Month: November 2021

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently tweeted two intriguing photos.

https://twitter.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1461378801921892355?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1461378801921892355%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2021%2F11%2Fa-president-for-all-americans.html

I didn’t recognize the picture on the left. It was apparently taken in 1948 after passage of the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act, which was the federal government’s attempt to “control” the Missouri River. It called for a series of dams, including the Garrison Dam, which created the 200-mile-long Lake Sakakawea. As a result, 436 of Fort Berthold Reservation’s 531 homes, as well as every square foot of the enviable farmland tilled by the people of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations, were flooded. Initially the tribes fought back.

But these arguments were no match for the government’s determination to tame the Missouri and spare any ill effects being visited upon its constituent white farmers—who owned less than 10 percent of the land lost to the series of dams the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 installed above Yankton, South Dakota. The rest was all Indian land.

Out of options, the tribes accepted the government’s offer of $5 million in exchange for their homeland. At the signing ceremony on May 20, 1948, in Washington, D.C., the bureaucrats were straight-faced. The suit-clad tribal chairman, George Gillette, stood just to the right of Interior Secretary Julius Krug, crying into his hand.

Gillette was right to weep. The affected tribes went from a thriving community to one that experienced an 80% unemployment rate.

That is the kind of story racist right wingers don’t want taught in our schools because it could make white people feel uncomfortable – never mind how it affected Native Americans.

The picture Haaland posted on the right took place as she and tribal leaders witnessed Biden signing proclamations that restored the original boundaries of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Northeast Canyons, and Seamounts National Monuments. It was Secretary Haaland who shed tears that day, but for the opposite reason.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland gets emotional speaking about measures the administration is taking to restore protections for national monuments pic.twitter.com/3wBxmpbF4j

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 8, 2021

That is a reminder that, without much notice from mainstream media, Biden is following in Obama’s footsteps when it comes to fulfilling the promises he made to our native brothers and sisters. In addition to restoring monuments and naming the first Native American to a cabinet position, here are some of the things the Biden administration has done in its first year:

The CARES Act allocated $8 billion for tribes to combat COVID-19.

The infrastructure bill allocated $31 billion to tribes for health care, housing and education programs.

Two Native American women have been nominated (and confirmed) to serve on federal courts.

The first Native American, Charles Sams, has been confirmed to head the National Park Service.

The president signed an executive order “Improving Public Safety and Criminal Justice for Native Americans and Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous People.”

The Annual White House Tribal Nations Summit (initiated by President Obama) has been revived.

Given this country’s history with Native Americans, nothing makes me more proud of my support for this president than watching him keep these promises. Biden is demonstrating what it means to have a country for ALL Americans, a future for ALL Americans, and a president for ALL Americans.

I am going to be busy during the early part of the day helping my mother get my Dad to a doctor’s appointment, but I wanted to open a discussion which I can pick up when I get back. The question is, what explains Joe Biden’s rather steep decline in the polls in the latter half of 2021?

Here’s one effort to answer that question from Jonathan Chait.

Nobody can say with any confidence if this fall can be reversed. Indeed, given the U.S.’s steady job growth, nobody can ascertain exactly why the public has turned so sour so fast. Biden is like a patient wasting away from some undiagnosable disease. What is clear is that if the presidential election were held this fall, Biden would enter the contest as the decided underdog against Trump.

The conventional wisdom has deemed that Biden is getting his just deserts for trying to govern as a liberal…

But the truth is that Biden’s presidency began to disintegrate without his abandoning the center at all. He found himself trapped instead between a well-funded left wing that has poisoned the party’s image with many of its former supporters and centrists unable to conceive of their job in any terms save as valets for the business elite. Biden’s party has not veered too far left or too far right so much as it has simply come apart.

I agree that Biden would lose an election to a Republican right now, possibly including even Trump, and I agree that “a lot of people are saying” that this is because Biden’s gone too far to the left. I think, however, that there’s more to it even if, as Chait suggests, it’s currently undiagnosed.

Chait’s explanation has a nice symmetry to it and plenty of surface plausibility, but I think it’s probably just a bit too tidy. There are obviously some things, like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, supply chain disruptions, and the Delta variant of COVID-19 that have something to do with Biden’s approval numbers. It’s not all about “Dems in Disarray.”

Yet, divisions within the party are most exposed when the majorities in Congress are tight. It really limits Biden to what can be done rather than fine-tuning to get the best political response.

Anyway, how do you weight the factors?

After the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, conventional wisdom focused on geography, suggesting that Democrats needed to nominate a (white male) Southerner in order to win the White House. Then in 2008, along came Barack Hussien Obama – who wasn’t only Black, he was born in Hawaii and lived in Chicago. Conventional wisdom shifted to demography and the “emerging Democratic majority” made up of people of color, women, and young people. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shifted all of that to class, with a focus on the need for Democrats to win back white working class voters.

