Leadership – Page 7 – The Wrongologist

Can A Peace Be Brokered Between Israel And Hamas?

The Daily Escape:

Tug pushing barge Tongass Provider in Dutch Harbor, AK. This is the last big load of the season heading north before ice prevents boat travel – October 29, 2023 photo by Richard McKinley. Note how small the trucks and RVs look relative to all of the goods on the barge!

Saturday is when the Wrongologist expects to offer his readers a chance to calm down after what has become our all-too-common weeks of domestic and international horrors. We call this the “Saturday Soother”, but this week, once again, it may prove difficult to find soothing.

Wrongo’s column on Tuesday ended by asking:

“Can Biden broker a peace when neither side wants one?”

Friend of the blog, Brendan K. who has military experience in the Middle East (ME) said in response:

“A peace does need to be brokered, but by Arab leadership with Israel. Biden has no relevance in the Arab World…”

The point is that the US cannot be a staunch supporter of Israel and also be an honest broker between the combatants. That the US isn’t trustable isn’t a new idea in the Middle East; this has been an issue in most conflicts involving Israel for decades.

But it seems that the window on a brokered end to hostilities in Gaza may not be open for long. The idea that Israel has crossed the line of proportionality in their attacks on Gaza is growing among western countries, while the idea that Arabs must stand in solidarity with Hamas vs. Israel also seems to be growing throughout the world.

We don’t need to look very hard to find examples of how US actions with Israel compromise its possible value to broker peace. The Intercept has a story about the US building a secret base inside Israel:

“Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build US troop facilities for a secret base it maintains…within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding US base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.”

In addition to hosting a radar site that is pointed toward Iran, the Army is constructing a “life support facility” there, which is military-speak for barracks for personnel. All of this is despite Biden insisting that there are no plans to send US troops to Israel given the war on Hamas. But the Intercept claims that a secret US military presence in Israel already exists. Apparently sites like this can house as many as 1,000 troops.

Add what the NYT reported on Friday about US drones over Gaza:

“The US military is flying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip, according to two Defense Department officials and an analysis by The New York Times. The officials said the drones were being used to aid in hostage recovery efforts, indicating that the US is more involved than previously known.”

The Defense Department told the NYT that these unarmed surveillance flights are not supporting Israeli military operations on the ground. Instead, the goal was to assist in locating hostages, and pass potential leads to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Wrongo finds the claim that these drones have a single mission to be laughable. In addition, several dozen American commandos are now on the ground in Israel. This view of drone flight patterns is from the NYT:

Flights shown here are from Oct. 28 to Nov. 2, of which at least six flights were over Gaza. Flight path data is from FlightRadar24. Paths are approximate based on each flight’s reported position about every minute.

Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah in Lebanon offered a warning to Israel and the US when he spoke for the first time since the start of the Israel/Hamas war. The WSJ had some key takeaways from his televised address:

It isn’t yet time for a wider, regional war: “For those who say that Hezbollah should start a war in the entire region, I say wait. These are the beginnings.”
Hezbollah had no advance knowledge of Oct. 7 attacks: The decision “was 100% Palestinian and it was this specific utmost secrecy which made it so successful.”
Arab and Muslim states must enforce the diplomatic and economic isolation of Israel: “It is not enough to just issue statements.”
Israel can’t eliminate Hamas: “One of the biggest mistakes that Israel is making right now is setting goals that it cannot achieve, such as eliminating Hamas and the power of Hezbollah.”
There should be a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip: “The Arab and Islamic nations must at the very least make an effort to achieve a cease-fire, even if some of them do not want to…sacrifice anything.”

Nasrallah also cautioned Israel against launching a preemptive strike:

“I tell the Israelis, if you are considering carrying out a preemptive attack against Lebanon, it will be the most foolish mistake you make in your entire existence.”

Worse, the WSJ reports that the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary outfit, plans to send air defenses to Hezbollah, which would be a major escalation in the Israel/Hamas war.

As expected, Netanyahu barked back with his own threat, warning Israel’s “enemies in the north” not to make the costly mistake of escalating the war:

“You cannot imagine how much this will cost you.”

It is very clear that Israel has forgotten 2006. Back then, Hezbollah attacked Israel, who responded by attacking civilian targets in Lebanon in an effort to make the Lebanese government and people think that Hezbollah brought death and destruction to their country. The opposite effect happened with most Lebanese Muslims increasing their approval or support for Hezbollah, while even Lebanese Christians, normally not friendly to Islamic parties or militias, blamed Israel for attacking civilian targets as an act of punishment.

Doesn’t that sound just like the Israeli strategy in Gaza today, 17 years later? US Secretary of State Blinken also issued a warning:

“With regard to Lebanon, with regard to Hezbollah, with regard to Iran, we have been very clear from the outset that we are determined that there not be a second or third front opened in this conflict. President Biden said on day one to anyone thinking of opening a second front, taking advantage of the situation, don’t. And we’ve backed up those words …with practical deeds.”

