Where Is The GOP’s War Of Words Taking Them?

The Daily Escape:

Rain, White Sands NP – June 2023 photo by Dawood Afzal

(Wrongo and Ms. Right want to give healing thoughts and condolences to John & Janis S., who have just experienced a terrible loss.)

The NYT reported on Trump’s speech in Columbus, GA, where he was pretty chatty about the US government and the DOJ indictment:

“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists…”

He was referring to Democrats. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.” Trump also described the DOJ as:

“…a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,”

He called the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.” He then went on to say, “This is the final battle”. And by that, he doesn’t mean the final court case against him. All of this was said in a speech to several thousand people and delegates of the Georgia Republican Party who met in a brick building that was once a Civil War ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army.

Trump calling his Democratic opponents “Communists and “Marxists” isn’t connected to today’s politics. the number of either in the US is vanishingly small. It barely makes sense, but in today’s GOP, it really doesn’t have to make sense. Trump and the GOP would never actually articulate what it is they’re opposing. That would make explicit that they’re really against America becoming more of what it is: An increasingly pluralistic and multi-ethnic country.

But many on the Right are deliberately going much further. The NYT reported that in Georgia, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, said:

“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden….If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA”

Well, that’s a threat. The same NYT article says:

“In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of…Trump…including a member of Congress…have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons.”

And all of these threats against Democrats, LGBTQ+ people, the FBI and the DOJ are more than rhetoric. They’re step one in a process known as stochastic terrorism. The idea is that a person or group are demonized, and violent actions against them are suggested by a leader with a large following:

  • The leader doesn’t ask or arrange for a specific person to carry out the violence, but they know in advance that somewhere among their followers are people who will.
  • And it only takes one.
  • The leader accomplishes their goal of violence without formally arranging for it.
  • There isn’t any paper trail, or phone records, or texts, or secret payments that could eventually show up in a court of law.

But the intent is clear even if, by design, there’s no direct accountability.

Wrongo saw a quote attributed to Anand Giridharadas:

“…Donald Trump…has clearly decided that his movement, and the Republican Party that he leads, is going to be the movement of resentment against the future. It is going to be a movement of people who don’t want to live in the future.”

Trump represents people who are in a state of constant rage at the thought that the world is changing in ways they hate and can’t actually stop. The horrible part of their dilemma is that no time that actually existed is a time that they want to live in.

Trump will try to “blanket the zone” with constant misinformation that may make it difficult to empanel a south Florida jury. It will be very difficult to find prospective jurors who say truthfully that they haven’t heard about the indictments and/or formulated an idea about it.

The best way to beat back the misinformation being spread by Republicans and MAGA sympathizers is to televise the trial. Take the trial away from social media pundits and let the MAGAverse see their hero squirm, bluster, and lie with their own eyes. They’ll see his complete lack of a legitimate defense unfolding in real time. Of course, that would take a judge other than Aileen Cannon to preside.

Let’s close with a tune that’s not among the normal music flavor here at the Wrongologist. It makes the point that some Americans don’t want to live in America if it’s going to change. It shows that you don’t have to wear MAGA to be MAGA. It doesn’t mention anything overtly political, but it could be a theme song for Trump’s campaign:

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 12, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Dawn, Outer Banks, NC – June 2023 photo by Stephen P. Szymanski

Wrongo promised himself that he wouldn’t write about the Trump indictments, but that was yesterday, so here we go. Mother Jones had a great take Wrongo hasn’t seen elsewhere. It’s from Reality Winner who was the first person to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act by the Trump administration:

“In 2018…Winner pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years and three months in prison after leaking a top-secret report on Russian hacking to the media….The former intelligence contractor and Air Force linguist made the comments in a new interview with NBC… ‘It wasn’t hard to believe’, Winner told NBC on Friday. ‘This is a man that really likes trophies.’”

This is a man that really likes trophies.” There are people who get paid seven figures to cover national politics who didn’t know that. What’s ironic is that the most serious charge against Trump is for violating the Espionage Act that he signed into law. More from Winner’s NBC interview:

“This is probably one of the most transparent and straightforward indictments that defines national defense information and gives the public a sense of the itemized description of every document, which is not how this particular law has been used against ordinary citizens…”

Ordinary citizens like Winner. She has said that the application of the Espionage Act is inconsistent and vague. But she went on to say that the indictment against Trump is remarkably specific on what he allegedly took and that there wasn’t any indication that he was acting for the greater good of the public: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“So this might set the new legal standard on how it will be used in the future. Perhaps it could give people like myself who were acting out of moral conscience more leverage under the law.”

