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:
The Daily Escape:
Sunset, North Plains, OR – August 2022 photo by David Leahy Photography
Wrongo and Ms. Right are streaming “5 Days at Memorial” a dramatization of the tragedy at a downtown New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina. It’s adapted from the 2013 book “Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital” by Sheri Fink. Ms. Right highly recommends the book.
It is difficult to watch something when you already know the outcome is a terrible loss of life. Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005, some 17 years ago. When we visited New Orleans three years ago, damage was still visible in parts of the city.
So imagine Wrongo’s surprise to read that the state of Louisiana is withholding nearly $40 million in funding for flood control in New Orleans: (brackets by Wrongo)
“[Louisiana] Attorney General Jeff Landry successfully pushed [the State Bond Commission] commissioners to withhold the funds as punishment, after the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution asking law enforcement officers not to enforce Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban…”
Yesterday, Wrongo quoted Dan Pfeiffer who said: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“Democratic efforts to turn this midterm from a progress report on Democratic governance into a referendum on GOP extremism failed to connect until the Dobbs decision. That was when Republican extremism went from an abstract argument to lived reality.”
The Dem’s performance in Tuesday’s primaries showed that Pfeiffer may be right, as many Democrats outperformed in swing districts. And what’s happening in New Orleans is another example of Republican extremism around the Dobbs decision. From Salon:
“The New Orleans City Council on July 7 passed a resolution in which local policymakers proclaimed their support for reproductive healthcare access and asked police, sheriff’s deputies, and prosecutors not to… enforce Louisiana’s draconian prohibition on abortion…”
That led to the state’s Bond Commission voting 7-6 to defer a motion to approve flood prevention funding until next month. CNN reported that this was the second time in two months that the panel rejected financing for a $39 million project that is meant to pay for drainage pumps critical to protecting New Orleans from flooding.
The Louisiana AG Landry sent a letter urging the bond commission to:
“…defer any applications for the City of New Orleans, Orleans Parish, and any local governmental entity or political subdivision under its purview….Any other funding that will directly benefit the City of New Orleans…should also be paused until such time as the council, mayor, chief of police, sheriff, and district attorney have met with and affirmed that they will comply with and enforce the laws of this state and cooperate with any state officials who may be called upon to enforce them.”
New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell told CNN that she is unwilling to budge on abortion and criticized Landry and other Republican members of the bond commission for endangering public health by holding flood mitigation funding hostage:
“We cannot afford to put politics over the rights of people, and particularly safeguarding people from hurricanes and other disasters, because we are on the front lines of climate change…”
Republicans used to favor local control. They always say federal policies shouldn’t apply unless the states agree. Now they’ll only say that if it’s politically convenient. This is political blackmail, not simply politics.
The sad part is how short sighted it is. This Landry guy and his Republican supporters who live outside of New Orleans think this can’t harm them. But, how long has it taken Louisiana to recoup all of its losses from Katrina?
And this bad behavior is becoming normalized. It happened in Texas’ Harris County when Houston was denied funds related to 2017’s Hurricane Harvey until recently. In Houston, the funds were not denied due to the abortion issue, but for other political reasons (including voting rights). Texas’s decision matrix favored more sparsely populated areas and areas with higher property values, which worked against Houston and Harris County, Harris County is a Democratic stronghold in a very Red State.
This kind of blackmail won’t go away unless fair-minded people win these important state offices, like attorney general and secretary of state.
Democrats need to hold the US House and Senate in November and retake the Presidency in 2024. If not, we will have failed to meet the moment. The defense of our previous political wins must be a constant goal in the game.
The 2022 and 2024 elections are America’s political endgame. And right now, it’s unclear how it’s going to play out.
This week, we all heard about tax cuts, the NYC terror attack, Trump’s Asia trip, and the World Series.
The GOP released their tax plan. The first analysis says everybody gets something:
Tax reform also brought up an old issue:
Trump’s trip to China won’t bring us any new “deals”:
The NYC terror attack hit close to home. One of the dead lived in Wrongo’s home town:
Hating immigrants, and hearing cries for extreme vetting have been on the agenda for a long time, as this 1903 cartoon shows:
Hat tip to Jack Cluth for the immigration cartoon
Houston got really good news this week:
The Daily Escape:
Reflection Canyon, in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah. This spot became popular with hikers after Apple used it to promote its Mac Book Pro high resolution with retina display. People first learned about the location after this photograph was taken by Michael Melford in 2006.
Texas has a $10 billion rainy day fund. Now, you would think that when the rains came to Houston, Gov. Greg Abbott would say “It’s a rainy day fund, let’s send some to Houston”.
Nope. The Texas Observer reports: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
On Tuesday, after Turner [Houston’s Democratic mayor, Sylvester Turner] made a public request for money from the rainy day fund, Governor Greg Abbott joined in, telling reporters that the fund wouldn’t be touched until the 2019 legislative session. Turner “has all the money that he needs,” Abbott said. “In times like these, it’s important to have fiscal responsibility as opposed to financial panic.” The governor went on to accuse the mayor of using Harvey recovery efforts as a “hostage to raise taxes.”
This is an epic statement of Evil. The Texas rainy day fund has $10 billion. The bill for Harvey is estimated at $180 billion, but Houston has all the money needed.
The Observer also quoted Lt. Governor Dan Patrick from early August, less than a month before Hurricane Harvey made landfall:
Where do we have all our problems in America?…Not at the state level run by Republicans, but in our cities that are mostly controlled by Democrat mayors and Democrat city council men and women. That’s where you see liberal policies. That’s where you see high taxes. That’s where you see street crime.
Ideology always comes first in Texas. You would think that these ultra-conservative chimps would be looking for ways to help Houston, if not its mayor. But, it’s business as usual: Everything good in Texas is to the credit of the brave GOP legislators in Austin, and everything bad is the fault of county commissioners, mayors, city councils and school boards.
Oh, and the immigrants.
Six of the nation’s 20 largest cities are in Texas. And those six have half of the state’s population, and they generate most of its economic activity. But, Republicans consider them a threat, either because of their “liberal” values or the demographic, and thus, the political threat they represent to the Texas Republican Party.
This could be a real problem for the entire country in the future. Increasingly, we are seeing the GOP in red states using their control of the political system to make war on the blue cities in their states. Think about Flint, MI where local interference by the governor and state-level Republicans partly brought about the lead-in-the-water crisis that remains unresolved, and which the state won’t pay for.
Maybe this is a good time to remember that Greg Abbott received a multi-million dollar settlement for an accident that paralyzed him, and put him in a wheelchair. He is also the guy that subsequently proposed, sponsored and shepherded tort reform in the Texas legislature.
He’s the guy that acts as if tort reform doesn’t keep present day accident victims from getting the kind of compensation that he received. He closed the door after he got his millions in a settlement.
Texas is dominated by right-wing extremists determined to turn everything to advance their ideological agenda. Forget that Texas already has massive disparities between whites and non-whites in terms of social services, policing, and most other government functions.
Turning their back on Houston just makes the ideology more visible.
In Texas, they just do everything bigger and badder.
Time to relax and think about summer being over. Fall is officially here, the leaves are turning and falling onto the fields of Wrong. Time to brew up a Vente-sized cup of Durango Coffee Company’s Costa Rica Las Lajas Perla Negra ($16.95/lb.), put on the Bluetooth headphones, and watch the leaves fall.
While you do, listen to “Woods”, the second cut on the 1980 album “Autumn” by George Winston. It was his second solo piano album. Wrongo chose this because of the great fall-inspired video that accompanies the music:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.