Category: Playlist

Monday Wake Up Call – July 24, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Avon, NC – July 2023 photo by Donna Cartwright Hayden

We’ve reached a point in our politics where the silly season never ends. The truth is slowly beginning to seep into the public’s consciousness that lifelong scofflaw Donald J. Trump is in deep shit. Wrongo is referring to the slate of trials the Former Guy is facing between now and the 2024 presidential election.

Florida US District Judge Cannon has just set a trial date for Trump’s classified documents case, so we can tally his busy legal schedule. As of now, the first item on the docket happens in October 2023. It is a civil lawsuit alleging he, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization were engaged in a $250 million fraud for inflating the values of his golf courses, hotels, and properties to obtain loans and insurance.

Next in line is the second bite of the apple for E. Jean Carroll. On January 15, 2024, (the same day as the Republican Party’s Iowa caucuses), Trump is again facing off against Carroll who won her last case against him. This time, she is seeking $10 million in damages for repeated attempts by Trump to defame her. The judge recently allowed Carroll to amend her lawsuit over Trump’s 2019 comments to include similar comments he made recently on CNN.

After that, the big trial fireworks begin with a March 25 case, where Trump will face a jury for the first time in a NY criminal case charging him with falsifying business records. The Manhattan district attorney’s office says Trump falsified records to cover up a reimbursement to his former fixer Michael Cohen, who advanced a hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The judge has warned Trump that he is required to attend every day of the trial, potentially keeping him off the campaign trail for a couple of weeks.

Then it’s on to the May 20th classified documents case in Florida. Judge Cannon has set the classified documents case to begin in a two-week period beginning May 20, 2023. By that time, only a few states will not have voted in caucuses or primaries. By then, it’s likely that Trump will have a commanding lead in the race for the Republican nomination.

We still don’t know if Trump will be indicted on federal charges for attempting to stage a coup to remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election. The signs are that he will face more federal charges from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith within a few days or weeks.

Also, state charges in Georgia could come sometime in August. The Fulton County DA is considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

These two trials could both be scheduled before the Florida documents case. And unlike the Florida documents case, they aren’t reliant on classified information which presents almost certain opportunities for delay by Trump’s lawyers.

The Jan 6 federal case will be tried in Washington DC. It would presumably take precedence over the Georgia case. It is likely that the presiding judge will schedule the trial for as soon as is practicable, irrespective of preexisting trial schedules in other cases. Otherwise, it’s hard to see a trial happening before a year from now.

If all of these cases move to a trial, it seems likely that Trump will be in court pretty much continuously from October 2023 (at a minimum) through the end of June 2024. The Republican National Convention is scheduled for mid-July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But, there’s a real possibility that at least some of these cases will not be resolved by then.

For all of these legal problems, anti-Trump people can do nothing to bring about his conviction in one or more of these cases. This is in now the hands of judges and juries over which we have zero control. It will be more than frustrating to stand helplessly on the sidelines as the trials unfold over the coming year.

And it’s possible that Trump could win some cases, even though on the merits, he doesn’t seem to have a viable defense in any of them. The friendliest jury pool he’s going to face is in the Florida documents case, but the evidence against him is overwhelming and incontrovertible. His best chance is that the judge who previously was absurdly friendly to Trump regarding these same documents, will exclude some evidence or otherwise steer the jurors toward a reasonable doubt. Short of that, he can hope that at least one juror will be MAGA enough to refuse to convict, leading to a hung jury.

The other trials in New York and DC, will have more problematic jury pools for Trump. There’s probably as good a chance that he will lose all of these cases as that he’ll get a hung jury and mistrial in any one of them. Outright acquittals seem impossible because the cases are just too strong.

Time to wake up America! On the legal front all we can do now is hope for victory. To help you wake up watch and listen to Todd Rundgren and Utopia perform “Just One Victory” on their 2018 Reunion Tour. Wrongo never was a fan, although this anthemic song hits the right notes for Trump’s legal battles, and he’s kept his voice even after all these years:

“Give us just one victory, it will be all right”

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Saturday Soother – July 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA – July 2023 photo by Cynthia Maciaga

Wrongo continues to find demographic differences between the voters of 2020 and today. Most of those differences favor the Democrats. A WaPo op-ed by Celinda Lake and Mac Heller talks about some of them:

“Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters. Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.”