Dems say, “we’re treating Trump like an ordinary citizen”, but that isn’t been true. He was given a ton of latitude and deference. An ordinary citizen (like Winner) went to jail after being charged. No ordinary citizen would have remained free and had their case moved to a special prosecutor at DOJ.

But most importantly he would have been given a “get out of jail free card” if he had simply returned the documents. There would have been no charges, just like there were no charges for Biden or Pence, who both happened to have stray secret documents lying around.

Yet, no ordinary citizen gets a do over from the feds.

But his ardent defenders on the right ignore that Trump got special handling. They really aren’t attempting to defend him on the merits because what he did was indefensible. You can’t be an ex-president who holds on to some classified documents and then shows them to random people in his orbit all while refusing to return them to the government.

Trump can’t then argue he should be given a “get out of jail free card”. Too late, times up.

The Republican Party has every right to demand that the nation consider Trump innocent until proven otherwise. We all know that the burden of proof resides with the government. But Republicans need to get real about the Trump documents case.

They can squint as hard as the can, but they won’t see government abuse here.

Wrongo knows that pointing out that Republicans are hypocrites no longer flies as an argument, but he remembers their 2016 presidential campaign attack against Hillary was that she failed to comply with information security best practices, even though no secret documents were found on her server.

But that was still considered a federal offense by Republicans: “Lock her up”, etc.

And now, with Trump actually criminally misappropriating classified documents and his subsequent obstruction of justice, it isn’t enough to get Republicans to say: “hey, let’s see if he gets convicted.”

From Hal Gershowitz:

“Few events in American history have riveted the people’s attention, as have the legal travails…of… Trump. The Republican Party has been steadfast in its support of the former President, notwithstanding those civil and criminal charges that have been brought against him…”.

Time to wake up America! About half the country believes that the FBI and the DOJ operate on a double standard. They no longer trust the media. These are existential problems that threaten the entire nation. Republicans: Take Trump’s name off of the indictment and replace it with anyone else’s name. Then decide if that person should be prosecuted.

To help you wake up watch and listen to this Jimmy Fallon Trump parody to the tune of the Pointer Sisters’ song “I’m so excited”. Here’s I’m So Indicted“:

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Saturday Soother – June 10, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Peony, Fields of Wrong, CT – June 2023 photo by Wrongo

(There will not be a Sunday Cartoons column this weekend. Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending a memorial service for family member Bob W.’s mom.)

The week ended with a ton of political news. First, as Mark Joseph Stern reported in Slate:

“The Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Allen v. Milligan on Thursday, which found that Alabama’s congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial vote dilution, sends two clear messages. First, a bare majority of the court—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the three liberals—believes that the VRA still plays a meaningful role in maintaining a multiracial democracy (or is willing to defer to Congress’ judgment on the matter). Second, that same majority of the court does not look kindly upon red states’ race to shred decades of precedent in an effort to wipe out the voting power of Black Americans.”

The good news is that the decision means that Alabama must create a second Congressional district in which the voting power of Black voters is not diluted by gerrymandering. It is likely that Alabama will add a second Democratic representative to its Congressional delegation.

Even better, Democracy Docket says that the holding in Allen v. Milligan will likely result in a net gain of six Democratic seats (five in other states) in the House in 2024.

Second, Trump is being indicted in Florida. He, along with a staff member at Mar-a-Lago, are facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents. This good news is offset by learning that judge Aileen Cannon is again assigned to hear the DOJ’s case that Trump wrongly held classified documents, failed to return all of them, and then obstructed the efforts of the National Archives and the FBI to recover them. Here’s a link to the indictment.

Mega millions of words will be written about this before there’s a trial or a guilty plea. Hold off on a victory lap until Trump is convicted. About a quarter of the classified/national security documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were found in Trump’s office. It will be difficult for Trump to persuade a jury that he didn’t know about the documents and chose not to return them.

Also, the Trump lawyers who were the front men for this indictment have quit the case. The attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, did not explain in detail why they had resigned.

Does MAGA now stand for: Make Attorneys Go Away? Or possibly, Make Attorneys Get Attorneys? Although it appears the parting was amicable, it would be irresponsible not to speculate! And it’s difficult to believe that the lead attorney’s last name is Trusty.

But Trump wasn’t the only MAGA mishandling secrets this week. The HuffPo reported that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made an eyebrow raising claim during a TV interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox:

“Greene said she read a document inside a SCIF ― a sensitive compartmented information facility ― related to bribery allegations Republicans have made against Biden…Then, she described that document while speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News

Wrongo has experience with reading documents in SCIFs. NOBODY takes notes on what they’ve read. It’s a violation of national security regulations. When you enter a SCIF, you check all electronic devices before entering, and can’t take notes while inside. And usually, information revealed in the SCIF can’t be repeated outside of it. But Greene held up her notes to the camera.

Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security, tweeted:

“Hey @FBI, if this information was classified sounds to me like the Congresswoman is admitting to a crime. And if it was not, @SpeakerMcCarthy should remove her privileges for violating the trust she was afforded as a Member of Congress to review sensitive information.”

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) June 9, 2023

But McCarthy won’t do anything. The GOP is building a wall around Trump, and minimizing the mishandling of documents by Greene will just be part of the play. To be a Republican in 2023 is to love Trump. They no longer love him for a particular reason: He’s what the Party has become.

There was plenty of orange air outside of the Mansion of Wrong this week. So, let’s pray for brighter skies while we settle into our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget the political news and the impending climate disaster. Let’s try to relax for a few moments. This week, George Winston died. He was a composer who became the signature style of New Age music in the 1980s. Wrongo was mildly interested in him at the time but came to admire and respect his work in the past few years.

Here’s Winston in 2020 playing Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”:

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 5, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Blue Ridge mountains, NC – June 2023 photo by Michele Schwartz

It’s getting to be long enough into our economic recovery that we’ve started to ignore the monthly jobs report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Luckily, Simon Rosenberg doesn’t let us forget: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The…BLS jobs report is out and it’s another good one – 339,000 net new jobs, [plus] 432,000…upward revisions from previous months. With this new data my monthly jobs tracker clocks in at:

-33.8m jobs – 16 years of Clinton, Obama

-13.1m jobs – 28 months of Biden

-1.9m jobs – 16 years of Bush, Bush and Trump

Biden’s 13.1m jobs is almost 7 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 49 million new jobs created. Remarkably, 47 million of those 49 million jobs were created under Democratic Presidents.

On the Democratic Party’s watch we’ve seen strong economic growth. OTOH, during the same time, Republican presidents have overseen three consecutive recessions. It’s not a stretch to say that the GOP’s economic track record over the past 30 years has been among the worst in US history.

Consider Biden’s record of economic growth:

  • GDP growth under Biden is 3+%, or 3 times what it was under Trump.
  • Almost 7 times as many Biden jobs as last 3 GOP Presidents combined.
  • Best post Covid economic recovery among the G7 countries.
  • Lowest unemployment rate in a peacetime economy since WWII.
  • Lowest poverty/uninsured rates ever.
  • Real corporate earnings up in 2022.

Despite what the GOP is saying to the press about their being deficit hawks, the federal deficit went up every year under Trump, and has come down every year under Biden. Rosenberg adds this helpful chart of GDP growth by president:

So why is it that Americans aren’t convinced that the economy has improved since the pandemic? In a new poll from the AP-NORC, asking if the nation’s economic conditions are in good shape, the percentage who agree is down from 30% last month to 24%. Only a third of Americans in the new survey approve of how Biden’s handling the economy, while two-thirds disapprove.

In the survey, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to view economic conditions favorably, but just 41% of them say the economy’s good and only 7% of Republicans agree. And both numbers are down from the previous month for both Parties.

Now this may be at least partially due to the Republicans scare tactics about the Debt Ceiling. The Hill reports that this AP-NORC poll is in line with other recent surveys that suggest most Americans think the country’s economy is in poor shape, Other polls also indicate low confidence in the economic leadership team.

Axios suggests a different way to view the economic issue. They looked at Federal Reserve survey data from 2017-2022, which shows that people think they’re personal economy is doing just fine, while they think the national economy is in terrible shape:

This is most likely because of the media’s awfulizing about our economy. Obviously, consumer prices are high, but inflation is coming down. But even if inflation went to zero, today’s prices will still be much higher than Americans were accustomed to pre-pandemic, so people will be complaining.

And we can’t discount the negative impact of Congressional dysfunction about the Debt Ceiling, or all the news bunnies crying about our unsustainable national debt.

Still, our economy continues to do better than even the economists think. The May employment report marked the 14th straight month that more jobs were created than economists expected. Our GDP continues to grow (it’s up more than 5% from its pre-pandemic peak), even after accounting for inflation.

The average US employee now makes $33.44 per hour, 17.5% more than before the pandemic. The stock market is up 10% so far this year, but still, Americans aren’t buying it. Axios’ Felix Salmon reports that while Americans say that they’re broadly happy with their personal finances (above chart), in other polls, a majority consistently think (erroneously) that we’re currently in a recession.

Time to wake up America! Things are rolling along reasonably well, even if they’re not fantastic. We have the best job market in 50 years, and there’s no recession on the horizon. As the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want…”. Maybe it’s time to look at the glass as half full.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Alan Jackson cover Eddie Cochran’s 1958 “Summertime Blues” in 1994. The Blue Cheer had the radio hit with it in 1968. Wrongo loves three versions of this song: Blue Cheer, the Who, and this Allen Jackson cover:

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Saturday Soother – June 3, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Shenandoah NP, VA – May 2023 photo by Lori May

You’re becoming dimly aware that the Republican Party is assembling a large field of candidates to be its nominee for the presidency in 2024. By Wrongo’s count, there are 14 individuals who have either formally announced a run or are signaling that they will soon announce.

In 2016, Trump won the Party’s nomination against a 17-candidate field. The commonly accepted logic was that the large field refused to take him seriously and failed to rally around a single alternative. This time around, the commonly accepted logic is again that the only way to stop Trump is for the anti-Trump Republicans to coalesce around a single alternative.

Sure, but it hasn’t happened. Why? Because there really aren’t many anti-Trump Republicans. If you look at the list of 14, most of them want to take over Trump’s cult rather than dismantle it.

These people all know what happened last time, and they aren’t dummies. They also know that since leaving office, Trump has gotten 10 more states to award their Republican delegates through winner-take-all primaries, even if the winner receives less than a majority of the votes. The number of winner-take-all Republican primary states has grown from seven to 17.

If the Republican candidate field remains crowded, and Trump gets the most votes (even if it’s only 30%), he’ll win those states.

So what are these other presidential candidates thinking? Some are auditioning for the VP slot. Others may be having a self-absorbed moment. Wrongo thinks there’s also something else going on: These otherwise savvy politicians, who can raise boatloads of campaign money, are betting that Trump will be indicted and most likely convicted by the Department of Justice.

The idea is that Trump will be either so weakened by the criminal indictments and/or convictions that his current base of loyal voters will shrink to the point that he either withdraws or loses the primary fight.

OTOH, the recent blockbuster news from CNN that federal prosecutors have an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran is very dangerous to him, if true. From CNN:

“The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records…”

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump met with two people working on the autobiography of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as aides he formerly employed. CNN offers this vaguely neutral comment:

“The revelation that the former president and commander-in-chief has been captured on tape discussing a classified document could raise his legal exposure as he continues his third bid for the White House.”

A conviction by DOJ would mean that Trump is barred from holding a national office.

Wrongo thinks that at least some of the Republicans in the presidential race are now starting to follow the Breadcrumbs to Indictmentville. With the Former Guy blabbing about war plans in his possession, this seems like a death blow to Trump’s viability as a presidential candidate.

Assuming that the tape is authentic, and that there’s a proper foundation for admissibility in court, Trump may be done for, as a national candidate. It’s hard to imagine that potential plans for a military attack on Iran (if that document exists), wouldn’t qualify as a stolen secret.

And that may be partially what’s driving DeSantis and the other serious Republican presidential candidates.

We’ve reached the weekend without the country defaulting on its debts! Default seemed all too real only a week or two ago. But now, we won’t have to worry about that for a couple of years.

It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we take a break and consider how we are continually jerked around by the GOP. It will be summer-like in northwestern Connecticut this weekend, and we have a houseful of family.

So, grab a chair outside in the shade. Now, watch and listen to something Wrongo had left over from Memorial Day: There’s a cemetery outside the Dutch city of Maastricht that holds 8,301 American soldiers who died in “Operation Market Garden” in the winter of 1944–45. Every soldier has been adopted by a Dutch family who tends their grave. Annually on “Liberation Day”, memorial services are held for the men who died to liberate the Netherlands. The day concludes with a concert, and “Il Silenzio” is always the concluding piece. It was written in 1965 by trumpet player Nini Rosso and is an extension of the Italian Cavalry bugle call also used by Tchaikovsky to open his Capriccio Italien. (It contains a part of the US military bugle call “Taps“).

This 2008 performance of “Il Silenzio” features a 13-year-old Dutch girl, Melissa Venema on trumpet with André Rieu and the Royal Orchestra of the Netherlands:

You won’t be disappointed by the video. It’s ironic and sad that people in other countries remember our war dead better than most Americans do.

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Saturday Soother – May 27, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Milky Way, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park – May 2023 photo by Hasanur Khan

The WaPo’s Paul Farhi writes about “The looming existential crisis for cable news”:

“As recently as 2016, when Trump was narrowly elected president, just over 70% of all households with a TV had cable or satellite TV subscriptions. Today the figure is just under 40%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, a research firm.”

