Category: Playlist

Saturday Soother – May 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Adams sunrise with orchards in bloom, WA – May 2023 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

(Wrongo and Ms. Right give a group hug to family member Bob W. His mother has a grave health crisis. We’re thinking of you Bob.)

There’s a book called “A Terrible Country” written in 2018 by Keith Gessen. It’s about life in Russia a few years before Russia became a pariah in Europe. But the title could easily describe the US in 2023. If you doubt that, maybe you aren’t aware of the video of a NYC subway rider choking a homeless man to death last week. The video lasts for four minutes.

The NYT describes the video:

“The homeless man, Jordan Neely, is seen writhing, trying to get free from the arms and legs of the other subway riders who are pinning him down. As the minutes tick by early Monday afternoon on a northbound F train in Manhattan, Mr. Neely visibly weakens as the arm wrapped around his neck stays tight.”

After he stops moving, the riders hold him down for about another 50 seconds. Neely was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Jordan Neely was homeless. He was a Michael Jackson impersonator. Neely’s race (Black) and that of his killer (White) are a depressingly familiar story. What’s different is that his assailant wasn’t a cop and didn’t use a gun.

What’s also familiar is that the assailant has not been charged by the NYPD.

What’s also disturbing is that the subway car held bystanders most of whom remained bystanders, watching a former Marine choke the life out of Neely for (apparently) behaving erratically.

After the fact, we learned that Neely had more than 40 arrests including an open warrant for punching a 67 old woman. No one should portray him as simply a misunderstood soul. But did he deserve to die in that subway car?

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that there’s been news nearly every day about Americans being killed over mundane, mostly non-threatening actions, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The NYT’s Roxanne Gay:

“We are at something of an impasse. The list of things that can get you killed in public is expanding every single day. Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life. We can’t even agree on right and wrong anymore.”

How did the country get this way? Why is there so much fear and paranoia about the “other”? Why do select elements of our society cultivate this fear by marketing it?

Neely’s killing is partly an outcome of the relentless political rhetoric that has contributed to the public’s false beliefs about actual crime levels in America’s cities. And NYC’s Mayor and NY’s Governor wouldn’t even condemn the killer. Elizabeth Bruenig writes in The Atlantic:

“This process, through which mundane uncomfortable situations are transformed into terrifying ordeals by…incidents of random gun violence…is one means by which a healthy community becomes a violent society. Nobody looks forward to encountering people behaving erratically on the subway…but killing a mentally ill man on a train….represents the loss of a peaceful commons, the absence of compassion, and the overwhelming fear we have come to accept in our culture of violence. This is the country we have become.”

Yep, we’ve become a terrible country. Back to Roxanne Gay:

“There is no patience for simple mistakes or room for addressing how bigotry colors even the most innocuous interactions. There is no regard for due process. People who deem themselves judge, jury and executioner walk among us, and we have no real way of knowing when they will turn on us.”

And on Thursday, four of the Proud Boys, among paranoia’s finest, were convicted of committing vigilante justice against our democracy. Let’s leave the final words to Gay, who says we’ve become:

“…a people without empathy, without any respect for the sanctity of life unless it’s our own…”

Or fetuses.

Time for Wrongo to wash up after digging in this cultural dirt. It’s time for our Saturday Soother where we try to forget about whose drones hit the Kremlin, and try to center ourselves before another demanding week begins,

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, Wrongo and Ms. Right are spending the weekend in NYC seeing two musicals.

But as a public service to the rest of you, grab a seat outdoors on what looks like a beautiful day in the northeast. Now watch and listen to Erzsébet Pozsgai play the first movement of “Spring” from the “Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi on solo violin, live in Budapest in 2013:

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 1, 2023

The Daily Escape:

The Schooner Surprise, built in 1918, is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, Camden Harbor, ME – April 2023 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

A few words about Biden, McCarthy and the Debt Ceiling. We all know that the clock is ticking on a US default of our debt sometime in June. There are multiple opinions in DC about who has the leverage in the coming debate between the House GOP, Senate Dems and Biden.

The institutionalist view is that McCarthy and the House GOP have taken the Debt Ceiling hostage and they plan a hostage negotiation with Biden. Some think that McCarthy is doing it badly. Others take the darker view that the Republicans are actually trying to crash the economy so that America blames Biden and returns the GOP to power in 2024.

If you think, based on what we’ve seen so far, that the GOP doesn’t plan to negotiate, that like terrorists, they will kill as many hostages as possible until their terms are 100% met, what they’re doing makes sense.

The NYT reports that McCarthy has been open about the fact that this is not a real bill:

“This bill is to get us to the negotiations….It is not the final provisions, and there’s a number of members who will vote for it going forward…say there are some concerns they have with it. But they want to make sure the negotiation goes forward because we are sitting at $31 trillion of debt.”

For the umpteenth time, we’re watching a game of chicken about raising the debt limit. There are something like 45 days until the Debt Ceiling must be raised. You know the “or else” sentence that follows: Or else, the US will face potentially calamitous economic consequences.

McCarthy’s bill may get the Republicans a seat at the table in the negotiations over raising the debt limit, but Biden’s position remains: “Send a clean debt limit bill, or pound sand.”

Has McCarthy overplayed a bad hand? If he had failed to get anything passed he would have looked completely incompetent. Nevertheless, passing a bill filled with devastating cuts and manifestly unpopular positions that will be difficult to defend except to the Party faithful, it is arguably worse than getting nothing done at all.

If the Dems are smart they will take the GOP’s messaging bill and come up with a message that has broad appeal that can be used to hurt the GOP in swing districts for the next two years. McCarthy’s bill shows that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to gut health care, food stamps and education, and even veterans benefits. The Vote Vets organization is out with a message:

“And now, it is the fringe MAGA party that voted for a budget that would gut health care and support for our Veterans. 217 of them voted for it, and just 4 against. They talk tough when it comes to Military action, but go AWOL when it’s time to take care of those who served.”

This bill isn’t intended to pass. Republicans had an opportunity to aim a productive salvo at swing voters to convince them that GOP majorities can deliver normalcy, and give them some sign that the Party was tacking away from the extremist positions that alienated voters in the last midterm elections.

Instead, their message is that the Party is about owning the libs and slashing aid for veterans and the poor. The GOP can’t even fake being a Party interested in governing anymore. That’s bad news for McCarthy, the man chained to the GOP canoe that’s heading over the falls. As Succession’s the late Logan Roy would say “You are not serious people.”

Instead the GOP’s message to the world is that America’s commitment to paying its debts is contingent on an underlying political negotiation about the size of the budget deficit.

  • Republicans believe they can win the political standoff by making Biden and Democrats look petty by refusing a basic negotiation.
  • Democrats also seem to be betting that Senate Republicans will step in as more mature political actors and defuse this situation.

The NYT quotes Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) and majority leader:

“Discussion of spending cuts belongs in talks about the budget, not for bargaining chips on the debt ceiling….The speaker should drop the brinkmanship, drop the hostage taking, come to the table with Democrats to pass a clean bill to avoid default.”

Time to wake up America! This kabuki play will run through at least mid-June. It’s a DC big boy fight. And we the little people, will have no say until November 2024 when we can escort the GOP flame throwers out of the House. To help you wake up, watch Crowded House perform “Don’t Dream It’s Over” from their first (of three) farewell tours, played at the Sydney Opera House in November 1996:

One of the greatest songs of the 80s and it still hits hard today.

Sample Lyrics:

There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup
There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re traveling with me

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Saturday Soother – April 29, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Crab Apple tree, Fields of Wrong, CT – May 10, 2013 photo by Wrongo. This year, the trees are in full bloom two weeks earlier. The petals will be long gone by May 10, 2023. Climate change?

The new Democratic governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs, appears to be on the wrong foot with her take on food safety. The NYT reports that she vetoed a bill that would have allowed Arizona’s informal network of home cooks to sell perishable food legally:

“Though the state promotes itself as a low-tax, low-regulation haven for private enterprise, it does not allow the sale of perishable foods made at home. So for years, a thriving economy of working-class, mostly Latina home cooks has operated underground, selling tacos, tres leches cakes and chile-dusted corn illegally from living rooms and outside laundromats and soccer games.”

Earlier in April, Republicans who control the state legislature came together with Democrats in a moment of bipartisan accord to pass a bill that would let Arizona’s home cooks register with the state to legally sell perishable foods like salsas and tamales.

And Hobbs vetoed it. Naturally, there was a backlash. Why would the new governor alienate Arizona’s large Latino population? Even a few Democrats have criticized her for killing what is widely being called the “tamale bill.” More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“They said her move was a slap in the face of Latino constituents who voted for Ms. Hobbs, and whose support was crucial in a politically fractured state that is about 32% Latino. Critics said her veto would hurt the working-class immigrants that Ms. Hobbs had championed during her campaign.”

We can debate the merits of Arizona’s food safety laws. You might say, “I’ve seen my kitchen, and I’m against it.”

But when we debate the merits, it ought to be in the context of a) the minimal acceptable standard for public safety, and b) what the people want. Arizona’s informal food network is very popular. People aren’t stupid: They know that eating food purchased from the trunk of a car or from a roadside stand carries a risk of a possible night on the toilet, yet no one complains. And if something happens the city or town can always trace it and shut someone down.

BTW: You haven’t lived until you’ve bought tamales from the trunk of a nice lady’s car in a Home Depot parking lot.

The Arizona food safety reform bill appealed to both Parties: Republicans could stand up for fewer regulations, while Dems could show that they understood and supported the working class. This is particularly relevant in Arizona, where working people have a long tradition of making money through selling food informally.

So, what was Hobbs thinking? The selling of home-cooked food is primarily practiced by people of color or immigrants. Banning sale of their cooking could be seen as institutional racism, something we might expect in Arizona, but from a Democratic governor?

Maybe roadside vendors could display a warning sign saying that the Office of Food Inspection isn’t inspecting their garage BBQs, or their kitchens, or their basement bakeries, so you’re on your own. Besides, the Feds allow Big Food to put pink slime in our ground beef.

Enough about Katie Hobbs, someone who we were thrilled to see beat Kari Lake last November.

It’s time to forget about politics and whatever Ron DeSantis was doing in Israel. Focus instead on finding some relaxing time before the week starts all over again. Here on the fields of Wrong, the spring cleanup continues, along with our working to convince a pair of house finches that building a nest under the walkway to our door is – well, wrong. Wrongo expects to prevail as he has in prior years.

But now, it’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Let’s start by brewing up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Basha Bekele coffee ($23/12oz.) from Virginia’s Roadmap CoffeeWorks, an award-winning artisan roasting company based in Lexington, VA. It is said to be chocolaty and fruit-toned in the very long and satisfying finish. Who doesn’t like a long finish?

Since there’s rain in Litchfield County today, grab a chair by a large window. Now watch and listen to “Simple Gifts” from Aaron Copland’s  “Appalachian Spring” conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In 1942, Martha Graham commissioned Copland to write a ballet with “an American theme”. It premiered at the Library of Congress on October 30, 1944, with Graham dancing the lead role.

In 1945, Copland was commissioned by conductor Artur Rodziński to rearrange the ballet as an orchestral suite. “Simple Gifts” was a Shaker Hymn that Copland brought to life. He called the piece “Ballet for Martha”, and Graham gave it the title “Appalachian Spring”, after a line in a poem by Hart Crane:

“Tis’ a Gift to be Simple“….indeed.

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Late Stage Capitalism

The Daily Escape:

A 20 feet x 9 feet sign placed in Times Square, NYC in Sept. 2013. Created by Steve Lambert.

In yesterday’s column about Bed Bath and Beyond’s (BBBY) bankruptcy, Wrongo used the term “Late Stage Capitalism” to describe some of the factors that led to the firm’s demise. Several readers asked what Wrongo meant.

First, some history. A German economist named Werner Sombart seems to have been the first to use the term “Late Capitalism” around the turn of the 20th century. A Marxist theorist named Ernest Mandel popularized it in the 1960s. For Mandel, “late capitalism” described the economic period that started with the end of World War II and ended in the early 1970s, a time that saw the rise of multinational corporations, mass communication, and international finance.

In America the terms “Late Capitalism” and “Late Stage Capitalism” are used interchangeably. Late-stage capitalism is characterized by greed, corruption, and a focus on profits over people.

The current crisis of capitalism’s legitimacy stems from business pursuing the aberrant form of capitalism known as shareholder capitalism, which began in the 1970s. It causes firms to seek maximizing shareholder value as reflected in the current share price, at the expense of all other stakeholders and society.

Some of the problems with late-stage capitalism include wealth inequality, environmental destruction, and financialization. Financialization refers to the increase in size and importance of a country’s financial sector relative to its overall economy. In the US, the size of the financial sector as a percentage of GDP grew from 2.8% in 1950 to 21% in 2019. The financial services industry, with its emphasis on short-term profits, has played a major role in the decline of manufacturing in the US. Financialization has created “unproductive” capitalism. According to economist Michael Roberts: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…financialization is now mainly used as a term to categorize a completely new stage in capitalism, in which profits mainly come not from…production, but from financial [engineering]

Today, capitalism is no longer the heart of a free market. Algorithms run the stock and foreign exchange markets. Large players in these markets operate freely with the expectation that they will eventually be caught. They then pay off the DOJ or SEC, chalking up the fines to the cost of doing business.

Lobbyists on Capitol Hill curry favor with politicians. Companies then receive substantial tax breaks and move their ever larger profits to offshore tax havens. The revolving door between Wall Street and the banking sector allows former Federal Reserve Chairs to charge speaking fees of $500,000 and earn seats on the boards of the algorithmic trading firms. The Pentagon continues to benefit from budgetary increases while the profits of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other defense contractors continue to swell.

Late stage capitalism helped create the current distortion of wealth. From the wealthy one percent living in multiple homes and flying private, to the plight of the working poor in America. In a 2020 survey by Edelman, a marketing and public relations firm, 57% of people worldwide said that:

“capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world”

When you have money, capitalism is your wing man. It opens doors to business leaders and helps develop political influence, all with the goal of amassing more wealth and power.

Late stage capitalism has allowed oligopolies and the oligarchs that run them, to rig the system in their favor. They’ve won Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United v. FEC (2010), that give corporations the same speech rights as people, allowing them to spend millions on political ads to elect compliant politicians.

In recent years, capitalism’s shortcomings have become more apparent: Prioritizing short-term profits has sometimes meant that the long-term well-being of society and the environment has lost out. Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, as economists Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato wrote in their book “Rethinking Capitalism”:

“…the performance of Western capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic…”

There’s also no denying that this strain of capitalism has led to increased economic growth worldwide, while lifting a significant number of people out of poverty. At the same time, its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support investment in public services, such as crumbling public infrastructure, improving education and mitigating health risks.

Watch Paul Tudor Jones, a successful hedge fund manager describe why we need to rethink capitalism:

He’s concerned about capitalism’s laser focus on profits. He says that it’s:

“….threatening the very underpinnings of society.”

More people are aware of the term “late, or late-stage capitalism,” due to the growing wealth gap. People now have access to information that exposes the defects of capitalism, and the effects of political and elitist interference in the monetary policy of a country. There is a popular Reddit community devoted to it.

And calling something “late” implies the potential for significant change or revolution, A “late” period always comes near the end of something. Calling it “Late capitalism” says:

“…This is a stage we’re going to come out of at some point…”

Perhaps we’re on the cusp of society dictating that capitalism provide us with a more equitable way of life. Or maybe the wealth gap will continue to grow, and the corporations will continue to seize more power.

Whenever late-stage capitalism eventually comes to an end, you can be sure of one thing – it won’t be a soft landing.

 

Sources and reading list:

https://wrongologist.com/2023/04/bed-bath-and-beyond-another-retailer-bites-the-dust/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialization.asp

https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-michael-r-roberts/

https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-united-v-fec/

https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Rethinking+Capitalism%3A+Economics+and+Policy+for+Sustainable+and+Inclusive+Growth-p-9781119120957

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210525-why-the-next-stage-of-capitalism-is-coming

https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2020-01/2020%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Global%20Report.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/

Alternative Views:

https://tomdehnel.com/crushing-the-myth-of-late-stage-capitalism/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/opinion/american-capitalism-good.html

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 24, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mountain Park in Globe, AZ  – April 2023 photo by Karen Coffelt

(Earth Day was yesterday. Wrongo was at the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in NYC. Then-mayor John Lindsay closed Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to 14th Street. Nearly one million people marched downtown. It was an upbeat and friendly crowd. In July of 1970, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order.)

Today let’s return to talking politics. Axios had an interesting chart from Gallup on the distribution of voters by party preference:

We spend our days listening to politicians who’s Parties, individually, now represent a minority of Americans. This trend means there are serious challenges ahead for our two traditional Parties. It also adds some context to our evenly split politics.

Here’s an analysis of the vote share of independents by Party in recent elections: (the numbers do not total to 100% because voters who chose “another” or didn’t vote aren’t shown)

Interestingly, the Democrats have lost 10 points of independent support from 2020 to 2022, but the GOP only gained 1%. At the time, the Associated Press reported:

“Republican House candidates nationwide won the support of 38% of independent voters in last month’s [2022] midterm elections, VoteCast showed. That’s far short of the 51% that Democrats scored with the same group in 2018…picking up 41 seats. The GOP’s lackluster showing among independents helps explain why Republicans flipped just nine seats…”

Going back to the trends in the first chart, Axios reports that Gallup analyst Jeff Jones says a big reason for this change is driven by the younger generation:

“It was never unusual for younger adults to have higher percentages of independents than older adults….What is unusual is that as Gen X and millennials get older, they are staying independent rather than picking a party, as older generations tended to do.”

So who are these independents? Krystal Ball explains in a YouTube video that most of these “independents” are younger voters, millennials and Gen-Z. They’ve also stayed more disillusioned than their elders.

This means that the nation is evenly split between those who think that one of our two political parties is telling the absolute truth, while the 49% majority basically don’t trust either to have their back.

The question with independents is whether they are truly a part of some mythical center or if they are a segment (half) of the population that isn’t politicized, meaning they don’t believe they have a personal stake in elections.

Or are independents simply that half of the US electorate that just doesn’t bother to vote?

The American political system is dysfunctional. That’s making people opt for being independent rather than Democrat or Republican. They see the choice between the Parties as choosing between the red shit sandwich and the blue shit sandwich.

Time to wake up America! Democracy is our country’s feedback mechanism, but just 46.8% of us voted in the 2022 mid-terms. So it’s clear our current brand of democracy isn’t working. More of us need to vote, and that means we have to help our Parties change. We don’t need a third Party; we need our two Parties to reflect what grassroots America needs. More about this tomorrow.

To help you wake up, and in honor of Earth Day, watch and listen to Neil Young perform “After the Gold Rush”, live at the Shoreline Amphitheater in 1993. He’s playing a pump organ, which generates sound as air flows past the vibrating reeds.  Also, he’s wearing Uggs:

Sample lyric:

Look at Mother Nature on the run In the twentieth century
Look at Mother Nature on the run In the twentieth century.

She’s still trying to outrun us 50 years later.

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Saturday Soother – April 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Rainbow, Blue Ridge Parkway, VA – April 2023 photo by Tim Lewis

American carnage is real, my friend. Just not in the way that Trump stated in his inaugural rant. The American carnage Wrongo speaks of is the gun attacks made on others by angry or fearful lone American gunmen. From Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark:

“Ringing the wrong doorbell, making a wrong turn, getting in the wrong car, and an errant basketball. A wounded teenager, a dead young woman, cheerleaders in critical condition, and a 6-year-old girl and her father shot.”

The Indiana man who shot a 16-year-old boy for knocking on his door is described by his grandson as a conspiracy theorist and avid consumer of right-wing media: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I feel like a lot of people of that generation are caught up in this 24 hour news cycle of fear and paranoia perpetuated by some…news stations. And he was fully into that, sitting and watching Fox News all day, every day blaring in his living room…..that doesn’t necessarily lead people to be racist, but it reinforces and galvanizes racist people. And their beliefs.”

Right wing propaganda is about fear. And some people bathe in it for hours a day. So, while the rest of us enjoy walks in the park or a trip to the market, they’re terrified of every swarthy stranger at the Publix or Home Depot.

Add this level of fear to the implicit permission given gun owners by “stand your ground” laws, and you have the elements of an environment of violence.  Vox provides background:

“Some of these shootings took place in states with so-called “stand your ground” laws, which offer expansive legal protections for people who use deadly force against others out of self-defense….and experts have noted that the laws can bolster a “shoot first, ask later” mentality.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Under such laws — which exist in some form in 38 states — people can use lethal force if they reasonably believe their life is under threat, and they don’t have to take steps to retreat or avoid the confrontation first. That’s a stark change from prior laws….In the past, the “castle doctrine,” which has been adopted by most states, allowed people to use deadly force if a person entered their home.

Stand your ground laws take that idea one step further, with some making such allowances no matter where a person is, whether that’s a public place, their vehicle or their office.”

Add pervasive fear and permission to stand your ground to the proliferation of guns in America (aided by the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Second Amendment) and the US has come undone. From Umair Haque: (emphasis by Haque)

“Did you know that America isn’t just the most violent nation in the industrialized world — but an off the charts extreme outlier? Iceland is the world’s most peaceful society. Canada is the world’s 12th most peaceful society. America is the… 129th.”

That’s 129 out of 163 countries tracked. Further evidence is in the recent TSA statistics about intercepting guns about to be carried on to planes:

“Officers with the Transportation Security Administration confiscated more than 1,500 guns at airport security checkpoints in the US during the first quarter of the year, more than 93% of which were loaded. The 1,508 firearms equate to an average of 16.8 intercepted each day during the first three months of the year…”

The gun gives its owner the power of life and death. No training needed. The power of God right there in your hand. It’s very attractive to a certain type of person. And we cultivate that type of personality in America.

We have no safety nets, no social bonds, no norms of decency. That means we ask each other to bear the unbearable.

We don’t invest enough in safety nets, insurance, public goods, healthcare, education, and, in most states, gun laws. According to Haque, it’s all justified by politicians saying, “I can bear the unbearable — why can’t they?” But we can’t do that forever. Someone will snap, and the frustration of bearing the unbearable pours out as rage that’s visited on whomever is nearest, or easiest to hurt. That’s American Exceptionalism at work. America’s extreme violence, caused in large part by the twisted ideology that asks Americans to bear unbearable things.

Enough about guns and people snapping. It’s time for our Saturday Soother! Here on the Fields of Wrong, our crabapple trees are in bloom. They’re being visited by both birds and bees, each looking for high calorie snacks. The bees for the flowers, the birds for the buds. Our spring clean-up is lagging, so there’s still much to do.

