State Of The Union Speech Mop-Up

The Daily Escape:

Morrow Bay, CA – March 2024 photo by Slocoastpix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More:

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

More:

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

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

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

More: (brackets by Wrongo)

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

More:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sample Lyric:

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

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Thoughts On Biden’s Performance And On Gasoline Consumption

The Daily Escape:

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

You’ve all heard and read about Biden’s State of the Union (SOTA) speech last Thursday. But maybe you’re unaware of the White House strategy for the speech. This was the first SOTA in history to be streamed live on Instagram, in addition to a primary stream on YouTube. Playbook reported that the 9 pm and10 pm hours were the best periods of grassroots fundraising for Biden since the President’s campaign launch.

The White House Office of Digital Strategy also held several events to brief and engage digital creators and media brands around the SOTA. There was a creator watch party in the White House State Dining Room during the speech. Given the declining reach of legacy media, these creator engagement strategies are important.

Trump had planned to comment on Biden’s speech in real time on his Truth Social platform but it went down for the first part of the SOTA. It took over an hour to read what he had to say. When the site came back, we learned that Trump had pretty much just been ranting about Biden’s coughing and warning people not to shake his hand because it had germs.

As an aside, Trump has been a germophobe forever. A casual friend knew him quite well in the 1980’s. Then Trump was a young real estate entrepreneur wanting to get into a fancy Westchester, NY country club. My friend’s husband was also in the real estate business, and Trump’s father Fred prevailed on him to get the Donald into their club. That led to multiple weekends where Trump would take a limo to Westchester to play golf with my friend’s husband and several buddies, all of whom were club members.

It turned out that Trump was a good golfer, so the men were ok with playing with him, except for the obvious cheating on the course. But after each round, the group would adjourn to one of the members’ homes for a potluck, and there Trump’s germophobe flag would fly. He wouldn’t shake hands, and he washed his hands often. He clearly preferred going through the buffet line first, to the extent that if he couldn’t he wouldn’t eat.

Apparently, Trump has done a lot to overcome his germ fears but it all came back when Biden didn’t wash his hands before leaving the podium.

A little on Biden’s strategy: Biden isn’t banking on turning out 100% of Democratic voters. He’s not necessarily counting on low-propensity voters who normally have very little interest in politics. His goal is for Trump to continue to be himself, while Biden, in addition to getting high Democratic turnout, will peel off about 10% of self-identified Republican voters (up from 8% in 2020) and then win Independents. Wrongo has stated previously that he’s certain that Trump will not get near the same number of votes he got in 2020.

Next up, the Biden campaign is rolling out a $30 million ad buy and many more campaign travel stops.

What to say about the rebuttal speech? Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) spoke from her kitchen table. By the end of the evening, there seemed to be less talk about her vice presidential chances than about who might play her on Saturday Night Live’s cold open.

Let’s turn our attention to gasoline consumption in the US. Wolf Richter reports that for 2023, gasoline consumption was where it had been 20 years ago, even though miles driven set a new record. This was largely due to more efficient internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Wolf provided two handy charts:

Gasoline consumption in the US in terms of product supplied to gas stations rose by 1.5% in 2023, to 376 million gallons per day. But that was still down by 3.9% from 2019. It’s finally back where it was in 2003, (20 years ago).

For clarity, gas consumption is determined by miles driven, and the growing efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles, including hybrids, along with the transition to EVs (the #2 bestselling model in the US in 2023 was a Tesla).

The second chart above, “per-capita gasoline consumption” makes what’s going on clearer. The US population has grown over the past 20 years, but while gasoline consumption has been flat, per-capita gasoline consumption has plunged by 15% from 2003 and by 21% from 1978.

Further, average fuel economy has increased by 42% over the past 20 years, along with average horsepower, because of technical innovations that make today’s ICE vehicles more powerful and more economical than ever before. From Wolf:

“Since 1975, fuel economy for highway driving doubled from 14.6 mpg to nearly 30 mpg in 2023!”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“With less demand for gasoline domestically, the US has become a significant exporter of gasoline….Exports of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel accounted for about 21% of the record 10.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products that the US exported in 2023.”