And it’s dropping fast:

“During the first quarter of 2023, another 2.3 million customers (or 7% of the total) cut the cord to traditional cable…the number of homes receiving TV via cable is now about the same as it was in 1992, when the industry was still on the rise.”

So, what does this mean for the Cable TV industry? Last year, the licensing fees collected by the six biggest cable news networks (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox Business and HLN) amounted to just over $4 billion. Advertisers added another $2.6 billion.

Farhi quotes Alan Wolk, a veteran advertising executive and media consultant:

“Cable news is dying….Not because it’s become irrelevant, but because the medium it lives on, cable TV, is dying.”

He predicts that cable could:

“…for all intents and purposes, disappear within a decade”.

The popular cable networks are profitable, largely because of how pricing works in the cable industry. The financial foundation of cable news isn’t advertising but the license fees that cable-system operators pay for the right to carry them. Regardless of whether a cable subscriber watches Fox, CNN or MSNBC, their monthly cable payments fund those companies.

The day could soon come when the exodus of cable subscribers leaves cable operators unable to pay the hefty license fees that those cable companies now command.

The cable industry sees what’s coming. They have all tried to distribute programming via streaming apps, YouTube channels, podcasts, and social media platforms in an effort to meet the cord-cutters where they are.

Yet so far, no news app comes close to matching cable in popularity and profitability.

Alan Wolk thinks cable news will have a particular problem in crossing the bridge to streaming: The median cable-news viewer is in their 60s and is resistant to new technologies.

The trouble signs are there. Viewers of the cable lineup other than news has sagged over the past decade as younger viewers have deserted cable. USA Network, once the most popular cable channel, has lost 75% of its nightly audience over the past 10 years. FX is down 68%, while the History Channel is off by 65%.

So what does this mean for US politics? Kyle Tharp posts weekly political advertising statistics on new media:

“…political advertisers spent just over $6.6 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week…. For the fourth week in a row, the Biden campaign was the top-spending political advertiser nationwide on Facebook and Instagram. Their team continues to lean heavily on the platforms for growing their network of grassroots donors…..Political advertisers in the US have spent around $800,000 on Snapchat advertising in 2023.”

Tharp reports that DeSantis’ campaign launch video was heavily watched across all social media:

“On Twitter, the video received 23.8 million impressions…. compared to 2.9 million impressions for Tim Scott’s…launch video, and 9.1 million impressions on Nikki Haley’s…launch video…..Joe Biden’s launch video received 44.8 million impressions. The [DeSantis] video also received 125,000 views on Facebook, 1.9 million views on Instagram, and 236,000 views on Rumble. It’s a strong showing by any measure.”

(An “impression” is how many times it was displayed or had potential “eyeballs” on it.)

When you learn that Trump’s CNN town hall attracted an audience of just 3.3 million viewers, It’s clear that social media is already a major competitor to cable for the political class.

OTOH, if cable news goes away, how will Wrongo get his daily diet of pharmaceutical commercials?

That’s enough for this week. It’s time to forget about the “groundhog day” feeling that you get with the news bunnies constantly talking about the Debt Ceiling. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the fields of Wrong, the baby bluebirds have fledged, and you can see them flying from tree to tree. We seem to be in for about 10 days of warmth and sun, with no rain in sight. People around here will soon need to choose between watering their plants and having a full well.

So grab a chair outside in the shade and put on your sunglasses. Now watch and listen to Dvořák’s “Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (the “Dumky”)”. Dvořák completed the trio in February 1891, and it is among the composer’s best-known works. The term Dumky is Ukrainian. It refers to epic ballads.

Here the Dumky is performed in the Herbst Theater, San Francisco in 2008 by the Beaux Arts Trio, with Daniel Hope on violin, Antonio Meneses on cello and Menahem Pressler on piano:

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Poetry Banned in Florida

The Daily Escape:

Storm, Outer Banks, NC – May 2023 photo by OBXbeachbum

You may remember that 18 days after the Jan 6th attack, a 22-year-old poet named Amanda Gorman stood on the steps of the Capitol. She addressed the nation’s fresh wounds and its uncertain future:

“A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.” What a beautiful sentiment.

But those exact words offended a Miami Lakes, Florida serial book banner named Daily Salinas. Salinas alleged that “The Hills We Climb “ included references of critical race theory, indirect hate messages, gender ideology and indoctrination, according to school district records obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project. The Daily Beast reports that Salinas is an avid supporter of Ron DeSantis. She worked as a volunteer on his “Education Agenda Tour” in August 2022.

