youth orchestra conducted by Boian Videnoff. You should watch just to see Videnoff’s conducting style:

Saturday Soother – April 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perhaps the most important selfie ever? Via POTUS

A few items for today. First, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday, making her the first-ever Black woman and former public defender to serve on the nation’s highest court. Every Democrat voted for her, plus three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with applause, but not by most Republicans.

Here’s a video of the many Republican Senators walking out amid applause for the new Associate Justice:

Some Republicans walk out during the applause. Mitt Romney stays and continues to clap pic.twitter.com/b9z8huQQIY

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 7, 2022

It was a bad moment for the White Nationalists of the GOP. Is it Wrongo, or has the Republican Party turned itself into a fountain of sexual innuendo and legal intrusion into our lives? Robert Reich agrees:

“…it’s part of their culture war, and culture wars sell with voters (and the media) eager for conflict and titillation. A culture war over sex sells even better. It lets Republicans imply that Democrats are somehow on the side of sexual “deviants” who endanger the “natural order…a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to talk about the real sources of populist anger — corporate-induced inflation at a time of record corporate profits, profiteering and price gouging….[and] stagnant wages…and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6.

Hate, whether against Justice Jackson or aspects of American culture, is like a hard drug. It’s destructive to the users and to everyone around them. And they will always need bigger hits of it.

Second, Tim Snyder posted about the Russian policy guiding its war in Ukraine: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency “RIA Novosti” published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated…into English.”

Snyder says that since the war began, “denazification” in Russian usage simply means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A “Nazi,” as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the “Nazification of Ukraine”.

The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: A Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit to being a Russian.

The money quote from Snyder:

“As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at the moment those actions become public knowledge….Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.”

Perhaps then it isn’t a surprise that Russia quit the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday shortly after it was suspended for atrocities in Ukraine. The UN General Assembly voted 93 to 24 to suspend Russia on Thursday, with 58 abstentions. What Snyder has reported deserves a global audience. It seems that throwing Russia out of the UN should be the next step.

Enough of this week’s news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, a precious few moments when we avoid the political yelling and focus on gathering ourselves for the coming week.

We’ve finally heard the peepers on the Fields of Wrong. The lawns are greening up, buds are on most trees and bushes, and it’s turkey romance season. We have a resident group of seven female and two male turkeys. This week, the males are preening around and spreading their tail feathers while the females run in the opposite direction. We expect that will turn into fraternization next week.

To kick off your Saturday, take a few minutes and brew up a mug of Two Dog coffee ($17.50/lb.) from Clearwater, FL’s Blazing Bean Roasters. Now grab a seat by a window and watch and listen to another arrangement of classical music by the Korean group LAYERS who we have featured before. This time, listen to their take on Bizet’s “Fantasy” from his opera “Carmen”. Here it is arranged for two cellos, violin, and piano:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 19, 2021

The political class in DC is very concerned about inflation, including many Democrats. So much so that they are unwilling to pass Biden’s “Build Back Better” social infrastructure bill because it will add to our current inflation. Specifically, Sen. Manchin objects to the extension of the child tax credit that is expiring this month.

It’s time to remind these people of what real inflation looks like. Back in 1980, when then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker raised interest rates high enough to throw the US into a recession and end inflation, inflation had averaged 6.9% for the previous 11 years. Let’s also remind Sen. Manchin that this year’s annualized rate of inflation went above the long-term average of around 3% in April. We’ve averaged 6.81% for the year, not for 11 years.

The Senate wrapped up its work for the year, with Democrats punting the Build Back Better and the voting rights bills into 2022. The Senate adjourned early Saturday morning after a voting marathon including confirming 50 of Biden’s nominees. On to cartoons.

The answer is to elect more Democratic Senators: