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The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category Archives: History

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 8, 2019

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are off to New Orleans for a few days. Regular posting will return on December 13th)

Trump’s former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Friday that the Confederate flag represented “service, sacrifice and heritage” for people in her state before mass murderer Dylann Roof “hijacked” its meaning when he shot and killed black Americans at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC in 2015:

‘Here is this guy that comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag, and had just hijacked everything that people thought of…people saw [the Confederate flag] as service and sacrifice and heritage, but once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.’

Here’s Nikki Haley going all in on winning the David Duke vote. Haley’s comment is of a piece with Trump’s comment that there are “good people on both sides.” Dylann Roof didn’t hijack the “meaning” of the Confederate flag, he lived out its meaning of hate, racism and white supremacy.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of the institutional racism that many in this country refuse to acknowledge, let alone fully rectify. People who regard the Confederate flag as an icon, with a glorious past that should be retained, ignore that it represents a social and economic structure that enriched a very small group of white people by enslaving and brutalizing a large group of black people.

That same small group was willing to destroy the US to preserve their oligarchy. The Confederate flag is about “heritage” the same way the swastika is about heritage.

What Haley said is incredible. What Wrongo means by incredible, is Nikki Haley has no credibility. On to cartoons. Dems and GOP are playing their hands:

Trump has nothing to fear:

The Grinch takes food stamps from 700,000 more Americans:

Elephants can’t spell:

People now think Trump is a comedian:

Biden goes viral in a bad way:

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Al-Baghdadi Connects GW Bush to Trump

The Daily Escape:

Witches paddle boarding on the Willamette River, Portland, OR. The event was the Stand Up Paddleboard Witch Paddle, that brings 100’s to paddle board on the river. Useful to remember that drowning was one of the recommended witch removal methods in ye olden days. Happy Halloween!

Speaking of Halloween, it looks like rain all day in our corner of Connecticut, so those parents with little ones, are casting about for ideas on how to avoid getting little Megan’s mask of Melania soaked through in the first minute.

On the flight back to the States from London, Wrongo watched the film “Vice”, a film history of the life and political career of Dick Cheney. It brought back how the GW Bush administration executed its pivot from a limited war in Afghanistan to a full-scale invasion of Iraq.

Cheney is portrayed as the prime mover behind getting the Bush folks to craft false intelligence “facts” to support, and then sustain, our war in Iraq. Cheney did this by creating a separate intelligence apparatus, since the existing intelligence agencies would not produce analysis supporting Iraq’s culpability in the 9/11 attacks.

One thing the movie points out was the effort by Cheney and Rumsfeld to find a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. They settled on a minor Iraqi anti-Shiite cleric named Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as the person that could be plausibly presented as having a tie between Saddam and bin Laden. This turned al-Baghdadi into one of the cool dudes of Islamic terrorism. He became a regional celebrity, the head of ISIS. We’ve all had to live with the consequences of Cheney’s “fake news”: Many died, and we’re still paying the price for Cheney’s rogue operation that sucked us deeply in the Middle East.

Now a different Republican president has taken out al-Baghdadi in a stealth raid in Syria this week. It was similar to Obama’s killing of bin Laden in May, 2011 in Afghanistan. We should be pleased that al-Baghdadi no longer controls ISIS, and we should give Trump full props for doing the deed.

We should remember that when Obama got bin Laden, the NYT reported the following from Republicans at the time:

“Former Vice President Dick Cheney declared, “The administration clearly deserves credit for the success of the operation.” New York’s former mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said, “I admire the courage of the president.” And Donald J. Trump declared, “I want to personally congratulate President Obama.”

But killing bin Laden didn’t kill al Qaeda, and killing al-Baghdadi won’t kill ISIS.

It’s good that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. But never forget that there is a straight line between Bush and Cheney’s elevation of al-Baghdadi to justify their invasion of Iraq, and al-Baghdadi driving ISIS to take over a swath of Iraq and Syria that was larger than the UK.