But first, let’s relax for a few minutes. Grab a comfy chair near a big window and watch and listen to Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukrainian-American pianist, play “Rustle of Spring”, a solo piano piece written by Norwegian composer Christian Sinding in 1896:

If you are interested in amazing piano technique, watch Lisitsa perform Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

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Monday Wake Up Call- April 17, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Woodenshoe Tulip Festival with Mt. Hood in background, WA – April 2023 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

If you drink beer, you know that Bud Lite is terrible. Wrongo shares this opinion with the GOP, but for different reasons.

Wrongo hates the taste. Conservatives hate Bud Light because of a recent Bud Light promotion featuring influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman. Mulvaney posted a sponsored video on her Instagram account announcing that Bud Light had sent her a customized beer can with her face on it.

Bud sent the can to Mulvaney in celebration of the first anniversary of her transition.

Some on the Right are calling the brew a “Woke Mind Virus”. But shouldn’t the real focus be on the MAGA Mind Virus? The Right has created a kind of Bud-lash fever: Some have machine gunned or crushed cases of the beer with heavy equipment. Then a person or persons moved on to making bomb treats at a Bud plant in Van Nuys, CA. Several Budweiser facilities across the nation have also been targeted with bomb threats.

Many on the Right call for a boycott of the bestselling beer in the country. If that sounds ludicrous, it’s because it is. It’s also indicative of where we are in America today.

Trans issues are front and center in the GOP-inspired culture war. Anti-trans sentiment is on display by many on the right, targeting children’s health, sports, drag shows, and health care. It’s seen throughout Conservative media. Anti-trans legislation is growing. And it’s even entering the mainstream. From Vox:

“Mainstream publications like the NY Times increasingly follow the lead of anti-trans agitators, treating what should be understood as a fundamental human rights battle more like a semantic “debate,” fixating on terminology and labels and medical minutiae, instead of humanizing trans and nonbinary people and their experiences.”

Vox reports that this has created a contentious situation at the Times. In February, contributors and members of the Times’s staff posted an open letter protesting the paper’s escalating bias toward anti-trans talking points.

But the Bud-lash fever may be breaking. The Daily Beast reported that on Saturday, the Twitter account for the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) removed a fundraising post that trashed Bud Lite. Apparently, they realized that Anheuser-Busch isn’t some progressive company. In 2022, they gave the NRCC $464,505. The NRCC has decided that they like political donations more than they hate trans people.

Bud’s partnership with Mulvaney also triggered a nearly $5 billion drop in the Anheuser-Busch stock value as of last Wednesday.

On Friday, Anheuser-Busch released a tepid statement from its CEO, Brendan Whitworth, saying he is “responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew”:

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

The company cancelled an event in Missouri last week, citing safety concerns for its employees. Wrongo is against banning TikTok. Here’s a TikTok video of Bud Lite cans being crushed by a steam roller. Where else would we see news like this?

Boycotts are a tradition in America, so like all the others, this one will fade away. The difference with this one is how wound up Conservatives get about something as trivial as a one minute video that pitches Bud Lite.

Time to wake up America! These clowns will try to take you down in a hail of gun fire, saying it’s for God and Freedom, (loosely defined). They just can’t abide sharing the country (or political power) with people who aren’t just like them.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to “All I Ask of You” from the musical “Phantom of the Opera” which had its last Broadway performance yesterday. It opened on Broadway in January of 1988. Since then, Phantom has played almost 14,000 performances (the most in history) to more than 20 million people, grossing over $1.3 billion. An estimated 6,500 people have been employed by the production – including over 400 actors.

Here the song is performed by Michael Ball and Sarah Brightman (the original Christine) at London’s Royal Albert Hall Celebration for Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the play:

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Saturday Soother – April 15, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Wildflowers, Ennis, TX – April 2023 photo by Teresa Gawor

Welcome to the start of taxpayer’s blues weekend. The date for submitting your taxes is April 18 this year, since April 15 falls on a Saturday and Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in Washington, DC, is April 17. Around 88 million Americans still hadn’t filed by April 1, so there’s got to be some burning of the midnight oil this weekend.

Let’s talk about the leak of classified Pentagon documents by Jack Teixeira, a 21 year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Teixeira was arrested on Thursday for posting US secret documents in a private Discord chat room he hosted. The classified material was shared with some 20-30 room members, including some of whom were foreigners.

The details are depressing. The group had a taste for racist and anti-Semitic memes. The WaPo reports that they seemed to love guns, military gear and God.

What happens next will be a damage assessment by the US Intelligence Community (IC), along with some of the usual suspects staking out political positions about how inept the IC is by allowing another classified leak.

Sadly, Teixeira has already picked up supporters in the GOP, as this tweet by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shows:

It’s surprising how open and direct the pro-Putin Right is in linking Russia’s policies to those of the authoritarian white Christian secession movement in America. If you read Wrongo’s column yesterday on what’s dividing America, today’s tweet by Greene is a prime example of the difficulty in finding common cause with the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

Perhaps you didn’t see that Fox’s Tucker Carlson said that Teixeira deserves a medal not prison time. Or that he said that Teixeira is today’s Daniel Ellsberg. Others are saying that the racist meme and the god and guns framing aren’t true and are simply what the liberals at the DOJ and the NYT are spoon feeding to us. If you can stomach it, read some of the comments Right Wingers leave after viewing Tucker’s spew.

If this had happened when GW Bush was president, the GOP would be demanding that Teixeira receive a public execution.

But the GOP has moved on, and now there isn’t a substantial difference between Trump and Teixeira. The crimes are the same, and it seems, so are their motives. But Trump isn’t a 21-year old trying to impress his friends in a private forum. After four years as US president, he knows exactly why his behavior was criminal and dangerous.

And whatever sentence Teixeira receives should also apply to Trump, only with less leniency.

A basic question for the US Intelligence Community is how many more disaffected people are out there who have access to our intelligence? How many have a desire to steal it, either to stick it to the man or to simply hoard a few secrets? How many more IC oddballs are out there living in houses filled with terabytes of digital and paper secrets squirreled away?

That’s enough for today, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we block out all distractions and try to figure out how many miles our cars were driven for business in 2022.

Here on the fields of Wrong, it’s been in the high 80’s and it’s suddenly apparent that there’s plenty of yard work that needs doing. Wrongo has started trimming and shaping the bushes that seemed to grow wildly last year, even without much rain. Ms. Right helpfully says just chain saw them off to half their size. It will be brutal, but effective!

But before starting the yard work, let’s take a few minutes to center ourselves and try to prepare for the week to come.

Start by finding a seat near an open window. Now, watch and listen to the Vienna Philharmonic play Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann: Barcarolle” live and outdoors in Vienna in 2020. Here the orchestra is conducted by Valery Gergiev. Barcarolle comes from the Italian “barca” or boat. It is a traditional folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style:

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 3, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Just when you thought it was only a meme: The beer is tasty – April 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. You may not know that there is a “Florida Man Birthday Challenge” web site. (Hat tip to Amy DeP-O). Wrongo is born in December. Of the many December Florida man entries, Wrongo’s favorite is: “Florida Man says aliens have landed, burns down house stocked with flamethrowers and ammo.”

It was a rental property…

We’ve been here in the land of the anti-woke for a few days. No one in our family openly talks politics, so  we just enjoy the fabulous food. But you’re aware that Trump was indicted by the NYC DA. You have probably heard that Trump said:

“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was handpicked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace.”

That led to some research. But it’s no secret. The NYT reported that Soros has put money behind electing reform-minded prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner and Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg. But he doesn’t fund them directly. His foundation donates to organizations that do field work like Color for Change. This isn’t any different from the right-wing billionaires who support right-wing organizations, issues and candidates.

So, when critics of Alvin Bragg say that he is backed by Soros, it should be similar to when critics say Republican politicians are backed by the Koch Brothers or the late Sheldon Adelson.

But bringing up George Soros feels different. The reason for vilifying Soros is rarely spelled out. You get general descriptors, like he’s a “globalist.” Of course, Soros IS Jewish, and the charge that rich Jews try to control the world for their own mysterious and nefarious reasons is an old and dangerous trope on the right. But Sheldon Adelson, who backed many Right-wing Republicans, including Trump was also Jewish.

Some say that people who mention Soros are anti-Semitic, and some probably are. Yes, he’s indirectly funded Bragg, but is Bragg doing something that wouldn’t have happened anyway? How exactly is Soros pulling Bragg’s strings? And why is Soros in more control of politicians he donates to than are donors on the right?

There’s zero indication that Bragg is bucking popular opinion to do the bidding of a Jewish billionaire, which is something you can’t say about many, many NRA-backed politicians.

The thing that impresses Wrongo the most is that while George Soros isn’t small potatoes on the billionaire list, the right-wing thinks he’s able to pay off millions of people, start revolutions, and influence deep states in dozens of countries without going broke.

Virtually every Republican politician has stood up for Trump, saying he’s the victim of a political witch hunt. Ron Brownstein lays out the Republican’s dilemma:

“The dilemma for the Republican Party is that Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles may be simultaneously strengthening him as a candidate for the…presidential nomination and weakening him as a potential general-election nominee.”