This means that between 2016 and 2024, the cohort of eligible voters will have changed by a net 52 million. That difference is largely driven by new young people entering the pool and older people exiting. Those 32 million new voters are mostly “Gen Z”, who now constitute 20% of today’s American electorate.

In other words, it is highly unlikely, despite what national polls are showing, that the 2024 election will be a repeat of either 2016 or 2020.

Lake and Heller address the nuances of the demographic changes that are reshaping the electorate. The data show that today’s electorate is younger, more educated, and more issues-focused than in 2016 when Trump won. These factors tend to favor Democrats but do not guarantee success. Their takeaway is that Democrats are better positioned than Republicans to take advantage of these demographic changes. Lake and Heller stress that how Democrats reach them must be different from previous elections:

“Meet young voters where they are: on social media, not cable news. Make your messages short, funny and somehow sarcastic yet authentic and earnest at the same time. Your focus should be issues first, issues second, candidates third and party identity never.”

More from Lake and Heller:

“About 48% of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72% White. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female.”

They also say that since voting participation correlates positively with education, we should expect women to have a larger voice in our coming elections.

Gen Z voters say their motivation for voting is not necessarily to support a party or candidate. Instead, it’s passion about one or more issues: They have a much more policy-driven approach than the more partisan voting motivations of their elders.

That policy-first approach, combined with the issues they care most about, have led young people in recent years to vote more frequently for Democrats and progressive policies than prior generations did when of similar age — as recent 2022 elections in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin have shown.

There’s a looming problem for both Parties: The possibility that young voters may embrace third-party candidates:

“Past elections show that Gen Z voters shop for candidates longer and respond favorably to new faces and issue-oriented candidates. They like combining their activism with their voting and don’t feel bound by party loyalty.”

With the “No Labels” movement and the efforts by the wacko Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to both field insurgencies, there’s potential danger from young people who are both committed and apolitical. Look for Gen Z to tire of waiting for Washington to solve problems. They may simply grab the national microphone from their elders and decide the 2024 presidential race.

Wrongo for one, is glad that they’ve arrived, and he believes they will fully understand the reasons why Trump must lose in 2024.

The weekend is here, and at least in our corner of the northeast, it is expected to be dry and warm. That means we can try to give more discipline to our disobedient plants. But before slapping on bug spray and sunblock, let’s take a few moments for our Saturday Soother, when we try to forget whatever Florida is doing to the teaching of the history of slavery, and center ourselves for another news-filled week to come.

Start by grabbing a tall glass of lemonade and find a chair outside in the shade. Now, let’s spend a few minutes remembering the life of Tony Bennett, who died on Friday. You know Bennett the singer, but you probably don’t know that he was a role model in other ways. As a soldier in World War II he helped liberate Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp, and he later marched in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He refused to perform in South Africa when it was under apartheid.

Let’s watch and listen to Bennett perform “Body and Soul” in a duet with Amy Winehouse from Bennett’s 2011 album “Duets II: The Great Performances”. Bennett and Winehouse won the 2012 Grammy for best pop duo for this.

Tony may have been the best ever, but here, Amy is great, sounding a little like Billie Holiday:

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 17, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Comb Ridge, UT & AZ – July 2023 photo by RC Bullough Photography

Wrongo and Ms. Right were urban pioneers in NYC in the early 1980s. We rented a loft on Maiden Lane in the financial district. Back then, we had to go uptown or to Hoboken, NJ for groceries because there were so few people living amongst the downtown forest of office towers.

But by the 2020 census, lower Manhattan was the fourth fastest-growing residential neighborhood in NYC. Since the pandemic, downtowns have looked more like the ghost towns of the 1980s with so many workers adapting to remote work. And they seem to be staying away.

Things are going to get interesting. We may be at the beginning of a massive structural change, not just a temporary blip impacting office towers: It seems that companies have figured out they won’t ever need this vast amount of vacant office space. Brookings says that office utilization averages less than 50% across major US downtowns. While The Gothamist reports that national office vacancies are at a high of 19.2% (compared to 12.6% in early 2020). They also report that McKinsey predicts that remote work will erase $800 billion from urban office real estate values.

This has many cities thinking about conversion of office space into residential space. In NYC, 25 Water Street, which was once home to the Daily News and JPMorgan Chase, has a plan to gut the offices, carve out courtyards and add 10 floors to the 22-story structure. GFP Real Estate and Metro Loft bought the building, formerly known as 4 New York Plaza, in December for about $250 million.