There’s a straight line connecting Bush/Cheney, and Obama’s willingness to bend our constitutional freedoms to extend the Global War on Terror for the better part of two decades.

There’s a straight line connecting Bush/Cheney and what Trump is doing in the Middle East today.

Still, killing al-Baghdadi is a good thing, and Trump’s pulling 1,000 troops out of Syria is not as serious an issue as most people in DC are saying it is.

But gloating over an enemy’s death? That isn’t something American presidents should be doing. When we celebrate the death of a foe, it shows weakness.

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Is The Trump/Ukraine Story A Trap for Dems?

The Daily Escape:

Hopkinton NH — September 2019 photo by Karen Randall

Wrongo has been skeptical of the House Democrats’ ability to investigate an administration that has zero interest in playing by the old rules.

He was skeptical of the effort to make Russian interference in the 2016 elections a means of impeachment of Trump. He was skeptical of Robert Mueller as the potential savior of the Democratic Party in 2018.

Now, we’ve stepped back into the waters of impeachment because of the Ukraine president’s convo with Trump. Are Democrats once again placing false hope in impeachment? Trump is corrupt in a completely ham-fisted way that makes his efforts at self-dealing blatantly obvious. Here’s Trump, talking to the Ukraine’s president Zelensky:

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great….Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

That fired up Democrats, since it appears that Trump was trying to pressure Zelensky by withholding US military aid unless Zelensky agreed to investigate both Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Here’s Wrongo’s take. For the past few months, Americans were finally concentrating on subjects like healthcare and college debt forgiveness. These ideas were getting both air time and traction, via the debates. The battalion of Democratic candidates were telling us their positions on these ideas, and others, like a wealth tax.

But the Democrats have now introduced impeachment 2.0, focused on the Trump/Ukraine story. By doing that, they have also rehabilitated a debunked Biden/Ukraine story, something that has been high on the GOP’s radar for years.

What’s the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/Ukraine story? It begins with the 2014 appointment of Hunter Biden to the board of Burisma Holdings, a small Ukrainian energy company. In late 2015, VP Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine, in part to send a message to the Ukrainian government that it needed to crack down on corruption.

That message was somewhat undermined by Hunter’s work with Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky had been Ukraine’s ecology minister under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Hunter had joined the board of Burisma the same month that Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, was conducting a money-laundering investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma. But the British investigation ended after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t turn over documents needed in the British investigation, and without that evidence, a British court ordered the assets unfrozen.

According to an Intercept piece on May 10th, Biden, during a visit to Kiev in late 2015, did threaten to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees unless the then- prosecutor was dismissed. But the Intercept argues that Biden did Ukraine a favor by hastening the prosecutor’s departure, because he had failed to properly investigate corrupt officials, including Zlochevsky.

By getting the prosecutor fired, Joe Biden made it more, rather than less likely, that Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch who Hunter worked for, would be subject to prosecution for corruption. Yet, it never happened.

There is no evidence that Joe Biden did anything to shield Hunter or Burisma Holdings from scrutiny, as claimed by Trump and Giuliani. But it is true that Hunter continued to work to repair Burisma’s reputation. That isn’t a praiseworthy activity for a presidential wanna-be’s son.

And Hunter’s no saint. In 2014, he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. Later, he was involved in a hedge fund with his uncle, James Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, that went belly up.

This story isn’t going to die. As long as the impeachment inquiry against Trump lasts, the Biden story will be linked to it for many Americans. Even if impeachment happens, the Republicans will use this against Joe Biden if he’s the nominee. Joe has said that he never discussed Hunter’s business interests in Ukraine with him, but maybe he should have.

A question that Democrats should be asking is whether this is the hill that they are prepared to die on: Is Trump’s Ukraine effort sufficient for an impeachment? Is it anything more than a “he said, she said” debate?

Are the Dems prepared for another investigative loss, much like in Russiagate and the Mueller Report?

Presidents know that they have few constraints on their activities. GW Bush (or perhaps Cheney) realized that, and went on to exploit presidential power in ways that radically changed America. And when the Dems came into power, Obama and Pelosi ruled out pursuing Bush and Cheney.

Trump is on a much more dangerous path than Bush and Cheney.

Would taking Trump down restore the balance of power in our politics?

Is that worth the downside risk to the Democrats?

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Saturday Soother – August 24, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Ground Swell – 1939 painting by Edward Hopper

In news you most assuredly haven’t seen, the 10th District US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that “Faithless Electors”, people who do not cast their votes in the Electoral College for the winner of their state’s presidential election, are now free to vote for anyone they want.

This Colorado case came about because in 2016, one elector refused to vote for the state’s winner, Hillary Clinton, and instead, voted for John Kasich. The Colorado Secretary of State ordered him to cast his vote for Clinton, or be replaced. He refused and was subsequently replaced with an elector who voted for Clinton.

The faithless elector sued, and the 10th Circuit decided in his favor, saying that the Constitution provides:

“…Presidential electors the right to cast a vote for president and vice president with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.”

The court traced the history of faithless electors back to 1796, when Samuel Miles voted for Thomas Jefferson instead of John Adams. Congress counted his vote. In the 2016 election, there were 13 anomalous votes from three states, and Congress also counted those votes.

This decision could have major ramifications for future presidential elections. The attorney for the faithless elector, Jason Wesoky, said the Court’s ruling essentially makes the laws requiring electors to vote for the state’s winner unenforceable. That impacts 16 states today.

It is even more significant, since a growing number of states are rethinking their Electoral College systems in response to the 2016 election. The 16 states that have passed laws that award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, currently equal 196 electoral votes.

If states representing another 74 electoral votes pass it, the so-called National Popular Vote bill will control the majority of votes in the Electoral College. The bill has passed at least one chamber in 8 additional states with 75 additional electoral votes.

This Appeals Court’s decision means that yet another crucial issue to  the future of our democracy will be in the hands of the Supreme Court, once the appeal gets to them.

Enough of news you won’t ever use, it’s time for your Saturday Soother!

Start by brewing up a mug of Honduras Marcala coffee ($19/12oz.) from Santa Barbara’s Handlebar Coffee Roasters. The founders are professional cyclists who met while riding in the Amgen Tour of California, America’s best bike race.

Now, settle back and listen to something very different, a guitar band from Mali called Tinariwen. They are Tuareg musicians from northern Mali. They play rolling melodic lines and loping rhythms that evoke the desert sands of the Sahara. The band’s name literally means “deserts” in their language, Tamasheq. Here they are playing “Kel Tinawen” from their upcoming album “Amadjar”, available on September 6th:

The video is of a road trip along Africa’s Atlantic coast as the band and crew cross the Western Sahara. They will be touring the US in September. For an early date in Winston-Salem, NC, some locals on social media are leveling violent, racist attacks against the musicians. Welcome to America!

Here is a translation of the lyrics:

Evil tongues – you can keep talking.

The uprising will be impossible to suppress.

The treachery of your evil words has sold out your brothers for your own interests.

You’ve locked them up in a prison, every last one of them.

You fine talkers, tell us what road you plan to take to avoid us if we remain rooted.

You’ve forgotten the suffering of our parents,

The suffering they have experienced since birth,

Unable to find water, unless they dig wells with their own hands.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Saturday Soother – August 10, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Milky Way from the summit of Mt. Katahdin, ME – 2019 photo by aryeh95

Wrongo wants to provide some background to how Hong Kong (HK) went from being a UK colony to being a part of China. If you watch the news, you know that Hong Long’s anti-extradition protests are now in their third month. They are ostensibly directed at the HK administration, but they’re also aimed at the Chinese government in Beijing.

And the conflict appears to be escalating.

The Hong Kong — Mainland conflict partly reflects a huge gap in national identity. Frank Chung in a piece in Ejinsight, says it can be explained in part by how the nationality of most people in Hong Kong was changed in 1997 from British to Chinese: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“From China’s standpoint, Hong Kong had always been Chinese soil. Through 150 years of British rule, its people remained Chinese, regardless of British law. This fitted nicely with Britain’s policy, which was to see to it that the millions of Chinese “British citizens” in Hong Kong could not move to the United Kingdom. Nationality and immigration laws were changed.

Britain created a new category of citizens, called British Dependent Territory Citizens, in the 1980s. This transformed United Kingdom citizens into Hong Kong citizens. When Hong Kong was no longer a British dependent territory, yet another new category was created, British National (Overseas). The holder has no right to live in Britain and the citizenship cannot be passed on to the next generation.

China, too, changed its nationality law to deal with Hong Kong. The Standing Committee of its National People’s Congress in 1996 – the year before the handover – issued “Explanations” of how China’s Nationality Law would be applied in Hong Kong. That is to say, the law would mean different things in different parts of the country, a highly unusual legal situation.

The “Explanations” introduce a concept missing in the nationality law itself, that of “Chinese descent.” Thus, any Hong Kong resident of Chinese descent who was born in Hong Kong or China is a Chinese national, regardless of whether he possesses Canadian, Australian, British or other nationality. That means people who were foreign nationals were transformed into Chinese nationals in 1997.”

This was how China and the UK cooperated to facilitate the transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Both wanted the people as well as the territory to be transferred wholesale. The millions of people in Hong Kong were considered nothing but chattel in the transfer.

And so it goes today.

China has all the leverage in the current test of wills. Their concern is not to let the HK demonstrations “infect” any cities on the mainland. And with the growth of the Chinese economy, HK’s leverage is steadily decreasing, as other Chinese cities surpass it economically, and trade directly with the rest of the world, a function that HK used to perform.

Two ways of looking at the current situation: One, HK’s not as important, and there’s little it can do to deflect Beijing’s control. Two, if Beijing doesn’t crack down, it will be seen as a weakness, rather than the wisdom of a mature nation.

Either way, the big advantage of authoritarian regimes is that they have fewer constraints. China historically has walked a line between centralized authority and provincial power. Centralized power will always win.

On to the weekend, it’s time for our Saturday Soother! With all the mass shootings news, and Trump trying to keep in the forefront of the same news cycle, our heads are spinning. We need to kick back and forget everything but how to kill crabgrass, and an AR-15 won’t help with that.

Start by brewing up a mug of Kenya Handege coffee ($19/12 oz.) from Austin TX-based Greater Goods Roasters. They say it is very sweet, tart, and rich. Now settle back near a large window and listen to Mary Gauthier perform her 2005 composition “Mercy Now” at the 2010 Americana Music Festival in Nashville, TN:

Given what El Paso and Dayton are going through, Gauthier’s poignant and direct message should resonate with all of us. Wrongo knows that you rarely click through and listen to the music, but today, it is really worth your while to listen.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – August 5, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Crater Lake NP viewed from Watchman Lookout Station, Oregon – 2016 photo by atheleticamps

Wake Up America! With El Paso TX, Dayton OH, and Gilroy CA last week, we’re starting to see what Red Hat Hatred means in the US. We’ll soon hear that these are more lone wolves who snapped, and that’s why we need to spend more on mental health, and to keep guns away from those sickies who really just need meds and counseling.

But, “lone wolves” should not be acting in lockstep with the Trump regime. Zealots and militants do that. In real life, wolves hunt in packs, so the term “lone wolf” makes no sense whatsoever.