It’s going to get worse for the GOP, since it’s highly likely that this is only the beginning of Trump’s legal troubles. There are possible charges from Fulton County, Georgia’s District Attorney Fani Willis. She has been examining Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results in her state. There are also the twin federal probes led by Special Counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6 effort to block Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election.

So, while Trump may lock up the primaries without difficulty, the recent NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist survey shows that 61% of Americans—including 64% of independents and 70% of college-educated white adults—said they did not want him to be president again.

That result was similar to the latest Quinnipiac University national poll, which found that 60% of Americans do not support Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

The challenge for the GOP is that about 80% of Republicans said they consider themselves part of the MAGA movement, and about 75% say they want him back in the White House. That means he will be the nominee, but not the next president.

Brownstein quotes Bryan Bennett, director of polling and analytics for the Democratic polling consortium that conducts the Navigator surveys:

“For the GOP to bet that Trump could overcome swing-voter revulsion over his legal troubles and win a general election by mobilizing even more of his base voters….seems to me the highest risk proposition that I can imagine.”

Time to wake up America! There’s nothing to be gained by letting the media, the GOP or Trump spin you up with irrelevant issues. Soros is just another wealthy white guy who wants to see change he can believe in.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Larkin Poe cover a Son House tune, “Preaching Blues”. Eddie House was a troubled man. He grappled for years with the seeming incompatibility between his growing love of the blues and his teenage desire to be a Baptist preacher:

Sample Lyric:

I’m gonna get me some religion
I’m gonna join the Baptist church
I’m gonna get me some religion
I’m gonna join the Baptist church
Gonna be a preacher
So I don’t have to work

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 27, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Snow Geese flying over Daffodil fields with Mt. Baker in background, WA – March 2023 photo by Erwin Buske Photography

Three House Republican committee chairs are indicating that the House may soon take up legislation to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority to prosecute former presidents. They’re saying that America needs federal legislation to prevent Trump from being indicted by a state.

Is the bill going to be called the “Ex-Presidents Are Above the Law” Act? Surely they mean to draft legislation to protect only Republican presidents and not the Democratic ones.

There are a least two states that have Trump in their sights. Georgia for attempted election fraud, and New York for falsifying business records to hide the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. In addition, there are civil suits in NY over his business practices and a defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape by the writer E Jean Carroll.

You may have heard that these same Congress critters sent a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg requiring Bragg’s appearance in front of their committees to give evidence about the NY DA’s ongoing investigation into Trump. When Bragg said of their demand:

“It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations,….This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors.”

The trio followed up with another letter to Bragg rejecting his arguments. They wrote:

“Your conclusory claim that our constitutional oversight responsibilities will interfere with law enforcement is misplaced and unconvincing.”

Because: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“the potential criminal indictment of a former President of the United States by an elected local prosecutor of the opposing political party (and who will face the prospect of re-election) implicates substantial federal interests”.

They meant the former president is facing re-election, not Bragg. They added:

“Therefore, the Committee on the Judiciary, as a part of its broad authority to develop criminal justice legislation, must now consider whether to draft legislation that would, if enacted, insulate current and former presidents from such improper state and local prosecutions…”

We all know that this is more performative grandstanding by House Republicans. Since the Senate has a Democratic majority and the White House is held by Biden, a bill shielding ex-presidents from prosecution will not be enacted into law. But the Republicans persist. On Sunday, Rep. James Comer (R- KY), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, insisted to CNN’s Jake Tapper that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is improperly conducting a federal investigation. From Aaron Rupar:

Comer has a BS in Agriculture, BTW. He soldiered on:

“We just want the government out of our elections….We believe the local DAs need to be focused on business crimes, on burglary, on theft …”

You have to be a moron to say you want the government out of our elections. States are in charge of their elections even in Comer’s Kentucky. And Trump wasn’t president when he allegedly orchestrated the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels and then fraudulently altered his books to hide it.

Time to wake up America! There is no longer any reason to look for traditional Republicans inside of the GOP. And anyone who is attempting to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority needed to do their jobs just to protect their Party’s cult leader, well, that sounds like Fascism.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Pink Martini play “¿Dónde estás, Yolanda?” live from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon on New Year’s Eve 2,005.

It is a fan favorite from their debut album, “Sympathique”, featuring vocalist China Forbes, and including Thomas Lauderdale on the piano, Gavin Bondy on trumpet, and featuring a trombone solo by Robert Taylor:

Where is Yolanda, and indeed, where are the traditional Republicans?

(This song is for friend of the blog Ashley G. who has some health issues and loves Pink Martini)

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