Wrongo is unsure what “practical deeds” Blinken is talking about. But it seems apparent that the warfighting strategy for Israel’s opponents is to continue to push the US into a position to overcommit until we can do no more. Wrongo thinks that Nasrallah will be reluctant to order a large missile attack against Israel because he knows that Israel will again attack Lebanese infrastructure with the complete blessing of the US.

As it presently stands, the Israel/Gaza situation is grim. There aren’t any reasons to expect Israel to voluntarily stop its ground operation, nor any indications as of yet that the Arab states are seriously considering attempting a diplomatic effort to achieve a cease fire.

Wrongo asked friend of the blog Brendan K. if he had an idea about how to extract Biden from the Israeli briar patch. And now Wrongo asks all readers: How/who has the ability to bring both sides to the table?

And here’s a music interlude that attempts to take our minds off of the ME for a few minutes. Watch and listen to “Hedwig’s Theme” by John Williams from Harry Potter performed at the BBC Proms Film Music night in 2011:

How Hamas’ Tunnels Affect Proportionality

The Daily Escape:

Halloween Abbey Road Tribute via The Loft

Wrongo said to a few commenters that he would follow up his “Proportionality in Gaza” column with additional information on the Gaza tunnels. How Israel deals with the Hamas tunnels is at the center of the question of proportionality since they are located under heavily populated parts of Gaza City.

As we know, more than 2 million people live in Gaza, and while many of them likely sympathize with Hamas, the best estimates of how many Hamas fighters are in the Gaza strip is around 35-40,000, a tiny fraction of the total population.

So the question is how to deal with Hamas without excessive civilian casualties, when Hamas can hide in tunnels under the city?

Before we begin, Wrongo has questions. Israel’s military confirmed over the weekend that Israel has twin goals: Annihilating Hamas while simultaneously rescuing some 230 hostages abducted from Israel on Oct. 7. But how does Israel expect to negotiate a hostage release from a group that Israel says they are annihilating? Doesn’t the threat of annihilation mean that Hamas will never release hostages to their sworn enemy? Worse, the hostages are believed to be hidden in Hamas’ tunnel network. The current heavy bombing raises the prospect of unmitigated chaos for both Palestinian civilians and hostages alike. It seems to Wrongo that Netanyahu’s twin goals are in opposition to each other.

Back to the tunnels. Lets start with the ground they are built in. We in the west have heard about Palestinian smuggling tunnels collapsing. Those were in the south near the border with Egypt, built in sandy soil. The Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip region are composed of limestone and sandstone along with some clay. These soils allow for digging tunnels that aren’t as subject to collapse:

Via the NYT: The network is by now so established that Hamas can manufacture weapons underground. Photo by Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock.

The NYT reports that a few of Hamas’ recent tunnels actually begin several meters out in the Mediterranean Sea. But the majority of them are part of a network of subterranean pathways, rooms, cells and even tracks for moving carts containing weaponry. Hamas, which oversees Gaza, is believed to hide weapons, fighters and even command centers in their warren of underground chambers.

Here is an example from the WaPo:

“A decade ago, Israeli authorities discovered a tunnel from Gaza into Israel 1.5 miles long and 66 feet underground. They estimated that it had cost some $10 million and required 800 tons of concrete. But Hamas directed most of its tunnel-building effort on the land beneath Gaza, rather than at the border…”

“Though no exact figures regarding the tunnels’ scale exist, experts say Hamas could control about 300 miles of tunnel….Most of the tunnels are about 150 feet deep…about the length of a 14-story building. But the network is winding, uneven and in some parts fashioned in a zigzag pattern to evade Israeli detection.”

Let’s turn to the challenges posed by any attempt to clear the tunnels of Hamas fighters. Combat inside tunnels is incredibly difficult and requires a specific skill set. The standard infantry tactics and weaponry are often not suitable inside a subterranean setting. It’s difficult to execute offensive operations inside the tunnels because navigation and communication systems often don’t work so far underground, and even night-vision goggles struggle, as they require ambient light.

The NYT quotes Gen. Joseph L. Votel, former leader of the US Central Command responsible for the Middle East who visited a tunnel controlled by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah near Israel’s border:

“This wasn’t just holes in the ground, it was an architecture….They were linked to rooms and built in a way to withstand strikes to the surface…. We should have no illusions about how this is going to be….It will be bloody, brutal fighting.”

But since the tunnels are so integral to Hamas’s operations, dismantling the tunnel network must be equally integral to Israel’s stated goal of eradicating Hamas. This is the proportionality dilemma. Will Israel be willing to forego their bombing and begin destroying tunnels primarily with the forces they have trained for the task? Or will the bombing of Gaza continue unabated? The Economist estimated that by day 18 of the war, Israel had destroyed about 9% of the buildings in Gaza.

An Israeli military unit called Samur, or weasel, specializes in underground warfare, training on mock tunnels in Israel. One Israeli technique, called “purple hair,” has been used to locate the tentacles of a Hamas tunnel. Israeli troops drop smoke grenades into a tunnel, and then watch for purple smoke to come out of buildings in the area. The smoke signals that a house is connected to the tunnel network and must be sealed off before soldiers descend into the tunnels.

However, even if Israel’s “tunnel rats” make headway, Hamas, by taking the hostages underground and releasing them over time, could extend this conflict for months, possibly years. Judging by Hamas’ 10+ yearlong preparation, they seem ready to fight to the last surface-dwelling Palestinian.

The strategic choice seems clear: If Netanyahu wants to get to eliminate Hamas, or at least its ability to wage war, he will have to send the IDF into the tunnels after them, or bomb Gaza into dust. The IDF knows this, but how many of them have the steel to venture into the darkness for months at a time?

And is eradicating Hamas even possible? Wrongo is old enough to remember the US effort to eradicate the Taliban, only to find them back in power on the day we left Afghanistan. And when, not if, Israel withdraws, then what? Who will step in to fill the power vacuum? What confidence can Israelis have that whatever replaces Hamas will be willing to live in peace with Israel?

Biden should be telling Netanyahu to stop the wholesale bombardment of Gaza and concentrate on securing the known tunnel entrances and sending in the tunnel rats. Hamas may blow up some of the tunnels as they’re penetrated causing loss of life to both sides. Then, the IDF must keep finding more tunnel entrances and keep burrowing.

Biden also should be telling Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid to flow to the Gazans, not just from Egypt, but from the Israeli side as well.

This strategy is fraught with risks. But it contains both the moral costs and military costs for Israel and preserves the possibility of a peaceful coexistence at some point in the future. But the question is: Do the Israelis have the will and the ability to execute such a strategy successfully?

For today’s Monday Wake Up, all sides in the Hamas/Israel war need to rouse themselves from their efforts at what Netanyahu called his “Mighty Vengeance”. This war will certainly get worse before it gets better. And maybe it won’t get better in what remains of Wrongo’s lifetime. As the NYT’s Nick Kristoff said:

“Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?”

To help us wake up, watch and listen to the late Eva Cassidy along with the London Symphony Orchestra perform the seasonally appropriate “Autumn Leaves”. She had a voice that will never die:

More Chaos

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This needs to be on billboards nationwide.

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

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

We should expect a very long shutdown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Perception Isn’t Fact

The Daily Escape:

View of fall colors and Linn Cove Viaduct, Banner Elk, NC – October 2023 photo by David Peak

Polls continue to show that people think the economy is terrible and that it’s Biden’s fault. Biden supporters chalk it up to the general unreliability of surveys: Asking people questions and then assuming their answers are accurate or honest. But often, they are not because people find it difficult to say, “I don’t know.”

A second issue is the astounding changes in polling data over the past decade: People’s self-reported emotional state in 2022 was worse than the very worst events of the past few decades. But are things as bad as people seem to think? From Barry Ritholtz:

“From an economic standpoint, things are much better than people seem to be willing to admit: The rate of inflation has plummeted by two-thirds from 9% to a little over 3%, but 60% of respondents believe inflation is “continuing to increase.” The economy is not on the right track, even as Americans’ Net Worth Surged by Most in Decades During Pandemic.”

And the political fallout may be worse than you think. Bloomberg’s recent poll reveals some significant danger for Biden:

“Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in several key swing states as voters reject the economic message that is central to Biden’s reelection bid….Trump…leads Biden 47% to 43% among voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results across those seven states had a margin of error of 1 percentage point.”

Thirteen months before the election, Biden lags Trump in head-to-head matchups in five of the seven swing states. These states will be particularly important in delivering the electoral votes that decide who will be the next president. More from Bloomberg:

“A 51% majority of swing-state voters said the national economy was better off during the Trump administration, and similar numbers said they would trust Trump over Biden on the economy going forward, 49% to 35%. Among independent voters, the chasm on trust to handle the economy is even wider, with a 22-point advantage for Trump.”

Seems like a problem. This is despite the fact that, since 2019, households invested more, home values have jumped, and savings levels have risen. Here’s more from Bloomberg’s polling partner Morning Consult’s Caroline Bye:

“Right now, Biden is not getting any credit for work he’s done on the economy….Almost twice as many voters in the swing states are saying that Bidenomics is bad for the economy, as opposed to good for the economy, which is a really startling fact if you’re the Biden campaign.”

Why is it that people’s perception doesn’t match the data? Back to Ritholtz, who thinks the fault may lie with the media:

“…the 2010s seems to be when they shifted their online presence to a much more aggressive stance. Perhaps most significant is in the way coverage became increasingly “click-bait” oriented via headlines filled with emotionally loaded language….Words that conveyed “Disgust” rose 29% and “Sadness” was 54% higher; words that reflected “Anger” were up 104%. The biggest gain was from perhaps the most emotionally loaded word: “Fear” skyrocketed by a huge 150%. And the words expressing “Joy” or “Neutral?” Down 14% and 30% respectively.”

But it isn’t just the media’s headlines that are hurting people’s perceptions; it’s also the choice of what the media covers that can lead us astray. Ritholtz provides us with a fantastic chart about the causes of death in the US from Our World in Data comparing actual causes of death with what was reported in the NYT:

This shows that the way the media covers deaths this is totally inverted: The things least likely to kill you get the most coverage: The bar chart on the right shows Terrorism, Homicide, and Suicide capture about 70% of the column inches. This is despite the odds that you are most likely to die from heart disease (30.2%), cancer (29.5%), or a car accident or fall (7.6%). The very bottom of the list are suicide at 1.8%, homicide at 0.9%, and terrorism at 0.01%.

So do negatively-laden headlines matched with wildly disproportionate coverage combine to send sentiment readings to places that do not match the reality of the economy or more broadly, the real world around us?

We’ve always had sensationalist journalism. The media’s response to social media is to approach news coverage in a similar manner to social media. Apparently the business plan is: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. It’s important to remember that we are what we eat, including our media diet. It’s making us unhappy, and increasingly detached from reality.

There are a few economic realities that may help explain where the public is right now:

Gas prices are both very volatile, and something that annoys an enormous percentage of Americans, because of the need to spend large amounts of money on a weekly basis to fuel their gas guzzling vehicles.
The housing market is a mess. The median sale price of a house in the USA went from $313,000 in 2019 to $480,000 in 2022. Since then the massive spike in interest rates has reduced median price to $416,000, but coupled with high mortgage rates, this is bad news for people wanting to buy homes in this market.

From a behavioral economics viewpoint, the extent of peoples’ reaction to price inflation may reflect the concept that people are loss averse: that is, they dislike what they perceive as losses more than they like what they perceive as gains.

This means if prices and wages were to increase at the same rate, politicians might assume that people would be indifferent to the nominal changes in prices, since they would be offset by wage increases. But if Americans are loss averse, when prices and wages both go up by a significant amount, (as they have over the past three years), people feel worse, because the “loss” incurred through higher prices feels worse than the “gain” of higher wages.

Time to wake up America! Perception isn’t fact until it is. How Dems fight this will determine the outcome of the 2024 election. To help you wake up, watch and listen to Bruce Springsteen perform “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live”, live at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2006. This is one year after Katrina, which Bruce focuses on at the start of the song:

Sample Lyrics:

Well, the doctor comes ’round here with his face all bright
And he says, “In a little while you’ll be all right”
All he gives is a humbug pill, a dose of dope and a great big bill
Tell me, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Sunday Soother – October 22, 2023

The demise of Sunday Cartoon Blogging was greeted without crying by the Wrongologist faithful, but maybe we need a laugh today. Herewith is the best cartoon of the week:

Jordan blew it:

And here is the best photo of art this week: West Bank wall – via Street Art by Banksy:

(This was executed in 2005 by Banksy on the West Bank barrier wall in Abu Dis.)

There’s only a small chance that we’ll get totally soothed after a most tumultuous week. John Dick, CEO of CivicScience reports that: (emphasis and brackets by Wrongo)

“People are glued to the Israel-Hamas war. In our 3 Things to Know this week, we found that 81% of US adults are paying close attention to the crisis in Israel – although [for] younger people, much less so. This high level of attention carries across age and political affiliations, but older adults and Republicans are much more likely to follow it very closely.”

Having both a war in Congress and the war in Gaza so dominate the news makes it hard for people to get sufficient distance to see these events in any real context. But, on this rainy Sunday in Connecticut, let’s give Soothing the old college try.

We had the local arborist come by to get a quote for tree work on the Fields of Wrong. When the cold weather comes, shaping and pruning trees and felling them is easier. We need all three. We’re delaying our fall clean-up for a few more weeks, since we still have many trees with green leaves. It looks like the clean-up will begin during the first week of November, or maybe when Congress is likely to select a new Speaker.

So here at the start of another week that will certainly be filled with momentous news, let’s try deep breathing and some robust coffee to start us off for the week. Let’s brew up a mug of Opus Dark Roast ($19.99/12oz.) from San Jose CA’s Chromatic Coffee. It is said to have notes of dark chocolate and burnt sugar. Yummy!

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to two different pieces, both of which gesture towards finding peace among combatants. First, from JS Bach’s “B minor Mass, here is “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Latin for “Grant us peace”). It is performed by the English Baroque Soloists & Monteverdi Choir and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner:

Now for a change of pace, listen to Alicia Keys perform her 2014 song “We Are Here”. It describes Keys’ frustration with both national and international issues, including the conflict at the time between Israel and Gaza. Following the song’s release, Keys launched a movement, called the “We Are Here Movement” calling for a more equal and just world:

Sample lyric:

Let’s talk about Gaza
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about Israel
Cause right now it is real
Let’s talk about, let’s talk Nigeria
And the mass hysteria, yeah
Our souls are brought together
So that we can love each other, brother

What A New House Speaker Means For America

The Daily Escape:

Autumn, Rocky Mountain Front, MT – October 2023 photo by Jack Bell Photography

We’re all trying NOT to follow what’s going on in the House. Since Matt Gaetz and friends fired Kevin McCarthy, pretty much every newscast and paper are covering it. Wrongo will add his few words to the hot steaming pile of wordsmith.

McCarthy’s downfall is proof that no good deed goes unpunished. His decision to shake hands with Democrats on a short-term budget deal, kept the government open, but drew a challenge to his Speakership from a small group of chaos caucus Republicans. These eight mutinying members of his Party felt that McCarthy committed the unforgivable sin of compromise with Democrats.

It’s useful to remember that 91 Republicans voted against McCarthy’s bill to keep the government open.

That, along with McCarthy’s unwillingness to make any concessions to the Dems for future funding requirements like Ukraine, made it clear that there was no good reason for them to do anything to help McCarthy and the GOP caucus to resolve their internal differences.

At the highest level, America is now looking at an uncertain period of being (un) governed, in fact, held hostage by a tiny group of eight “chaos Republicans”. If the Republican House members select a new Speaker from the current two front runners, Steve Scalise (LA) and Jim Jordan (OH), their Party will tip further to the Right than it was under McCarthy, and there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.

Just eight Republicans were in love enough with chaos to vote against Mr. McCarthy; more than 200 other Republicans understood that chaos isn’t conducive to sound policymaking. And 32 of those who supported McCarthy are members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is in theory dedicated to bipartisan solutions.

The WaPo has a great chart that lays out just how small the chaos caucus is vs. Republicans who voted for McCarthy:

Those Republican Problem Solvers are very angry at the caucus’ Democratic members for not supporting McCarthy when he was dethroned. All the House Dems who voted, voted against McCarthy (208), while four Dems weren’t present.

So now, a government shut-down seems assured. But the reality is that despite the best wishes of the chaos caucus, the government cannot remain unfunded forever. And their demands for capitulation by Biden to the GOP’s fever dreams for cutting spending will never happen.

The House can’t do anything without a Speaker, so the pressure is massive to choose one. And the Republicans will probably find a way to choose one without requiring any Democratic votes to support their choice. But when government funding runs out in mid-November, we’ll get to the real logical driver of partisan politics, the absolute necessity to fund the government.

When the new Speaker can’t pass a funding bill that is supported by the Senate, the new Speaker will eventually see the value in again seeking Democratic support.

The math drives this. The functional majority in the House will be that group who are willing to pay our bills on time by funding the government. Of the 221 Republican House members, 130 of them voted to avoid the shutdown, and 91 voted for it. The new Speaker needs to wrangle 218 votes to pass a bill on to the Senate. So if only 130 Republicans are willing to govern, Democrats will have to supply the difference.

Roll Call reports that the Republican vote for the next Speaker will take place next Wednesday morning, so we’ll soon see if the impasse can be resolved.

Another interesting turnabout this week was the Biden administration deciding to waive two dozen environmental laws in order to resume building the wall on the southern border. Trump demanded an apology because Biden had promised in 2020 there would “not be another foot” of wall if he won.

The White House now claims the administration’s hands were tied by appropriations bills that required them to spend the money. Said Biden:

“The money was appropriated for the border wall…I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t.”

Biden added he still doesn’t believe walls are an effective solution, but Republicans are crowing “I TOLD YOU SO” with this announcement. But since it was FY2019 money that couldn’t be reprogrammed, we should be asking why it wasn’t spent while Trump was still in office.

Wrongo is applying for a patent on his new invention. It’s called “the magic button”. You press it and any intractable problem simply disappears without a trace. It will be ready for use sometime after the 12^th. The 12^th of never.

On to the Saturday Soother, where we spend this Saturday of a three-day weekend attempting to escape from the news cycle. Wrongo and Ms. Right are on Cape Cod for our annual fall getaway that dovetails with the various Oysterfests on the Cape.

This means that columns may be light and variable for the next 10 days.