From sociologist Kieran Healy: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“It’s traditional to say that there are ‘no easy answers’, but this is not really true. Everywhere groups face the problem of holding themselves together. Every society has its enormous complex of institutions and weight of rituals that, through the sheer force of mutual expectation and daily habit, bring that society to life. But not every society has successfully institutionalized the mass shooting. Only one place that has done that, deliberately and effectively. The United States has chosen, and continues to choose, to enact ritual compliance to an ideal of freedom in a way that results in a steady flow of blood sacrifice. This ritual of childhood is not a betrayal of “who we are” as a country. It is what America has made of itself, how it worships itself, and how it makes itself real.”

This is the society we’ve become. Will Republicans do anything? Of course not. Shooting at St. Ronnie didn’t get them to act. Shooting at Steve Scalise and other Congress persons didn’t help. The common factor is no modern-day Republican politician (since Lincoln and Garfield) have actually been killed. So, unless targeting Republicans becomes the norm, they’ll never budge.

OTOH, look at this billboard about the Squad! Have at it, boys! More guns! The fact that American voters countenance this double standard is beyond disgusting. At this point, the right wing’s reaction to this endless carnival of mass murder by angry white dudes comes in a few cascading flavors:

  • The ‘thoughts and prayers reaction, which is the shortest and slipperiest response, but if pressed, they’ll offer up: That’s just the cost of freedom.
  • Or, that mass shooting deaths are less than 1% of gun deaths, let alone actual murders, in the US, so what ya gonna do? They say that the vast majority of people killed by guns in the US are shot one or two at a time, not in large groups.

But, that’s not something any reasonable person should consider a winning argument. And as for Trump, there’s really nothing for him to say. He can’t play the role of healing the nation that we have normally expected from our leaders, because he bears real responsibility for the violence.

The Second Amendment has failed America, says Joel Mathis of The Week:

“The Second Amendment of the US Constitution is a failure because the right to bear arms — the right it so famously defends — is supposed to protect Americans from violence. Instead, it endangers them…. Data shows that people who own guns legally are more likely to kill themselves than they are to kill an intruder. People who own guns legally are more likely to kill a family member — on purpose or accidentally — than they are to kill an assailant. And people who own guns legally don’t actually use those weapons in self-defense all that often.”

Mathis goes on to say that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On balance, guns do more harm in America than good. The damages are easily measured, while the benefits are mostly theoretical and rare. This means the Second Amendment, as currently observed, doesn’t actually work under the terms of its own logic.”

Wake up! Americans should be able to gather at places like churches, schools, shopping malls, and concerts without fear that they’ve made themselves easy targets for the latest angry man possessing the tools to kill dozens of people within a few minutes.

To help you reflect on the Second Amendment, here is CPE Bach’s Cello Concerto in A Major, Largo movement, with Tanya Tomkins on a 1798 baroque cello. She’s playing along with San Francisco’s Voices of Music. This is a very somber piece, seemingly perfect for reflecting on mass shootings:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Take Away Trump’s Legitimacy

The Daily Escape:

Wildflowers at St. Marys Lake, Glacier NP – July 2019 photo by zjpurdy

Wrongo arises from his sick bed to discuss Trump’s war on the four Democratic Congresswomen. Saying “America, love it or leave it”, or, “Go back where you came from” are almost as old as the country itself.

“Love it or leave it” was a popular bumper sticker during the late 1960s. It was aimed at the anti-Vietnam War protesters who claimed that America was wrong to be fighting in Vietnam. The slogan possessed an internal logic. If you really hate where you are, why don’t you go someplace else?

The reality is that wanting policy change isn’t the equivalent of hating your country. Nixon and his supporters said that the (largely) student protesters believed that America itself was evil. That justified the slogan for the right, and we saw it everywhere.

Fighting for policy change today is perfectly acceptable. It says nothing about your love of country. Despite Trump’s shouting, dissent in no way equals hate of country.

By using “Go back where you came from”, Trump is tapping into one of the old reliable political tools, the fear and vilification of immigrants and their descendants. He’s using deeply entrenched roots in American history: Why don’t you just go back where you came from?