Where will gas consumption go from here? Biden says we should be at zero emissions by 2050. How will we replace the tax receipts from federal and state gas taxes?

Enough. Let’s punt on the election and on the debate over EV cars. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break from the assault on our consciousness by media and social media, and instead, focus on calming ourselves before launching into another week of disinformation.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re planning for projects on the Fields of Wrong, preparing for a meeting with our yard guys. We’ve finally convinced them that because of global warming, yard work must begin in early March rather than in early April.

To help you get centered on this Oscars weekend, grab a seat by a big window, then watch and listen to famed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas lead the USA’s National Youth Orchestra in a 2018 performance of Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from his ballet “Rodeo” in Beijing:

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Russia. China And Iran, And Other Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Simon Rosenberg:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s Flaco in happier times:

More:

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

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

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

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

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

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Florida Lets Measles Run Free

The Daily Escape:

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

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

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

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

More:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Nation:

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

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

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

That describes America today. More from The Nation:

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

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

Highly doubtful.

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

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

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

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

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

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Update On Book Banning

The Daily Escape:

Ashokan Reservoir, Ulster County, NY – February 2024 photo by Dan Mish

The GOP effort at book banning isn’t going well. DeSantis acts SHOCKED that his punitive censorship laws have resulted in chaos and excessive book banning in Florida public schools. DeSantis knows he went too far. Mr. Never Back Down, is in fact, backing down:

“With objecting – if you go to a school board meeting objecting. If you have a kid in school, okay. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a kid in school and you’re gonna object to 100 books? No, I don’t think that’s appropriate. So I think the legislature is interested in limiting what the number of challenges you can do, and maybe making it be contingent on whether you actually have kids in school or not. We just want to make sure we’re not trying to incentivize frivolous objections or any type of games being played.”

But don’t get your hopes up. The Propaganda Professor (PP) takes a look at book banning, riffing on a National Review article “Book Curation is Not Censorship”:

“Curation is the process whereby a venue (library, museum, theater, etc.) decides what products to offer its patrons….But curation means making such decisions…on the basis of such factors as quality, relevance, timeliness, and constraints of space and budget. Those factors for the most part do not figure into with what is happening in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. Books are being pulled just because someone chooses to find them offensive….And those choices aren’t being made autonomously. They’re being made under intense pressure from government bodies and their proxy agitators.”

While denying that they’re really banning books, Right-wingers offer attempts to justify the bans they say that they’re not really doing. They often brand the offending book as “pornographic”. They slap the “pornography” label on anything that makes any vague reference to sex. Another common claim is that the books being attacked are guilty of somehow “indoctrinating” kids into…something. Usually some combination of “liberalism”, “leftism”, “communism” or “anti-Americanism”.

More:

“There are two types of books in particular to which they are eager to award the Indoctrination Trophy. One is anything with a gay or trans character, or that even makes reference to a gay or trans character….Such books, they…warn, are indoctrinating kids into the gay ‘lifestyle’…”

A huge problem is banning books that have too much truth about racism. If you write about the horrors of our shameful past, you can expect to be branded as someone who “hates white people”. One of the books removed for “review” was a biography of baseball legend Roberto Clemente because it mentioned the racism he encountered in baseball. Above all is the complaint that so much literacy will indoctrinate our kids into wokeism or leftism — or whatever FOX says is the equivalent du jour.

More from the PP: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Getting back to National Review, Daniel Buck…is particularly appalled that anyone should (as some have done) liken the situation [book banning] to anything that happened in the Third Reich. After all, you may have heard how the Nazis responded to books they didn’t like.”

But that kind of thing IS happening. Valentina Gomez a GOP candidate for Missouri Secretary of State posted a video of herself burning two books about the LGBTQ community with a flame thrower:

In the video she says:

“These are Missouri library books. When I am in office, they will burn.”

The sad thing is that this isn’t the fringe of the Republican Party. It’s become the mainstream.

We can’t begin the weekend without lamenting the death of Alexei Navalny, opposition leader against Putin, who Russian state media says died in prison in Siberia. In 2020, Navalny was poisoned by the Russian state. After he recovered in Germany, Navalny faced the decision whether to go back to Russia, where he was certain to be arrested. Or he could have remained free in the west. He returned home and was sentenced to 30 years in prison..