It’s raining in the Northeast, so, it’s mostly indoor sports today. To help you let go of the week’s news, grab a comfy chair by a window and brew up a cup of Kick Ass coffee from Canada’s Kicking Horse Coffee.

Now watch and listen to “My One And Only Love”, the old standard performed here by legendary saxophonist John Coltrane and singer Johnny Hartman. This was recorded in 1963 and features McCoy Tyner on piano. If you want to take your mind off a few things today, this will surely help:

Kevin Shows His Little Spine

The Daily Escape:

Lone Cypress, 17 Mile Drive, Monterey, CA – September 2023 photo by Leila Shehab Photography

“Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.” — David McRaney

Wrongo’s Wake Up Call came on Saturday evening when Kevin McCarthy asked House Democrats to bail him out again:

“Congress passed a bill today to fund the federal agencies at FY2023 levels until Nov. 17. The legislation reauthorizes the FAA and the national flood insurance program through the end of this year. There’s $16 billion for disaster relief accounts, too.”

From Politico:

“McCarthy’s move marked an abrupt shift after spending most of the year trying to placate all corners of his party — including a dozen-plus hardliners who have made it next to impossible for him to maneuver anything onto the floor. After the vote, McCarthy all but taunted his critics to come after his gavel if they wanted to.”

Wrongo said here that:

“You’re unlikely to win if you decide to place a bet on McCarthy getting a dose of moral courage and standing up to his Party.“

Well, Wrongo was um, wrong. The 45-day bridge funding passed with more Democratic than GOP votes. That’s a repeat of the debt vote last spring that also angered McCarthy’s opponents.

What’s “My Kevin” Gonna Do?

The Daily Escape:

In her series Marjory’s World, photographer Rebecca Reeve creates portals from the domestic into the wilderness. She uses household drapery that she purchases from local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores to evoke the feeling of looking out of a room.

This photo was taken in the Everglades in Florida in 2012.

Reeve’s series, Marjory’s World is named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas who was an American journalist, author and conservationist. She was an advocate of the Everglades and defended against the efforts to drain and reclaim it for development. Her most influential book was “The Everglades: River of Grass” written in 1947, the year that the Everglades was made a National Park.

In 1990, when she was 100 years old, her name was given to the high school in Parkland, FL where in 2018, a mass shooting took place leaving 17 dead and 17 more wounded in less than six minutes. Stoneman Douglas died at 108 on May 14, 1998.

(hat tip to Adam Tooze for introducing Reeve to Wrongo)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) died on Friday at 90, leaving a complicated legacy. Having lived in California for more than 10 years, Wrongo and Ms. Right had the opportunity to vote for her. In her early years in the Senate, Feinstein was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans. Feinstein in her later years overstayed her welcome in the Senate.

But her real legacy was Chairing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) Torture Report in 2014. Feinstein’s tenure as SSCI Chair ensured there was a documented account of the torture done during the GW Bush administration which was serious enough that the CIA actually “lost” its sole copy of the 6,000+ page report. And she defied Obama by releasing the unclassified summary of the torture perpetrated during the War on Terror. For that alone, her legacy deserves respect.

She also championed the assault weapons ban that became law under Clinton, which was later allowed to expire by Bush. For history buffs, she became mayor of San Francisco after the murder of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. She found Moscone shot in his office and tried to revive him. After Moscone’s death, Feinstein succeeded him as Acting Mayor of San Francisco. She was also a strong leader for SFO during the AIDS crisis when Reagan couldn’t care less.

But let’s also talk today about a politician whose legacy will be forever tarnished, House Speaker Kevin (My Kevin) McCarthy. On Friday, the Republican-controlled House voted down a last-ditch measure to temporarily avert a government shutdown, 198-232 with all Democrats against it, along with 21 Republicans.

The Continuing Resolution (CR) would have kept the government funded for 30 days while cutting funding by 30% for all agencies except the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, something no Democrat would ever accept.

Most GOP “no” votes were by right-wingers who objected to the very idea of a CR. While it failed, 198 House Republicans voted for this bill sourced from God Knows Where (GKW). The Thesaurus says one synonym for GKW is “alien”. And a few synonyms for alien are: Contrary, Estranged, Opposed and Inappropriate. These all seem right to Wrongo.

These Republicans do not belong in our government.

You may remember that back in June, House Republicans and McCarthy agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, McCarthy and Biden agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this kind of impasse until after the next presidential election.

But McCarthy welshed on that deal, under pressure from a number of MAGA Republicans in his caucus who are refusing to fund the government and are calling for deeper spending cuts.

Meanwhile, McCarthy is “leading” one of the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades. He faces a choice of either showing moral courage by introducing a funding bill with the backing of House Dems, or letting the Shutdown run for several weeks or months.

Another day, another new McCarthy plan. Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters say that they don’t want the government to close.