Or, as Trump’s North Carolina crowd said, “Send her back”. Send her back doesn’t just apply to Rep. Ilhan Omar. It means your black neighbors, the Guatemalan family at church, and the Hmong kids your son plays soccer with. It means your Indian co-workers; it means the Chinese couple in the park.

But it doesn’t include any of the roughly 580,000 illegal migrants from Europe.

From the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to “No Irish Need Apply” signs in the 1830s, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, America has loved to hate immigrants. They were not only seen as competing for jobs, but as threatening the social, cultural and political order. Even in the 1830s people thought that they were taking jobs that should belong to Americans, and that they clung to their native language and refused to assimilate.

Sound familiar?

And once we stopped allowing Chinese immigrants, some of the jobs denied to the Chinese were subsequently filled by Mexicans. They were also viewed as different, clannish and hard to assimilate.

It’s good to remember that the US government has rules against saying to its workers “go back where you came from”. Here’s a quote from the Equal Opportunity Commission’s regulations:

“Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ whether made by supervisors or by co-workers…”

Isn’t Trump a government supervisor? Sure, but these rules don’t apply in Republican administrations. Robert Kagan in the WaPo:

“Trump has given us a binary choice: Either stand with American principles, which in this case means standing in defense of the Squad, or equivocate, which means standing with Trump and white nationalism. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). The truth is, they have done nothing and said nothing about the United States or about an ally (in this case, Israel) that has not been done or said thousands of times.”

Now, he’s going up against the entire Democratic Party. They’re quoting him directly. And the pit bulls at Fox News are saying that calling him out is grossly unfair.

It’s time for Democrats to stop debating Trump about whether he’s a racist. They simply need to keep saying it. Every day. Until November 2020. Along the way, which ever Democrat is nominated should say they have no intention of debating the liar and racist Trump. He doesn’t deserve the dignity and respect that the debate forum implies.

Instead, the Democratic nominee should buy time on all networks including Fox, and on all social media outlets in 5, to not-longer-than 10 minute pieces. In each, they can point out what Trump said he would do, and what actually happened.

Think how it might work for domestic policy: Trump gutted Obamacare with no plan for helping the people who lost insurance. His tax cuts helped corporations and the 1%, while doing nearly nothing for the rest of us. His tax cuts also blew a hole in our budget. He’s weakened our education department, and our environmental regulations.

The candidate would then present the solutions. Clearly, without the need for any ninety second rebuttals by the liar and racist Trump. The GOP will say we’re not following the rules, but Trump never follows “rules” of presidential behavior, why should Democrats?

He’s already proven that he will say anything (and possibly do anything) to get elected.

Stop legitimizing him.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 30, 2019

While most of the media was blathering about the Democratic debate dog-and-pony-shows, the story of the week was the Gerrymandering decision that the Supreme Court announced on Thursday. Its decision in Rucho v. Common Cause says that the federal courts have no business policing partisan gerrymanders. That issue is for states to handle.

Chief Justice John Roberts:

“Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering. Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void….The States, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts.”

The Conservative justices are saying that citizens have no recourse to the federal courts to solve what has become a major weakness in our democracy.

Roberts is now three-for-three, with Citizens United opening the floodgates to unlimited corporate money funding candidates. Then, with Shelby County vs. Holder, he eviscerated part of the Fourteenth Amendment and defanged the Voting Rights Act. And now, in Rucho v. Common Cause, he delegates to state legislative majorities that were enabled by the first two rulings, the ability to perpetualize (? probably not a word) their party’s time in office by drawing unrepresentative district maps with no recourse to judicial appeal.

Justice Elena Kagan dissented:

“For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights….Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections….”

Wrongo’s shorter John Roberts:

“The federal government can’t do anything about your state stripping you of representation. You have to go back to the people who stripped you of representation and ask them.”