Wrongo is only surprised that he survived as long as he did.

Navalny loved his country so much he allowed himself to be martyred in an attempt to free it from Putin’s oppression. Imagine the fortitude required to survive an attempted assassination, only to surrender to the assassins and take the fight to them. He was an amazing man who should be a role model for activists everywhere.

On this unhappy note, it’s on to the weekend. At the Mansion of Wrong, we had about 11” of snow to dig out from. And the weekend weather calls for high winds and low temperatures, meaning it’s time for indoor sports.

But let’s take a break from whatever Speaker Johnson is doing by sending the House home for two weeks when there’s so much legislating to be done; or why guns can be open carried by juveniles in Missouri.  Instead, let’s try to gather ourselves for what promises to be another roller-coaster ride of a week to come.

Start by grabbing a chair by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Playing For Change’s cover of Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train” featuring Yusuf himself playing white piano in an open air setting in Istanbul, along with Keb’ Mo’, Rhiannon Giddens and 23 other musicians from 12 countries. Maybe this 1971 anthem of hope and unity will say something to the 2024 version of us:

Also, Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop”, about the making of the funds raising tune, “We Are The World”. This shows the biggest music stars of the time coming together to perform a song about hope and the collective strength of humanity. It’s worth your time.

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US Media Should Learn The Difference Between Age And Ageism

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Manhattan, NYC, from The Summit One Vanderbilt – February 2024 photo by Alec Halstead

Judd Legum’s Popular Information notes that the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal ran 81 articles about Special Counsel Hur’s assessment of Biden’s memory in the four days following his report’s release. (NYT ran 30 and the WaPo ran 33, leaving a mere 18 in the WSJ). But Trump’s mental lapses and incoherence barely merited a mention in the same publications.

Here is an actual paragraph that ran on the front page of the NYT:

“Mr. Trump, by contrast, does not appear to be suffering the effects of time in such visible ways. Mr. Trump often dyes his hair and appears unnaturally tan. He is heavyset and tall, and he uses his physicality to project strength in front of crowds. When he takes the stage at rallies, he basks in adulation for several minutes, dancing to an opening song, and then holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.”

Wow! According to the NYT, Democrats should just give up now.

Wrongo could beat up on the NYT and the others. He noted that the commenters in many newsletters said that because of this, they were terminating their subscriptions to the Times. Wrongo won’t be doing that although he agrees with Jamison Foser, who writes at his substack Finding Gravity that the NYT is now, politically, a Republican newspaper:

“The Times is a newspaper that falsely portrayed Al Gore as a serial liar and George W. Bush as a straight-talker; treated Hillary Clinton’s email hygiene practices as the most important issue in 2016; and routinely portrays Donald Trump as a law-and-order candidate despite his repeated, flagrant law-breaking.”

OK, we know that Biden is older. But as JVL says:

“We don’t choose our leaders based on recall and processing speed.”

Wrongo is 80. Every human knows that when you get to your 70s and beyond, you’re not as quick on your feet as you used to be. In general, geriatrics shy away from real-time debates with 45-year-olds. More from JVL:

“You very rarely look at an old guy and think, that dude is slick.”

But is slick what we want in our leaders? No, we want experience because the first requirement for problem solving is experience. If you know little to nothing about a given problem, you will almost certainly come up with terrible solutions. Trump demonstrates this every day. Back to JVL:

“There is a reason that we have a minimum age for voting in this country and not a maximum age—it’s because we don’t trust young people, with all of their rapid recall memory and synaptic lightning, to be wise enough to vote….By the same token, we don’t have a maximum voting age, because we recognize that the losses elderly people experience in the ability to rapidly process are over-balanced by the accumulated wisdom of years and experience.”

Especially in a president, we’re smart to value wisdom over glibness.

Experience gave Biden the ability to instantly understand the stakes in Ukraine and wisdom helped him navigate the strengthening of the NATO alliance vs. Putin. It is wisdom that allowed Biden to see the benefits America receives from leading the global order. It was also wisdom that made Biden cooperate with the special counsel and respect the rule of law, the right decision even though it’s biting him in the ass right now.

Contrast this with Trump. Last weekend, Trump threatened the abandonment of our NATO allies and to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want.” We all know that he’s 77, but its clear that Trump didn’t spend all those years accumulating wisdom. His experience is more like one year of experience repeated 76 more times.

Trump’s reckless comments were condemned by most major media. The NYT led with three front-page stories about the Trump’s statement.

  • Favoring Foes Over Friends, Trump Threatens to Upend International Order
  • An Outburst by Trump on NATO May Push Europe to Go It Alone
  • Trump draws fire for his comments on NATO and Russia

The WaPo had a top-of-page headline, “Trump’s NATO-bashing comments rile allies, rekindle European fears.”

The WSJ included a below-the-fold front page headline, NATO Leader Blasts Trump’s Suggestion He Would Encourage Russian Invasion of U.S. Allies.

And leading Republicans excused Trump’s reckless statement. Senator Marco Rubio said:

“He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”

Excusing Trump because “he doesn’t talk like a politician” doesn’t change how our NATO allies feel about Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade NATO countries. Article Five of the NATO charter doesn’t bind America only if America decides that a European country is fully paid up.

It’s not a high bar, but Biden is the picture of cognitive clarity compared to Trump. Let’s give the last word to JVL, who thinks Biden ought to embrace his age:

“Am I elderly? You betcha. Don’t move like I used to. And I have the occasional senior moment. I’ll probably have one during this speech, just so folks from the New York Times have something to write about.

But I know what the hell I’m doing.

Let me tell you about getting older. You aren’t as fast on your feet. You have to think a moment before you remember stuff.

But…as you get older, you’re able to see what really matters. You’re able to let go of your ego and focus on what’s important. That’s why I was able to work with the Republicans in Congress even while they said nasty things about me in public: Because I didn’t care what they said—I’m too old for that.”

Biden would be smart to embrace his age. As would other Democrats. There’s a difference between substantive grounds for breaking up the Democratic coalition, and a flimsy one, that only plays into the hands of the hard right.

There’s a big difference between age and ageism.

Time to wake up America! Biden’s advanced age is far from ideal for a president seeking a second term, even given how effective he’s been as president. He’s old. And he was never a gifted public speaker. Sometimes he makes cringe-inducing mistakes. It would be great if he were 20 years younger. But for the media to make this the overarching issue of the campaign is nothing short of journalistic malpractice.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Little Feat perform “Old Folks Boogie” which first appeared as the fifth track on Little Feat’s sixth album, Time Loves a Hero. (Here it’s performed live at the Rainbow Theatre in London, in August of 1977). This is taken from the album “Waiting For Columbus”, perhaps the best live album of all time:

Chorus:

And You Know That You’re Over the Hill
When Your Mind Makes a Promise That Your Body Can’t Fill

We’ve all experienced the discomfort of having our mind make a promise that our body couldn’t fulfill.

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Saturday’s Hot Links

The Daily Escape:

Grand Canyon, South Kabab Trail, AZ – February 2024 photo by Lynsey Schroeder

We’ve made it to Super Bowl weekend, but not without bumps and a few bruises caused by this week’s edition of America’s dysfunctional politics. Today, let’s do a lightning round of mostly bad and a few good stories from the past week.

First up, Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report declining charges against Biden in his classified documents case but finding he did willfully retain information. In the report, Hur goes out of his way to paint a damning portrait of the President. He cites several examples of memory lapses and describes Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur’s message boils down to this: a well-intentioned, forgetful old man took the wrong stuff home from work. He “willfully retained” it, but we’re gonna let him go. Not because he’s president, but because we’re nice guys. Sotto voce: (because we probably couldn’t prove criminal intent). Maybe the DOJ felt Trump needed a win after 91 felonies.

There’s a pattern to the DOJ’s appointments of special counsels:

What’s amazing is that Biden now faces more heat from the media for being found innocent than Trump will if he’s found guilty. The multiple questions by reporters at Thursday night’s Biden press conference showed just how difficult it is for America’s media to focus on what’s important. The White House Press Corps should collectively be ashamed of its behavior during the press conference. They behaved like a pack of rabid hyenas.