You’re unlikely to win if you decide to place a bet on McCarthy getting a dose of moral courage and standing up to his Party.

Here in the Northeast, we’ve been dumped on by even more rain leading into the weekend, which isn’t expected to taper off until late this afternoon. Despite that, we’ve taken the Bluebird nesting boxes down, cleaned them out and stored them until next spring.

But we have to find time for our Saturday Soother, where we forget about the mess Republicans are making of their “impeachment inquiry”, you know the one with zero evidence. Instead we must focus on building up our mental resolve to wander through the government shutdown without injury.

To help you build resolve, let’s start by grabbing a comfy chair by a south facing window. Now watch and listen to U2’s take on Kevin McCarthy’s problem. Here is U2’s remastered video of “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” from their 2000 album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. The song was written by Bono for his friend, lead singer of INXS, Michael Hutchence, who committed suicide in 1997:

Let’s hope that McCarthy doesn’t engage in any self-harm, except for losing the Speakership.

Sample Lyric:

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you (Ooh)
You gotta stand up straight,
Carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere (baby)

You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a moment
And you can’t get out of it

Trump Could Be President Even While Serving Time

The Daily Escape:

First fall foliage, Cox Brook, Northfield Falls, VT – September 2023 photo by John H. Knox

First, although we may know if Trump has been convicted prior to the 2024 election, it’s highly unlikely that he would be serving time by then, because his convictions (if any) will be appealed. The appeal process will take us well beyond when the Electoral College votes are counted in DC.

Second, The Constitution (before it was amended) contains just three requirements to become president: the person must be a natural-born citizen of the US, 35 years or older and a resident of the US for at least 14 years. That’s it.

In 1868, the 14^th Amendment added Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the original text that:

“no person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

UCLA law professor Richard L. Hasen, a leading expert on election law, told CNN that Trump has a path to serving as president if he wins the election in 2024: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President….It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,”

And while some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, those laws do not apply to federal elections. More from Hasen, on whether a president may serve from prison.

“How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question…”

If Trump were in jail and prevented by law from leaving jail while his sentence was carried out, that would make running the government impossible. It wouldn’t necessarily prohibit him from serving as president from a cell, at least until he could pardon himself, another untested loophole.

If he tried to pardon himself, or to commute his own sentence, we’d wind up at the Supreme Court. From the NYT:

“Either action would be an extraordinary assertion of presidential power, and the Supreme Court would be the final arbiter of whether a “self-pardon” was constitutional.”

Trump would certainly sue to be released from jail, saying (correctly) that imprisonment prevented him from fulfilling his Constitutional obligations as president. Trump’s lawyers would argue that keeping a duly elected president in prison would be an infringement by the judicial branch on the operations of the executive branch. Again off to the Supremes we’d go.

So time for a few brief reminders: Trump faces no significant opposition to winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Plan A among those who really don’t want Trump to win is to say:

“…he will lose in the general election.”

And there’s no Plan B. So, what will your options be if he wins? In general, your options are: Knuckling under, taking part in political violence, or leaving the country. And understand that, regardless of how submissive you are, the number of people who will die in police custody or while “resisting” will go way up. Let’s take your options one at a time:

Leaving the country is something only rich people can do and it wouldn’t dislodge Trump. It will make him more secure.
Political violence is personally risky. It requires moral compromise that makes our regular politics look almost pristine. And unless it’s large and well organized, it will fail.
Knuckling under to tyranny will probably be the response of most Americans, even though most would say that’s incompatible with their conscience.

But all that said, Ukraine’s limited success against a superpower shows that using today’s technology makes it relatively easy to hold large swaths of a country despite the other side’s having a much stronger military.

Wrongo thinks that after a Trump win in 2024, US citizens will have to think seriously about how to handle life under an authoritarian regime. Trump will start out with a soft form of authoritarianism. But later? Who knows what it becomes. A lot of people around the world live under authoritarian regimes, so while it’s awful, it’s also survivable for most people.

And think twice about resistance. As a thought experiment, list out the historical examples of a citizenry that successfully resisted a fascist takeover once the fascists had a firm grip on the judiciary and half of the legislatures.

America has one great shining example of what not to do when Bush v. Gore was decided in 2000. No Democrat (looking at you Bill Clinton!) told the Supremes to fuck off. Even Gore didn’t say “just keep on counting” in Florida. Instead, he crumbled. In a democracy, no court should ever tell the political branch to stop counting votes.

That election was stolen, but Democrats collectively just let it happen. Worse, two years later almost all of the Democrats in Congress voted for Bush’s nasty authoritarian terror bills and a war to avenge 9/11.

Wouldn’t it be much better this time around to make sure Trump doesn’t get the votes of any of your friends, family or neighbors? And better yet, that you get most of them out to vote?