This has enabled a charade of a democracy to replace the one that we thought we had. Chief Justice Roberts’s legacy will be the death of democracy. All of today’s cartoons will concern gerrymandering.

The domestic violence will continue:

The Roberts decision simplified:

Elections have consequences:

 

Supremes sit idly by while America burns:

 

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Saturday Soother – War With Iran Edition, June 22, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Na Pali Coast, Kauai HI – 2019 photo by Santahickey

It’s tough to wake up on a Friday morning and find out that during the previous night, America almost started a war. On Thursday night, Trump allegedly pulled back from a military strike he had earlier authorized against Iran.

The New York Times wrote: “Trump Approves Strikes on Iran, but Then Abruptly Pulls Back”. The NYT says that Trump’s hawks, Bolton, Pompeo, and CIA Director Gina Haspel, had argued for the strike, while the Pentagon was said to have been against it. The NYT report includes this paragraph: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Asked about the plans for a strike and the decision to hold back, the White House declined to comment, as did Pentagon officials. No government officials asked The New York Times to withhold the article.”

It’s curious. If Trump was serious about attacking Iran, what purpose was served by the WH giving this story to the NYT? Not everyone bought the claim that a planned attack was called back. Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar on international conflicts, tweeted:

Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk – 3:43 UTC – 21 Jun 2019

I don’t buy this. Trump’s team is trying to have it both ways — acting restrained but talking tough. This is pretty much what Nixon did in 1969, too. Why not just admit that sometimes restraint is smart?

He goes on to link to the 1969 NYT piece referenced above:

The @nytimes ran the same story Nixon in 1969. Nixon was not going to retaliate but he wanted people to think he almost did — and the Gray Lady obliged. —> Aides Say Nixon Weighed Swift Korea Reprisal

On May 6th 1969, the Times carried a story that Nixon decided not to escalate when the NoKo’s shot down a US Navy plane. So, this current storyline of “a strike was ordered, but Trump held back and saved the day” might also have been coordinated by the WH and the NYT.

If the threat of another Middle East war wasn’t bad enough, a new IMF study shows that US $5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. The latest available country breakdown is for 2015. In that year, the US was the third-largest subsidizer of the fossil fuel industry, providing $649 billion in subsidies. China and Russia ranked first and second, respectively.

You should be outraged that the $649 billion we spent in 2015 is more than 10 times the 2015 federal spending for education. America has to change its priorities. The true costs to America of using fossil fuels has to include these subsidies.

These two stories about fossil fuels show our government’s fealty to the oil industry.

The average person didn’t notice that on the day the American drone was shot down in the Straits of Hormuz, the price of oil jumped 10%. Trump surely was told this, and the risk of higher oil prices caused by his risky foreign policy may have reduced his desire to strike at Iran.

For whatever reason, we’ve finally seen a prudent move by Trump. It’s a face saving gesture: he appears both tough and reasonable simultaneously. Also, it is encouraging that he used the concept of proportionality, saying that the planned strike would have been too harsh a retaliation for losing one drone.

We can expect his neo-con advisors and the FOX fringe to try to undercut his decision. Maybe then he’ll understand it’s time to clean house.

So, on this Saturday, it may be difficult to get soothed, but let’s try our best. Wrongo and Ms. Right are on Cape Cod with daughter Kelly, where rain is dominating the weather. In honor of being here, today we’ll brew up a large cup of Wellfleet’s Beanstock Coffee Roasters’s old reliable Wellfleet Blend ($11.99/12oz.).

Now, settle back and listen to “The Hebrides”, Op. 26 “Fingal’s Cave” by Felix Mendelssohn. It is played by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, conducted by Scott Sandmeier.