You can read Gorman’s full poem here. A video of Amanda Gorman reciting her poem at the 2020 Inauguration is here. Gorman reacted, saying in a Facebook post:

“Unnecessary #bookbans like these are on the rise, and we must fight back…”

A review by the WaPo of complaints in 153 school districts across the country for the 2021-2022 school year found that a:

“…majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people.”

The WaPo says that each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges:

“Together, these serial filers constituted 6% of all book challengers — but were responsible for 60% of all filings….In some cases…these serial filers relied on a network of volunteers gathered together under the aegis of conservative parents’ groups such as Moms for Liberty.”

Not surprisingly, Daily Salinas is one of them. Miami Against Fascism alleges in a tweet thread that Salinas is associated with Moms for Liberty Miami-Dade county as well as with the Proud Boys and County Citizens Defending Freedom USA (CCDF), and a Christian nationalist group. From the LA Times:

“When asked if she was aware of professional reviews of the National Youth Poet Laureate’s poem, Salinas wrote, “I don’t need it.” And when asked to list the author, she wrote Oprah Winfrey. (Winfrey wrote the forward for the book version of the poem published in March 2021.)”

Here’s the form that Salinas filled out:

Look again at pgs. 12-13 from Gorman’s poem above. If you can detect a hate message, let Wrongo know. And saying that poetry will indoctrinate students? We should be so lucky. Gorman reacted in a tweet:

“I’m gutted…They ban my book from young readers, confuse me with Oprah, fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives,”

This is the Florida of Ron DeSantis. And this is the America he wants to create. DeSantis’s campaign merchandise touts that he will “Make America Florida.” Here are some stats that show how well DeSantis is governing Florida: Florida is 34th in fatal overdoses, 26th in teen birth rates, and 31st in infant mortality.  FL ranks dead last in providing long-term care for older adults. Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, 45th in per-pupil spending. Despite having a fairly high cost-of-living index (23rd), Florida ranks dead last in providing unemployment benefits, giving recipients just $236 a week for just 12 weeks.

Most Americans would rather their states remain free from the fascist landscape that DeSantis has given Florida.

BTW: the Bible includes: Rape, incest, torture, slavery, bestiality. But apparently, it isn’t subject to the same standards that Daily Salinas uses, despite on the surface, being one nasty book.

We can’t let today go by without thinking about Tina Turner. She was one of the most important recording artists in American history. It’s pretty hard to describe how incredible and important she was for so many decades. In my twenties, Ms. Right and I got to see Ike and Tina Turner (and the Ikettes) live at Fillmore East in January 1970.

Later in her life (and ours) it was just Tina. One thing was consistent: Tina Turner blew the lid off of any joint where she performed. You can’t say that about many acts, but Tina could do just that. Sadly, the soundtrack to Wrongo’s life is growing fainter with time. Tina Turner’s passing adds to the growing list of performers from the past 70 years that Wrongo admired.

Take a few minutes to watch and listen to Tina and Mick Jagger perform “State Of Shock / It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” in front of 100,000 people at Live Aid in 1985 at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia:

Let’s hope Ike is burning in Hell.

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mountain Laurel with waterfall, Panther Creek trail, Chattahoochee NF, GA – May 2023 photo by Paula Johns

The Republican drumbeat to impose restrictions on women’s sexuality are growing ever louder. We’ve seen the Republicans pass laws to do exactly that in states where they have the legislative power to do so, regardless of local public opinion.

This Republican war on abortion, mifepristone, and contraception says that female bodily autonomy is a problem for most of the GOP (with some exceptions). It is pursued by Republican politicians from the lowliest state legislator to the Party’s representatives on the Supreme Court.

Some say that the Republican Party isn’t anti-woman, but the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do, and the best insight into the society it hopes to build. When Republicans call for a return to traditional values in family life, they mean returning to a legal and cultural place where women no longer have the freedom to leave bad marriages, the freedom to choose to have some or no children, or the freedom to obtain professional employment.

Jamelle Bouie had an op-ed in Sunday’s NYT about state GOPs efforts to gain cultural control over life in America. He outlined the “Republican Four Freedoms”, which are decidedly different from FDRs:

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

And the Right continues to try to move the limits of control even further. Rolling Stone reports that:

“Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control.”

If you think that’s strange, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the US are initiated by women. All 50 states and DC have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didn’t come around until 2010. But Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage.

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that the passage of no-fault divorce resulted in a 20% decline in suicide for married women in the first decade, and about a 40% decline since the first law passed in 1967. There also were dramatic drops in the rates of domestic violence, and spousal homicide of women.

Texas and other states are looking at legislation to end no-fault divorce. More from Rolling Stone:

“A…proposal is presently being workshopped by the Republican Party of Louisiana. The Nebraska GOP has affirmed its belief that no-fault divorce should only be accessible to couples without children.”

More:

“At the Republican National Convention in 2016 — the last time the party platform was overhauled — delegates considered adding language declaring, “Children are made to be loved by both natural parents united in marriage. Legal structures such as No Fault Divorce, which divides families and empowers the state, should be replaced by a Fault-based Divorce.”

It’s kinda awful that Republican males seem to think that the only way to retain their partner is to legally trap them in the marriage. The GOP effort to end no-fault divorce is becoming a key piece of their agenda.

Time to wake up America! The GOP has been captured by religious radicals and wingnut social conservatives who would be happy if they could return the country to the way society was in the 1940s.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Gloria Gaynor perform her hit “I Will Survive”, the ultimate breakup song. Did you ever notice at weddings, whenever this is played, all the women get up and dance?

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Saturday Soother – May 20, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Daffodils, Laurel Ridge, Litchfield CT – May 2023 photo by Dave King

The oil industry enjoys special economic status in the US. That is demonstrated by the tax breaks and outright subsidies we give them. Hannah Dunlevy notes that:

“In 2020, the explicit and implicit fossil fuel subsidies cost the United States $662 billion, around $2,006 per capita. Cutting just two tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry — the intangible drilling costs subsidy and the percentage depletion tax break — could generate $17.9 billion in government revenue over ten years, according to Congress’s non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation.”

Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposed cutting some of tax subsidies for oil and gas companies, which would save the US $31 billion over ten years. It will probably not survive the current Debt Ceiling and budget discussions.

One hidden subsidy that the oil industry enjoys is when wells are no longer productive – they are idled. If it’s no longer profitable to return idled wells to production, they need to be plugged. And the cost of plugging a well can be $100,000 or more.

The problem is that when wells start to decline, they are sold by Big Oil to smaller producers. When the well is sold, the plugging and cleanup liability passes to the new buyer. And often, the new buyer simply walks away from the uneconomic well, creating what the industry calls “orphaned wells”. But if a company doesn’t plug its wells before walking away, the cleanup costs will ultimately fall to taxpayers and current operators.

This has already happened with thousands of wells in California and may happen to millions more across the country. Pro Publica reports that there are more than two million unplugged oil wells scattered across the US. California is just the tip of the iceberg.

Petroleum reservoir engineer Dwayne Purvis laid out the reality at a recent conference. His research shows that more than 90% of the country’s unplugged wells are either idle or minimally producing and unlikely to make a comeback.

California is the canary in a coal mine. Shell and ExxonMobil recently agreed to sell more than 23,000 California wells which they owned through a joint venture, to a German asset management group IKAV for an estimated $4 billion. This means that a subsidiary of IKAV now owns about a quarter of California’s oil and gas production, largely in Kern and Ventura counties.

This ownership shift moves the subsequent environmental liability from Big Oil powerhouses to firms with smaller capitalization, increasing the risk that aging wells will be left orphaned, unplugged and leaking oil, brine and methane. For California and other states, this could repeat what was seen in coal mining, which led to taxpayers bearing all of the cleanup costs.

The oil industry has created layers of LLCs that are used to screen Big Oil from the dirty end of the oil business, like responsibility for cleaning up the messes that they make. And these firms can easily declare bankruptcy rather than pay for cleaning up orphan or idle wells.

ProPublica reports on an analysis by Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank that used the California regulators’ draft methodology for calculating the costs associated with plugging oil and gas wells and decommissioning them along with their related infrastructure.

The cost categories included plugging wells, dismantling surface infrastructure and decontaminating polluted drilling sites. That would cost California about $13.2 billion. Adding inflation and the price of decommissioning miles of pipeline could bring the total cleanup bill to $21.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Purvis estimates that California oil and gas production will earn only about $6.3 billion in future profits over the remaining course of operations; nowhere near sufficient to pay for the cleanup, even if those profits could be captured by the state.

That’s just California. These costs are what economists call “Externalities”. An externality is an indirect cost (or benefit) to a party (taxpayers) that arises as an effect of another party’s (Oil Companies) economic activity. The problem is that the price of their product doesn’t include the externalities. That means there is a gap between the profit of these corporations and the aggregate loss to society as a whole.

Republicans have a tried and true solution for this problem. Taxpayers pay the bills. We’re back to the “privatize profit, socialize the losses” game that corporations have played forever. Maybe the correct terminology should be socialism for the rich.