One loophole is that the Financial District doesn’t require that the conversions include any affordable housing. So this project will not have any apartments with capped rents for low-income units. That isn’t true in other parts of the City, like Midtown, Queens or the Bronx.

Boston is testing an incentive program for developers to convert empty downtown offices into housing. Mayor Michelle Wu announced that the owners of repurposed buildings could get up to 75% off on their property taxes. Boston’s office market vacancy rate climbed to 14.2% in the second quarter, the highest level in 20 years, according to data from CBRE Group Inc. And median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment has jumped 8% in the past year to $2,800.

Boston’s downtown has about half of the city’s office space. An October 2022 report commissioned by the city found that economic activity downtown remained 20% to 40% below pre-pandemic levels for industries like retail.

Back in NYC, Mayor Eric Adams is also proposing incentives to designate 136 million square feet of office space for conversion to residential development. It’s worked before: A 1995 tax break for conversions helped create 13,000 new apartment units in Lower Manhattan.

Brookings raises the question of what the taxpayers’ interest should be in these conversions:

“To what extent are current high office vacancies a market problem whose burden falls on the private sector (property owners and investors) and to what extent do they represent a market failure and policy problem to which government must respond with financial support from the public?”

The advocates of tax breaks and other financial incentives say it will:

  • Help drive foot traffic to downtown businesses struggling from a lack of commuters.
  • Bolster municipal coffers, as cities often rely on property taxes from office buildings.
  • Supply much-needed housing amid a shortage that has many paying exorbitant rents.

It seems that office-to-home conversions are no more a comprehensive remedy for housing than e-bikes are for transit issues. Few office buildings are truly suited for conversion. It’s often more straightforward for developers to knock down the existing structure and build condos from scratch.

Moreover, the best thing that cities can do to encourage more housing is to loosen zoning restrictions, allowing multi-use and apartment buildings to be developed rather than just supply tax breaks.

The battle lines are drawn. The 25 Water St. developer said state and city lawmakers will have to pay up if they actually want to turn vacant offices into homes:

“The politicians, if they want to create housing in New York City out of these buildings, they will need to provide significant incentives….And if they want to provide affordable housing, those incentives would have to be even higher.”

Time to wake up America! We can’t let our mayors give away more tax revenues to developers! We’re unsure if the current rate of office utilization will improve or not, so cities need to be smart about what they do next. To help you wake up, we dust off an oldie. Here are the Rolling Stones with “Salt of the Earth” from their album “Beggars Banquet”. Performed live at the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. This was the first tune where Keith Richards had the lead vocal:

Sample Lyric:

Raise your glass to the hard-working people
Let’s drink to the uncounted heads
Let’s think of the wavering millions
who need leaders but get gamblers instead

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Saturday Soother – July 15, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Dawes Glacier, Endicott Arm Fjord, AK – July 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. The face of the glacier is 600’ high. While we were in front of it, the glacier calved 5 times, although never when a camera was pointed at it.

Word came that Anchor Brewing, America’s oldest craft brewer, is shutting down after 127 years in business. From CNN:

“The San Francisco-based company announced Wednesday it’s ceasing operations and liquidating the beloved business “following a combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016,” a press release said. Craft brewers, in particular, have been struggling for a variety of reasons including changing consumer habits, rising costs and lingering supply-chain challenges.”

Wrongo is old enough to remember when Anchor Steam was a cult beer in the eastern US. It was difficult to find, and it was more expensive than the big local beers. It was really an upmarket lager. There’s nothing wrong with being an upmarket lager, but today, plenty of craft brewers also do that, so America’s first craft brewery and the maker of the Steam Beer will be sold for parts. The surprising fact was that it employed just 61 staff.

It’s been a few years since the Wrong family had any Anchor products in the house. The last one was the Anchor Christmas Ale, which was for a time, an annual tradition at the holidays. But with the rise of local craft beers, tastes changed.

Today, family parties often include a craft beer made near where one of the kids live. The beers are admired because they are hard to get, and often have amusing names. The taste tests are conducted with much seriousness, although they’re similar in form to decades ago when someone would bring Coors Beer back from the west for all to taste.

Back in the day, we bought Anchor and Sierra Nevada when there were very few other craft beer offerings in the NY area. Now there are hundreds of craft beer choices throughout the country. And there’s so much good beer around, it seems logical that Anchor would fail. It’s surprising that Sierra Nevada actually seems to hold up.

But the industry’s facing headwinds:

“During the first three months of 2022, at least 53 craft breweries shut their doors, up from 42 closures in the first quarter of last year. That still leaves some 9,100 breweries in operation, but more closures are expected.”

That’s 9,100 breweries and 36,000 IPAs!

The pandemic and its ongoing effects, and the war in Ukraine continue to drag down smaller brewers, who are battling climbing costs, rising rents, and supply chain challenges.

2022 was supposed to be the “make or break” year for craft breweries, but problems remain in 2023. The biggest issue is increased competition in what has become a shrinking market for beer. Since most craft breweries cater exclusively (or mostly) to local markets, why wouldn’t Anchor still be viable in CA or a few western states? Apparently they were mis-owned.

Sapporo is a Japanese beer company that bought the brand in 2017. VinePair, a digital magazine that covers beer, wine and food reported last month that employees complained about Sapporo’s alleged mismanagement and lack of understanding of craft beer in the US. Sapporo also owns Stone Brewing, another craft beer with a national following. Let’s hope that Sapporo doesn’t do to Stone what it’s done to Anchor.

But there’s still 9,000+ breweries nationwide, so it’s easier than ever for consumers to find great beers within a few neighboring zip codes. For the brewers, they need to find a niche and make an extremely good product line. The brewer in our town has become quite successful with one location, and a rotating group of about 10 beers. They have gotten distribution in local supermarkets and liquor stores and seem willing to be a big fish in a small pond.

It’s Saturday, and in the northeast, we’re experiencing continued rounds of thundershowers that make it difficult to do much outside. In the past week, we’ve picked up around 5.5” of rain, so we won’t have to water the vegetable garden for a week or so.

And since it’s Saturday, its time for our Saturday Soother, where we step back from another week of news you can’t use and find a few moments to live as simply as possible in the present.

So grab a mug of coffee and take a seat near a large south-facing window and listen to “Jupiter” from Gustav Holst’s “Planet Suite” played here by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. The Planet Suite took nearly three years (between 1914 and 1917) to compose:

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We’re In Hot Water

The Daily Escape:

Harbor Seals hauling out on a buoy in Petersburg, AK. Wrongo and Ms. Right were passing by in a zodiac – July 2023 photo via the cruise line

It seems like it’s going to stay hot for a long while, and nobody wants to do anything about it. Temperatures are rising both on land and at sea, with climate experts ringing alarm bells about unprecedented sea surface temperatures:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late June warned that half of the world’s oceans may experience marine heat wave conditions by September.”

And it’s hitting close to home:

“Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.”

The NYT reported that the water temperature around Florida hit 90° yesterday.

And while it’s possible to score cheap political points on their governor DeSantis who would rather fight with Mickey Mouse and whatever “Woke” means this week while ignoring climate change, Wrongo won’t stoop to that. He’s sure that Floridians love their governor’s priorities. Just last week, as insurance companies were pulling out of Florida, DeSantis was saying not to worry, the insurers will return to Florida after the hurricane season.

As Pogo said many years ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Primarily, the enemy is the Republican politician who continues to vote against efforts to bring the world’s CO2 levels under some semblance of control. The fixes to climate change that will have the most impact involve changes in public policy that will never happen as long as Republicans hold enough votes to block them.

But the big idea is that we’re not going back to where we were heat-wise, no matter what we do to cut further CO2 emissions. As NYT journalist Jeff Goodell said on NPR: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We are moving into a different world, and we need to grasp that idea….the planet is heating up…because we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere…..It is essentially permanent when we put it [CO2] up there….And the warming will not stop until we stop emitting CO2 and burning fossil fuels….And even if we stop [adding more] CO2, we are stuck with that warming planet for a very long time.”

So, even if at this moment we made huge changes, we would always be on this part of the temperature scale, unless we figure out how to take quite a bit of that CO2 out of the atmosphere.

A few red state legislatures are considering following South Carolina’s lead and simply banning all mention of global warming or climate change in official documents or state-funded research. They think the only real way to deal with the climate problem is to ignore it.

Worse, nobody has a good model for what happens when all that warm water sits and gets warmer. Some meteorologists have pointed out that if the Caribbean got hot enough, it could spawn a continuous series of Category 5 hurricanes, say, once a week from May to October.

Which would resolve the problem of insuring Florida’s oceanfront properties pretty quickly.

It’s becoming evident that we live in a world designed for a climate that no longer exists. What’s really sobering is that the climate that now exists won’t resemble the one that will exist a generation from now.

How our societies and political systems deal with this is the central question of the 21st century.

Wrongo and Ms. Right moved back to New England from California partly because of climate. We were concerned about how scarce water would become in Los Angeles, and we knew that Connecticut would have more water for longer. This week, several of our roads and bridges closed because we had too much rain, causing the Housatonic River to overflow its banks.

This shows that there are no longer any places that can be marked safe from climate change. It has become impossible to predict the future climate/weather anywhere based on the past. And we’re still not coming to terms with just how hot and dangerous things are becoming. Or how fast it’s happening.

Let’s close the week with a wake up tune. Here’s “The Effects of Climate Change on Densely Populated Areas” by People Under The Stairs, a hip hop group from LA formed in 1997:

Sample Lyric:

Hundred degrees at midnight for the third day in a row
Nobody sleepin’ well and I can feel the tension growin’
LA wth rollin’ brownouts, rollin’ papers and rollin’ sixties
Heat exhaustion increasing caution across the city
Some people hit the mall, they’re tryin’ to stay cool
Some people call the cops; “there’s black children in the pool”
Everybody’s lookin’ sideways, we’re ragin’ on the highways
I hate it, I’m tryin’ to stay hydrated and faded but my way Is blocked
By road construction like a scene from “Falling Down”
Cops, they tryin’ to function but it seems they takin’ down us
Brown people at will People get hot and then killed
As the sun begins to set it’s hotter, no-one can chill
Everybody’s windows open there’s not a moment of silence
Alcohol heatin’ frustration that’s increasing domestic violence
9-1-1 is overwhelmed, homie, guess you on your own
The hills are still on fire, I recommend you stay at home

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Saturday Soother – July 8, 2023

The Daily Escape:

There are currently 13 turkey chicks roaming the Fields of Wrong. One mom has nine and the other, four. While each year we hope for the best, we live amongst always hungry Coopers and Red Tailed hawks. Oh, and watch out for the foxes, coyotes and bobcats – July 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo.

In Wrongo’s last column, he talked about the need to fight and win the long battle to reclaim rights that were lost in recent Supreme Court decisions:

“It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible.”

And new data from NBC offers a ray of hope:

“Republican primary voters are older, whiter and much more conservative than the electorate at large…. 39% of Republican primary voters are age 65 and older, compared with 25% of the overall electorate and 25% of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll…..89% of GOP primary voters are white, versus 72% of all voters.”

Here’s a chart from the poll:

Only 24% of GOP voters are under age 50, compared to 57.9% of the US population. More:

“…67% of Republican primary voters say they are conservative, including 41% who are “very” conservative…..That compares with 36% of all voters who are conservative, including 18% who are “very” conservative.”

There’s more bad news for the GOP in recent census data:

  • One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election is that census data show that the number of white people without college degrees (a core of Trump’s support) has fallen by 2.1 million since 2016.
  • Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college (an increasingly Democratic constituency) has grown by 13.3 million.

Worse for the GOP and Trump, the reliance of the GOP on the electorate without college degrees has grown. In 2012, 48% of Republicans didn’t have college degrees. By 2016, that percentage had increased to 58%, but according to the NBC News poll, it’s now 63%.

They’ve also lost many of the college educated over the past eight years. And the population of the non-college educated is shrinking. It’s not a good formula for victory. It all points to having a decent chance to win the town by town, state by state fight to blunt the Supreme Court’s extremism. Forget what the media are saying, 2024 doesn’t have to be a close election.

And let’s also forget about the news, or where in the world Prigozhin is hiding. Rumors say he’s in St. Petersburg, Russia. Soon we’ll want proof of life.

And if you want to know just how far to the right the House Freedom Caucus has moved, they just ousted Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for being too liberal.

But it’s time to leave all of this behind and concentrate on our Saturday Soother.

We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in northwest Connecticut, and that makes all of the necessary yard work much more difficult to do. This year, we’ve had rabbits in our vegetable garden along with the usual horde of chipmunks, so Wrongo put up some of the deer fencing we use in the winter around the garden. We’ll see if it is successful.