Mendelssohn actually visited the west coast of Scotland in 1829. It was part of Mendelssohn’s three-year Grand Tour, a common excursion taken by young men of wealthy families as a part of gaining cultural literacy. Here is “The Hebrides”:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Saturday Soother – June 15, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Emerald Lake, Yoho NP British Columbia – photo by newenglandmtbr

The basketball season ended on Thursday night, but the DNC gave us a new made-for-TV sport, the two-day Democratic presidential primary debates. If you are thinking Wrongo shouldn’t be using sports analogies for something of consequence, consider that the NYT called them “match ups” in their announcement. A sporting contest is how the media sees the Democratic primary race.

The fact that the future of the country rides on how these “match-ups” play out in November 2020 doesn’t seem to faze the media. Here is the line-up for June 26th:

Booker Inslee
Castro Klobuchar
De Blasio O’Rourke
Delaney Ryan
Gabbard Warren

It appears that Warren is the star of Wednesday night. She’ll try to knock off Booker, and audition O’Rourke for VP. FWIW, O’Rourke has the ability to knock off Warren, but he’s nowhere near as experienced. The rest will audition for VP.

This isn’t a debate. It’s a two-hour effort by each candidate to break through into the consciousness of viewers and the media. That 120 minute time slot will be reduced by at least 20 minutes of commercials. Ten candidates will then split 100 minutes, or about 10 minutes each, unless someone is a hog. A few of these candidates have a very hard time putting complex ideas into short sentences, so the role  of the moderators will be crucial.

Here’s the Thursday, June 27th line-up:

Biden Hickenlooper
Bennet Sanders
Buttigieg Swalwell
Gillibrand Williamson
Harris Yang

On Night Two, it seems certain that Sanders and Harris will try to poke Biden, another person who has difficulty with short sentences. Buttigieg will be trying to break through. Gillibrand looks to be auditioning for VP. Who is Swalwell?

We’ll get through this June circus, and then see another at the end of July. But for the third round in September, the qualifying thresholds jump significantly:

“The DNC’s outline for its September debate — the third of at least a dozen promised matchups during the 2020 nominating fight — decrees that candidates can participate only by reaching 2% in four approved polls released between June 28 and Aug. 28 while also collecting contributions from a minimum of 130,000 unique donors before Aug. 28. That donor list must include a minimum of 400 individuals in at least 20 states.”

That could cull half or more of the herd. Given today’s polling averages at Real Clear Politics, that could leave: Biden, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete, Kamala Harris, and possibly, Beto in the top tier.

It is also possible that one or two other candidates could break through in the initial debates and get their numbers up significantly by September. But, we can count on it being a much smaller stage after Labor Day.

But you’ve had enough for this week!

Iran may have blown up a tanker or two, or it may be a false flag operation. Sarah Sanders leaving the White House confirms that it’s difficult to spend more than two years working for Trump. Trump said he’d cheat again, if a foreign country gave him another chance.

With all of this, it’s time for a Saturday Soother.

Start by brewing up a cup of Rocketeer Blend ($14.00/12 oz.) coffee from Massachusetts’s Atomic Roastery. They say you will taste chocolate, nutty tones and sweet spices.

Now settle back at listen to “Adagietto” (movement 4) from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, conducted by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. The Adagietto is the most frequently performed of Mahler’s works. This leads to two stories.

Mahler was in love with Alma Schindler, the woman who became his wife. She was considered the most beautiful woman in Vienna. He didn’t declare his love, but instead, composed this piece and sent it to her without a note. She played the music, and said to Mahler, “Now you should come here.”

Story two: Their marriage struggled, and she had an affair with Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School of architecture. After Mahler died, Alma married Gropius. During her marriage to Gropius, Alma had an affair with Franz Werfel, an Austrian novelist and playwright. Alma and Werfel were eventually married after Alma separated from Gropius. They fled to the US when the Nazis took over Austria, and settled in Los Angeles. Alma died in 1964.

The Adagietto was chosen for the 1971 film “Death In Venice”. A member of the film crew was impressed with the music, and asked who wrote it. He was told “Gustav Mahler”. The guy replied “Can we hire him”? Mahler died in 1911.

Here is the beautiful Adagietto:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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