Why the horrible behavior toward Biden, and the deference to Trump? Mainstream media outlets have long been obsessed with Biden’s age. They have not, however, given the same attention to Trump’s age or to his gaffes and incoherent comments. It’s sad that we’re in a situation where Trump’s multiple indictments seemingly are politically advantageous to him, and Biden’s exoneration is politically terrible for him.

Given the media’s obsession, it won’t matter how well Biden does in public. If he makes one mental slip it becomes confirmation that the biggest concern about him is true. He can’t be perfect every day for the next nine months. Nobody can.

Next, Reuters reported that the Hawaii Supreme Court has upheld the state’s laws that generally prohibit carrying a firearm in public without a license. In the process, they criticized the US Supreme Court’s rulings that have expanded gun rights:

“The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”

This is a direct attack on the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen” which recognized for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. More:

“The Government’s interest in reducing firearms violence through reasonable weapons regulations has preserved peace and tranquility in Hawai’i. A free-wheeling right to carry guns in public degrades other constitutional rights….The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness encompasses a right to freely and safely move in peace and tranquility. Laws regulating firearms in public preserve…liberty and advance these rights….There is no individual right to keep and bear arms under Article I, Section 17. So there is no constitutional right to carry a firearm in public for possible self-defense.”

Hawaii for the win!

Third, on February 9, 1964, 60 years ago, Ed Sullivan hosted the Beatles on his show. If you’re a member of the baby boomer generation, chances are you were sitting in front of a television that night. Seventy-three million Americans joined in to watch something they had never seen before. You can wake up old memories by watching “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” here.

Fourth, after blocking the border bill on Wednesday, Senate Republicans allowed a clean funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to advance toward a vote. In the meantime, Ukraine is close to losing Avdeevka, a major eastern city to the Russians.

Fifth, disinformation watchdog groups have uncovered a covert, coordinated Russian effort to spread disinformation via Telegram and X/Twitter across the Texas border about a US Civil War:

“The disinformation campaign…expanded after Russian politicians spoke out when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with….Biden’s administration to rule that US Border Patrol officers were allowed to take down razor-wire fencing erected by the Texas National Guard…..There also appear to be a number of Russian accounts on X posing as pro-Texas groups, in another echo of 2016 when an account that claimed to be run by Tennessee Republicans was outed as Russian-run.

One of the suspect accounts is the Texan Independence Supporters, which has already been called out for spelling errors and constantly referencing Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday, the account claimed “we are a Texan organization, not Russian. We can definitely assure ya’ll [sic] that we’re not Russian.”

Another reminder that the internet is a cesspool.

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we stop obsessively scrolling through our news feeds and take a few moments to chillax and gather ourselves for another week hearing all the reasons why it’s necessary to continue bombing Palestinians.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong we’re preparing to host a small Super Bowl viewing party with as many high-calorie, high-fat appetizers as we can eat.

To help you relax, find a spot near a south-facing window and watch and listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”.  February 12th is the 100th anniversary of this work that combines jazz and classical origins into an iconic American work. Here it is performed by Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic while playing solo piano in 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany:

(hat tip to Marguerite S.)

Wrongo was struck by how Bernstein was able to conduct and play. Maybe multi-tasking IS possible.

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What’s South Carolina’s Democratic Primary Telling Us?

The Daily Escape:

After the storm, Southern AZ – February 2024 photo by Leila Shehab

Welcome to the Monday Wake Up Call. Let‘s start with a quick review of the South Carolina Democratic primary: Biden won. He swept every county, garnering 96% of the vote overall and 95% or better in every county. At the watch party, people were headed out the doors less than an hour after polls closed. Here’s an MSNBC screen grab that says it all:

With the Biden vote so dominant and the race so noncompetitive, turnout was low, at 131,000. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted. That means we didn’t learn very much about voter engagement for 2024.

And once again, the advance polling couldn’t be trusted. Here’s what Emerson College found on Jan. 5, 2024 just four weeks prior to the primary:

This meant that there were 23% undecided in early January. We all know that there are months to go before the general election this fall. It seems certain that Biden and the Democrats are currently testing the effectiveness of messages across the various voting cohorts in the US.

Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering on Trump’s threat to democracy. But how to tell the story about Biden’s first term in ways that normal people can understand? Is the implied threat of an authoritarian takeover by Trump enough to propel turnout in the fall? Or should the message focus on how much better off people are three years on from Trump?

The continued strength of the broader economy is finally starting to break through to people’s consciousness. But Biden and the Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Anat Shenker-Osorio famously said in an article in 2017 for The Hill, that Democrats shouldn’t just take the country’s temperature, they should change it.

Ezra Klein offered thoughts about American’s need to vote for stability:

“Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone.”

More:

“…Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But…Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching….is a push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”

More:

“I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election.”

Finally:

“…Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.”

That’s where Wrongo parts ways with Ezra. He’s not certain that voters who yearn for stability will cast their lonely eyes on Trump. Think about how effective Nikki Haley’s message is that chaos follows wherever Trump goes. Trump’s base isn’t buying that, but that criticism was successful for Haley with Independents in New Hampshire, and will be effective with the “never Trumpers”.

As far as what will motivate 2024 voters to turn out? Wrongo is struggling with how to balance the need to defend America from the authoritarian Right and the kitchen table issues. Wrongo was in high school when the John Birchers were insisting that the threat of creeping communism required a militarist leader to keep America safe. That led to the Republicans nominating Barry Goldwater, at the time a member of the radical Right. The Birchers’ Republican heirs today have moved beyond Goldwater. They hunger for a fascist strong man.

Do average voters see this threat, or are they fretting so much about overpaying for their rent and groceries to care?

And the stability argument resonates with Wrongo. This Sunday brings the Super Bowl, which used to be the one television event that would still unite America. But a significant minority of Americans now think it’s a PsyOp to make Trump lose the election. Klein says in his article that:

“The clichĂ© used to be that Democrats fell in love and Republicans fell in line. The reality, in recent years, has been that Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart.”

Time to wake up America! The choice whenever voting starts in your precinct this fall is between chaos and stability. We must stay obsessed with turning out Independents and unaffiliated, along with the Republican “never Trumpers” whose collective votes will ultimately determine the 2024 election.

Biden has to lead the way, and he’s got to do more interviews even though it increases exposure to his age as an issue.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Doreen Shaffer & the Skatalites tune, “You’re Wondering Now”. This was covered and popularized by the UK group The Specials in the 1980s. The Skatalites did this in 1968. But they were covering “You’re Wondering Now” by Andy and Joey, another Jamaican group who first performed it in 1963. Ska is a happy sounding form of music that featured a bass line on the off beat. In the early 1960s it was the dominant music genre in Jamaica and was also popular with the British mods. Shaffer’s voice is pure and wonderful:

Sample Lyrics:

You’re wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end
You’re wondering how, you will pay, for the way you did behave

Curtain has fallen, now you’re on your own
I won’t return, forever you will wait

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The Red Sea Is Becoming A Bigger Problem

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Outer Harbor, Camden, ME – February 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

A quick update to Wrongo’s column, “The End Of US Naval Superiority?” which concluded by saying:

“We don’t have sufficient deterrence to keep the Red Sea and thereby, the Suez Canal, open. We can’t do enough to the Houthis to make them back down. And we won’t be able to stop them with boots on the ground.”

That’s still true, and the military situation hasn’t gotten any better. Tim Anderson, Director of the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, mused on Xitter that the Houthis might have a path of escalation if the US and UK keep striking at their missile and drone launch capacity by cutting the Red Sea’s internet cables. The Houthis have denied this, but that doesn’t matter. The possibility is now out there.

From The Middle East Eye: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Egypt is a major [undersea cable] chokepoint, handling traffic from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and vice versa. The 15 cables that cross Egypt between the Mediterranean and Red seas handle between 17% to 30% of the world population’s internet traffic, or the data of 1.3 billion to 2.3 billion people.”

Does this mean that the Houthis have a path to escalatory dominance? We also learned from CNN that a few days ago, the USS Gravely had to use its Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) against a Houthi cruise missile that had gotten to within a mile of the ship. The Phalanx is essentially the ship’s last layer of air defense against incoming attacks. The fact that the Houthis got a missile through the AEGIS system which is the ship’s primary defense against incoming attacks by air, must be really concerning to the Pentagon. Having the possibility of a US Navy ship getting hit by the Houthis would be something that the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian navies would be watching very closely.