This morning grab a cold brew coffee and take a seat in the shade outdoors. Now put on your Bluetooth headset and watch and listen to Sissel Kyrkjebø, a Norwegian soprano, perform “Going Home”. This song is about Antonin Dvorak, who wrote his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” soon after arriving in America in 1893.

The song is based on the larghetto movement from Dvorak’s 9th. One of Dvorak’s students, William Arms Fisher, put words to the melody from the second movement. He called the new song, “Goin’ Home“. It was published in 1922.

Dvorak outlived his entire family, and returned home to Bohemia from the US. He died in 1904, at the age of 63. Sissel, who Wrongo knew nothing about before today, sings beautifully. Consider that English may not even be her primary language:

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July 4, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kilauea Caldera showing a blackened lava lake, Hawaii Volcanoes NP – June 2023 photo by J. Wei for the NPS

Kilauea stopped erupting on June 19, but the threat of another eruption is always present. That could be a metaphor for America in 2023: We could erupt at any moment.

The 1960s were an optimistic time. There were demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. There was police violence against the demonstrators, and assassinations of JFK and MLK. But a throughline of those times was a belief that righteous change was possible.

Wrongo graduated from Georgetown in 1966. His specialty was American colonial history. Those also were times of optimism, and there also were factions and different priorities and beliefs throughout the land.

Back in the 18th century, we overcame our differences, declared our independence, and formed a nation.

Now, 247 years after our revolution, it seems that staying united is difficult, if not impossible. Today, facts are fungible, and so is the truth. As Wrongo stated in his last column, about one third of Americans fail to vote. They are apathetic because they can’t see what would change if they did vote.

Having one third of Americans regularly fail to vote has surrendered control over our politics and our courts to a minority, mostly a few at the top, supported by some people in the middle, and enabled by the apathy of most of the rest of us.

Worse, most of those in today’s controlling minority are extremists. They have exploited the imperfections in our system to impose a return to the social mores and politics of an earlier time.

The best example of this is the string of far-Right decisions handed down in 2022 by the Supreme (Extreme) Court. From Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:

“Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved….The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone….Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone.”

Vast areas of law that took decades to establish were overturned in a year.

And in 2023, the Court’s reactionary majority has continued to overturn more of the American social order. Those rulings: ending affirmative action, preventing the forgiveness of student loans and an egregious decision on gay rights, show that the Court has lost any sense of judicial restraint.

The Court is no longer “calling balls and strikes” as Chief Justice John Roberts famously said. In fact, there could be a highlight reel of umpire John Roberts’ blown calls. It’s clear that the Extreme Court wants to go further, and given today’s politics, there’s zero risk of the other two branches of government agreeing to override their decisions.

So, on this Fourth of July weekend, let’s hit pause. Let’s take time to reflect on how our founders were able to weave a message that united many factions against a common enemy. It should be very clear that at this point that the common enemy to unite against is the partisan power of a partisan minority.

Real power no longer lies with the People or with their politicians, it resides in the Supreme Court. The antiquated and undemocratic elements of our government: the Electoral College, lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices and the malapportionment of the Senate, would require Constitutional amendments to fix. But we’re too divided to amend the Constitution.

Imagine attempting to fix the Senate’s malapportionment by getting a Constitutional amendment through that same malapportioned Senate.

But there may be reason for optimism in the fact that the two of this term’s negative rulings related to college students (admissions and debt relief). Those issues will motivate young voters in 2024.

Here are some numbers that give some cause for optimism about younger voters helping to change our politics:

  • Voters 47 and younger will be in the majority beginning in 2028.
  • Younger voters have historically voted in significantly higher numbers for Democrats.
  • Young women, especially young Hispanics and young African Americans are substantially higher voters for Democrats.
  • Fifty-five percent of white male voters under 45 voted Democratic in 2022, as did 52% of younger white females.

Here are a few other facts that should make us optimistic going forward:

  • Abortion was youth’s #1 issue in 2022.
  • Mid-term voter turnout for people under 29 was 23%, lower than 2018 (28%), but much higher than in 2014 (13%).
  • Michigan had the highest youth turnout in the country (37%).
  • Two swing states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were among the four states to have the highest youth turnout in 2022.

To help you reflect on how we might take back control, let’s listen to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” performed at the Greek Theater in Los Angles in 2012.