They prefer to call it keeping government off the backs of job creators.

Time to let go of California’s messy problem and find a few minutes to center ourselves before next week which will bring either financial Armageddon, or a diminished Biden. At the Fields of Wrong, we had a freeze last Wednesday that caused us to cover the newly planted vegetables and bring the Meyer Lemon tree indoors. Spring in Connecticut can always show up with a backtracking nod towards winter.

But on this rainy Saturday, grab a chair by a big window and listen to Debussy’s “Nuages” (‘Clouds’) from his “Trois Nocturnes”. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra made the first American recording of Debussy’s “Three Nocturnes” for a 1950 LP.

Here is the first “Nocturne”, a musical impression of slow-moving clouds:

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 15, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Scarlet Tanager, Manomet Observatory, MA – May 2023 photo by Ken Grille Photography

Today, Wrongo is going to be a grumpy old mossback. It rarely suits his politics or his outlook on life, but the WaPo is reporting that automakers are removing AM radio from their new models:

“Automakers, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla, are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford, one of the nation’s top-three auto sellers, is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated.”

More:

“Now, although 82 million Americans still listen to AM stations each month, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, the AM audience has been aging for decades. Ford says its data, pulled from internet-connected vehicles, shows that less than 5% of in-car listening is to AM stations.”

Wrongo remembers car radios before FM, and long before SiriusXM, listening to Wolfman Jack at night, beaming his show from the USMexico border. Or hearing Alan Freed talk about the “submarine races” in NYC. Later, living in London, he would listen to pirate radio instead of the BBC.

At night, rotating the AM dial to bring in stations like KDKA in Pittsburgh or WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia was an art. It required that you avoid the interference of other stations or the snap and crackle of lightning. While driving in the car, the AM signal could also be corrupted by the hum of overhead power lines.

Now that less-than-ideal experience will soon be only a memory. But as always in America, there’s a political argument to be made about AM radio leaving a few high priced cars. More from WaPo:

“The removal of AM radio from cars — where about half of AM listening takes place — has sparked bipartisan protests. Some Democrats are fighting to save stations that often are the only live source of local information during extreme weather, as well as outlets that target immigrant audiences. Some Republicans…claim the elimination of AM radio is aimed at diminishing the reach of conservative talk radio, an AM mainstay….Eight of the country’s 10 most popular radio talk shows are conservative.”

But the auto makers aren’t abolishing AM radio; they’re just not offering it in their new cars. AM will persist on the dial in most of America.

As usual, the issue in America is profits. Eliminating AM is all about the numbers. From WaPo:

“Of the $11 billion in advertising revenue that radio pulled in last year, about $2 billion came into AM stations, according to BIA Advisory Services, which conducts research for broadcasters. And some of the country’s most lucrative radio stations are still on AM, mostly all-news or news and talk stations in big cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.”

BIA Advisory says that about 40% of AM stations have news, talk or sports formats; 11% are oriented to specific ethnic groups; and another 11% have a religious format. About a third of AM outlets play music, including Mexican and Spanish music. But they also report that the AM audience is getting smaller and older. The in-car streaming technology has grown exponentially, as has the trend away from music and toward podcasts and other spoken-word formats.

WaPo also quotes Pierre Bouvard from Cumulus Media, which owns more than 400 (mostly AM) stations:

“Radio is still the soundtrack of the American worker….It’s what people listen to on the way to work. And Ford owners are massive users of AM radio — 1 out of 5 AM listeners are Ford owners, so Ford is missing something here.”

But people can stream AM broadcasts into their cars if they must have AM programming.

The demographics of in-car listening aren’t fully understood. A new study by Edison Research found that young people often prefer AM and FM broadcast radio because it’s free. Edison says that overall, AM and FM radio still account for 60% of all in-car listening. SiriusXM satellite radio makes up 16%, followed by drivers’ own music from their phones at 7%, with podcasts and music videos at 4% each.

If this makes a difference to you, several manufacturers including Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Jaguar Land Rover, said they have no plans to eliminate AM.

Time to wake up America! Nobody is shutting down AM radio stations! If you need AM in your new car, you’ll just have to shop for a car that offers it. Wrongo has nostalgia for the old days of AM radio, but the one AM station he listens to in the car can easily be streamed through Apple Air Play.

Let’s not create another faux cultural war issue over whether your new Tesla must have an AM dial. To help you wake up listen to Meatloaf performing “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” with Ellen Foley. It’s from his 1977 album “Bat out of Hell”:

Props to Mike and Marie S. who did the absolutely best karaoke version of this tune!

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