The economic situation hasn’t improved either. The WSJ reports that the world’s oceans are seeing an interlocking set of maritime security crises from Europe to East Asia. This raises a troubling question:  How difficult will it be to preserve freedom of the seas going forward? Here’s a map showing the way shipping routes have been altered in the last year:

This is exacerbated by the way the US Navy was sidelined during America’s decades of counterterrorism fascination. It makes it difficult to defend not just the shipping lanes but also undersea data cables and gas pipelines that are equally important to global economic output. More from the WSJ:

“Even if those ships can evade Houthi missiles, they can’t hide from insurers. The rate for war insurance through the Red Sea, once a tiny percentage of the total value covered, has ballooned to 1%, a difference that many shippers deem cost-prohibitive.”

The 10,000-mile-long alternative route, circumnavigating Africa, is so fuel-intensive that cargo ships pay steep climate taxes on arrival in Europe and risk scoring failing grades on the International Maritime Organization’s carbon report index.

Adding to shipping costs is the spiking of container rates. Here’s a chart (paywalled) from Statista:

While rates remain lower than they were in 2022, the fact that freight rates have spiked is a sign that the Houthi attacks are getting the desired effect, and that the maritime industry is taking them seriously.

This is an example less of asymmetric warfare than of asymmetric objectives. Briefly, the Houthis have a simple objective – trade disruption – which is straightforward to accomplish with relatively unsophisticated weapons. The West’s objective – freedom of navigation – is much more complex and requires a large, long-term presence with the ability to operate by land, sea and air, without ever having to seize the initiative.

As we’ve said previously, ships handle more than 80% of global goods. We seem unable to stop the Houthis. So it is likely that longer lead times on imported goods are right in front of us, along with more cost in delivering them.

This is another way in which Israel and Netanyahu specifically have dragged the US and the west into an escalating dilemma. There seem to be only two options: We end Israel’s destruction of Gaza as a means to eliminate Hamas, or we escalate in Yemen.

What will Biden and the US military say is our way out of the box we’ve gotten ourselves into?

That’s enough for this weekend. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about Trump, Nikki Haley and the pile of hot steaming stuff that are the House Republicans. We do that by turning off the news for at least a few minutes. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we remain undecided about when to take down our Christmas tree. The ornaments are packed away, but Wrongo likes looking at the lights in the evenings. Maybe just before company arrives for Super Bowl weekend.

To help on your way to unplug from the news, start by brewing up a vente cup of Frank Sumatra coffee ($13.95 for 12oz) from Camden, ME’s Coffee on the Porch. It is said to be a fun and lively roast with notes of nutmeg, dark chocolate, and a fruity zing. Who doesn’t like a fruity zing?

Now grab a seat by a window to watch and listen to Ravel’s “BolĂ©ro” performed by Prequell live in Paris. The backstory to this performance is that it was part of Paris’ 2017 campaign to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The city wanted to create a moment combining the city’s history, culture and sporting spirit using the Seine river. One project was this performance of “BolĂ©ro” on a 100-meter track floating on the Seine.

It showcases French classical music with a floating orchestra, arranged in a straight line, playing Ravel’s “BolĂ©ro”. As you know, Paris was successful in its bid for the 2023 summer games.

Watch and listen to Ravel’s masterful earworm:

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Will The Law Restrain Trump And The MAGAs?

The Daily Escape:

Shiprock, NM – January 2024 photo by Matt Farber

Does the law matter anymore to Trump and his MAGA followers? As Heather Digby said, the MAGAs:

“…now believe that the law is what Trump says it is.”

That seems patently true if you read anything on Xitter by Right-wing Trump apologists, since they throw all sorts of pasta at the wall hoping some will stick. The latest is about the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case Lewis Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) having worked together in the early 1990s. Somehow that constitutes a conflict of interest in the minds of the MAGATs.

Roberta Kaplan joined the firm in 1992 and left in 2016. Judge Kaplan was a partner there until 1994, so there was a two year overlap that occurred 30 years ago. They’ll try to make chicken salad out of this chicken shit.