Please don’t plan on sitting back and waiting for a conviction to deliver us from Trump. Why is it in the DNA of Democrats to keep looking for some external solution to our political problem?

Wrongo is an elderly white, married, upper-middle class male living in a Blue state. He’s going to be fine no matter what. He’ll worry about his kids and grandkids, but personally, Wrongo has nothing to worry about. His taxes may even go down again.

But he plans to resist, no matter what.

The Auto Strike

The Daily Escape:

Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain NP, CO – September 2023 photo by Rick Priebe

On Friday, The UAW union expanded its strike against GM and Stellantis, two of the Big Three automakers, ramping up pressure on the companies to reach deals on new contracts. The union walked off the job at parts distribution centers of both manufacturers but spared Ford, saying the company had done more to meet its demands. From the NYT:

“Our pressure on Ford is starting to pay off,”

But there was no indication a deal with Ford was imminent. More:

“Stellantis workers walked out at 20 of the company’s parts distribution centers Friday, while G.M. workers went on strike at 18 centers.”

Ford Canada reached a deal last week with the union that represents its Canadian workers. It may offer a clue to the US outcome: The deal provides for pay increases worth up to 25% over three years, as well as bonuses, improved retirement benefits and measures to protect employees as Ford retools factories for electric vehicles. The union, Unifor, is negotiating separately with GM and Stellantis in Canada.

The UAW is asking for a 37% wage increase over four years, improved retiree benefits and shorter work hours. They also want an end to a tiered wage system that starts new hires at much lower wages than the top UAW pay of $32 an hour. Importantly, more than 18,000 UAW members are now on strike.

Some context: UAW workers made significant sacrifices to help keep the big three afloat, amidst the financial crisis in 2009. They made those sacrifices based in part on the promise that the Big Three would eventually renew their compensation and benefits, which the Big Three never did. There were no cost of living adjustments, despite the Big Three going from losing money to record profitability (and tens of $ billions in stock buybacks).

And this week, Biden will join the strike in an extraordinary move of support. From CNN:

“Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday and walk the picket line with members of the United Auto Workers union, he announced Friday…”

Biden said in a post on Xitter:

“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs,”,

This presidential appearance on a picket line is a historic first. It is also an opportunity to score political points, since it comes one day before Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech to an audience of current and former union members in Detroit. In July, Trump asked the UAW to endorse him, so both politicians are working hard to gain traction with the union.

The UAW was angered by Biden’s pumping tax money into nonunion electric vehicle suppliers, and has withheld its endorsement, even as most other labor unions have rushed to back Mr. Biden’s re-election.

Back to some context for the UAW strike: The WSJ reports that:

“The Detroit companies’ labor costs, including wages and benefits, are estimated at an average of $66 an hour…”

That compares with $45 at Tesla, which isn’t unionized.

Hopefully, the UAW strike will yield fair results for the workers, given the enormous profits the companies are making, the generous salaries the industry’s execs are reaping, and the sacrifices labor made to keep the lights on when the industry was on life support in 2008.

This may well be the union’s last big strike when you consider that nearly half of all the cars built in the US are manufactured in 31 foreign-owned plants. None of these facilities are unionized, and their workers are generally paid less than those at union plants.

The move to EVs will be also be a sea-change reality for auto labor. There is likely to be a 40% reduction in the labor required to build the new engineless cars. Electric motors are much simpler than internal combustion engines. It is estimated that in less than 10 years, two-thirds of all new cars will be electric.

While the impact on labor throughout the supply chain will be dramatic, plenty of internal combustion engines will remain in use, even if not in production. That will provide stability for auto maintenance and repair workers for decades to come.

Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall. Workers with computer skills and AI capability will replace many traditional lunch-pail workers at plants assembling automobiles.

Time to wake up America! Not so long ago, the thought of a UAW strike was traumatizing because of the enormous workforce the union represented. A half-century ago, the UAW represented 1.5 million auto workers (1.5%) out of a total American workforce of just under 100 million workers. Today, UAW membership at GM, Ford, and Stellantis is about 150,000 employees (less than one percent) out of a total American workforce of 160 million workers.

Imagine if today’s number is reduced by 40%, or 60,000 workers! This means that the UAW loses its ability to represent its workers effectively by 2033!

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Green Day perform their hit “Wake Me Up When September Ends” from their 2004 album “American Idiot” at England’s Reading Festival in 2013. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the song about the death of his father when he was 10 years old. But it has come to express loss of all kinds. Gotta love those English crowds:

You realize that the country is growing older, that Biden is growing older, the song is growing older, Green Day is growing older, and the union movement in the US is growing older too.

Regardless of how much time has passed, this song hits just as hard as it did when it was introduced 19 years ago.

Sample lyric:

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends

The Wrongologist

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What’s “My Kevin” Gonna Do?

The Auto Strike