There are many versions of this tune on YouTube, but this one makes the point that virtually all of us are descended from immigrants, in this case, Diamond’s grandmother, who immigrated from Kyiv:

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Alaska! And Russia!

The Daily Escape:

Castle Mountain from Stikine River, Wrangell, AK – September 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. Castle Mountain is on the border between Alaska and British Columbia. This is a Nunatak, or a mountain that was higher than its surrounding glaciers, so over the centuries, it wasn’t rounded off by glacial movement.

This is the first day in several when we’ve had internet (or mobile) connectivity. So, here are a few thoughts on our Alaska trip and on the momentous news out of Russia.

First, we’ve had uncharacteristically beautiful weather! It’s usually raining at this time, but its been sunny and relatively warm for the first 10 days of our trip. Over the next few days, once we have better bandwidth, Wrongo will post more photos from the trip.

We have spent all of our time in Southeast Alaska, dropping in and out of fjords where the cruise ships cannot go. We’ve also spent quite a bit of time talking to members of the indigenous Tlingit nation. It is always interesting to learn about one of the many cultures that make up America. Ms. Right and I spent a morning with Joe Williams, a Tlingit ambassador and a former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska. Attached is a video of Joe giving some highlights of Tlingit history. Joe explained about the Eagle and Raven clans and how the Tlingit gave their children over to uncles and aunts to be raised. The sociology of their tribes and family structure was fascinating.

Second, what the hell is going on in Russia? Wrongo and Ms. Right have gotten to know a retired Marine officer who is traveling with our group. He’s providing commentary for the BBC from our small ship, when we have comms. He says it is way too early to tell how this will fall out, or if there will be a new power alignment in Russia, or if this will make any difference in the Ukraine war.

But as the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan famously said in 2000, “it would be irresponsible not to speculate”, so here goes. It’s clear that Prigozhin became a threat to his buddy Putin simply by leveraging Russia’s assets. As Yale’s Timothy Snyder says:

“Unlike most of its other ventures, Wagner’s war in Ukraine was a losing proposition.  Prigozhin leveraged the desperation of Russia’s propaganda for a victory by taking credit for victory at Bakhmut.  That minor city was completely destroyed and abandoned by the time Wagner took it, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives.”

Before the aborted coup, Wagner’s primary source of funding was the Russian state. Whether that will continue, given the supposed “deal” between Prigozhin and Putin, remains to be seen.

A couple of other points. Will Prigozhin actually go to Belarus? If he does, will he take some or all of his Wagner forces with him? If they all go to Belarus, who will be paying them? Its difficult to believe that Wagner and Prigozhin will remain inactive for very long. As mercenaries, they survive on extracting money from a benefactor and/or from the places where they operate.

There are several possible “deals” between Putin and Prigozhin that drove his “exile” in Belarus. According to the BBC, Prigozhin agreed to move to Belarus after he negotiated directly with Belarus leader Lukashenko.

Wrongo is most intrigued by the possibility that Wagner could open a second front in the Ukraine war from Belarus, similar to what Russia attempted in February 2022. Back then it looked like this:

With most of Ukraine’s military assets focused on a counteroffensive in the east and south, an attack from the northeast could prove decisive at a point in time when Moscow looks to be weak and vulnerable.

Will this happen? The thing to watch for is how many Wagner assets move to Belarus along with Prigozhin (assuming he moves there). Imagine if part of the “deal” is that Prigozhin is tapped by Belarus to be their army’s commander-in-chief, and they launch a second front during the driest time of the year, rather than in February like last time. Belarus was somewhat neutral in 2022, but since then have become much more tightly aligned militarily with Russia

Russia on the attack may have the resources to open up a second front in Belarus. The question is whether Ukraine can defend itself on one front while attacking Russia on its eastern front.

These are the interesting times we are doomed to live through. Let’s close with a tune from the Aquabats. This was recommended by granddaughter Mallory for our trip to Alaska. Here is “Hot Summer Nights (Won’t Last Forever)” from their 2005 album “Charge!”. Seems appropriate for our trip and for Prigozhin, no?

Sample Lyric:

Dear Elizabeth,
I hope you’re doing well
I think it’s so awesome that you’re out monitoring glacier patterns
In some remote part of Alaska where no one can get a hold of you
I thought I’d try anyway

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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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