A more serious attack on the law is occurring in Texas. Vice News is reporting that:

“A trucker convoy of ‘patriots’ is heading to the US border with Mexico next week, as the standoff between Texas and the federal government intensifies. The organizers of the ‘Take Our Border Back’ convoy have called themselves “God’s army” and say they’re on a mission to stand up against the ‘globalists’ who they claim are conspiring to keep US borders open and destroy the country.”

God’s Army. Vice quotes Ruth Braunstein, professor at the University of Connecticut:

“When people believe that they are working on behalf of God, they might be willing to resort to relatively extreme measures….And so you have a politically volatile situation that could become much more so, in part because of this rhetoric.”

The God’s Army website is “Secure Our Borders.” It is calling on:

“…all active & retired law enforcement and military, veterans, mama bears, elected officials, business owners, ranchers, truckers, bikers, media and LAW ABIDING, freedom-loving Americans…”

To join in the march on Texas. This has stoked civil war fantasies on fringe forums, as well as favorable comments on the social media accounts of GOP lawmakers and right-wing political commentators. And no surprise, this has bled into politics. The Daily Beast reported that on a news show, Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and Newsmax host Carl Rigbie mused about the possibility of a “force-on-force conflict” erupting between the federal government and the Texas National Guard.

They should be careful what they wish for. Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-TX), was quoted in the Dallas Morning News saying he expects to see continuing escalation in the legal battles between the state and the Biden administration:

“It’s striking that Texas Democrats are willing to side with Mexican drug cartels invading the state of Texas over their own governor and over the people of Texas…”

And most Republican governors recently signed a statement backing Abbott:

“We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border….We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.”

Wrongo has written many times about the faction of MAGATs who sport flag lapel pins and show you copies of their pocket Constitutions. The irony is that these (mostly) dudes haven’t really accepted the words of the Constitution and its Amendments. They want to interpret the law based on referendums orchestrated by Trump and Fox News.

What Abbott, Trump, and the MAGAs are attempting with the “southern border resistance” is testing to see how much buy in they can get from red state governors, truck drivers, law enforcement, and “patriots”. Can they sow enough chaos that the presidential election is difficult to conduct?

Here’s a theory: Trump doesn’t expect to win in November. In fact, he may not even care about the November election. Why wait until November 2024 and/or January, 2025 to make his move? What if he can mobilize his followers to strike now? How would Biden and the federal government respond to multiple domestic attacks occurring simultaneously within our borders?

If the GOP and Trump can’t beat Biden one-on-one, why wait? Waiting means that Trump will likely be incarcerated. Both Trump and the GOP certainly know that time isn’t on their side.

It’s time for the federal government to step in and knock this shit off before somebody gets killed. All Guardsmen at the border should be federalized immediately and then ordered to assist other federal officials in enforcing the Court’s decision.

That’s the only legitimate authority in play here. The GOP Constitutional reading favoring the states against the federal government is laughable. What would the fallout be if the National Guard, federalized by Biden attacks Texas law enforcement along with guys who drove their pickups to the border?

Time to wake up America! The Gospel According To CB Radio isn’t an authority on anything! Ask Trump and Abbott how many federal law enforcement officers enforcing a Supreme Court ruling are you willing to kill for your political stunt?

To help you wake up, we recognize the passing of the 1970s singer Melanie Safka who died this week at 76. Melanie was one of the surprise stars at Woodstock in 1969. To Wrongo, her best tune was “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”. She would later say that the sight of people in the Woodstock crowd lighting candles in the rain inspired her to write the song which she recorded with gospel-style backing from the Edwin Hawkins Singers. It was released in 1970 and became her first hit.

Here she performs it live with the Edwin Hawkins Singers in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1970:

The song was anthemic, in the same way the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day” had been the summer before. And the Edwin Hawkins Singers are also the chorus on “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” The song is alternately hugely upbeat and dark.

Sample Lyric:

We were so close there was no room
We bled inside each other’s wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace

Lay down, lay down, let it all down
Let your white birds smile up at the ones who stand and frown
Lay down, lay down, let it all down
Let your white birds smile up at the ones who stand and frown

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