Perhaps you’ll excuse me if I take that latest bit of conventional wisdom with a grain of salt. These predictions have never been right – perhaps because they’re constantly looking at the past rather than the future.

Nevertheless, the fact that Terry McCauliffe lost the governors race in Virginia has sparked a whole new emphasis on the latest conventional wisdom about class. Perry Bacon calls it white appeasement, David Shor calls it popularism, and Ruy Teixeira, who once chronicled the “emerging Democratic majority,” has now done an about-face and adopted right wing talking points about Democrats needing to drop a focus on “wokeness.”

Given the structural advantages Republicans have in our elections, the base of their argument is not completely wrong. Here’s Bacon:

Certainly, there is a real case that Democrats need to prioritize wooing White voters — and by whatever means necessary. The Republican Party is growing increasingly radical, raising the stakes for the country in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Even as the United States becomes more racially diverse, White Americans remain about 70 percent of voters overall and make up an even larger bloc in key swing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats can’t win presidential elections or control of the Senate if they lose too many White voters to the GOP.

So if Democrats need to woo white voters (especially working class white voters), the question is “how do they do that?” Bacon posits that a certain amount of white appeasement is necessary (think Sister Souljah). But as he suggests, that can also be problematic.

[T]he limits and dangers of Democratic White appeasement are serious and substantial. Past policies adopted by party leaders to appeal to White voters have hurt people of color in deep and lasting ways. And many of those moves didn’t actually attract many White voters, either. Centering White voters now could push the Democrats away from a recent positive trajectory that includes increasingly embracing candidates of color and aggressive efforts to address racial inequality.

Heading into the 2020 midterms, Shor’s focus is on congressional races. Here’s how Ezra Klein summarized his prescription:

Shor has built an increasingly influential theory of what the Democrats must do to avoid congressional calamity. The chain of logic is this: Democrats are on the edge of an electoral abyss. To avoid it, they need to win states that lean Republican. To do that, they need to internalize that they are not like and do not understand the voters they need to win over. Swing voters in these states are not liberals, are not woke and do not see the world in the way that the people who staff and donate to Democratic campaigns do.

All this comes down to a simple prescription: Democrats should do a lot of polling to figure out which of their views are popular and which are not popular, and then they should talk about the popular stuff and shut up about the unpopular stuff. “Traditional diversity and inclusion is super important, but polling is one of the only tools we have to step outside of ourselves and see what the median voter actually thinks,” Shor said.

In an explanation of Shor’s popularism, Nate Cohn focuses on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign as a model.

[Shor’s] also clear in believing that the Obama ’12 campaign is the model for Democrats. As far as he’s concerned, that was the last time Democrats thought in a popularist–tactical–way, including about salience/messaging on race, immigration, culture…And I think it’s pretty easy to see the Obama campaign as an exercise in popularism. Its core message in the Midwest was to tout the autobailout and attack Romney as a corporate raider who would outsource jobs and hollow out the middle class…Obama didn’t exactly shy away from talking about liberal cultural issues. But it is true that they weren’t the central question of the election, either.

For his recommendations, Teixeira relies on the conclusions of a study about working class voters conducted by Jacobin/Center for Working Class Studies/YouGov.

Working-class voters prefer progressive candidates who focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues, and who frame those issues in universal terms. This is especially true outside deep-blue parts of the country. Candidates whose campaigns focused primarily on universalist policy issues such as jobs, health care, and the economy performed better than those who focused on group-specific policies, such as racial justice or immigration. In addition, woke messaging decreased the appeal of other candidate characteristics. For example, candidates employing woke messaging who championed either centrist or progressive economic, health care, or civil rights policy priorities were viewed less favorably than their counterparts who championed the same priorities but opted for universalist messaging.

But here’s the dilemma Democrats face: It is clear that Republicans will continue to run on racial grievance (with Senator Hawley adding male grievance to the mix). It worked pretty well for them with the election of Donald Trump, but also more recently in the Virginia governors race against a fairly moderate white guy. According to Shor and Teixeira, Democrats should simply ignore all of that because their positions on race and gender are unpopular with working class voters.

One of the main problems with these recommendations stems from the assumption that working class voters are responding to policy issues and that Democrats can win them back with a focus on things like jobs, health care, and the economy. That completely ignores the appeal of grievance politics, as well as messages like those we heard from Republican politicians at the recent National Conservatism Conference.

The politicians’ speeches were like entries in the catastrophism Olympics:

“The left’s ambition is to create a world beyond belonging,” said Hawley. “Their grand ambition is to deconstruct the United States of America.”

“The left’s attack is on America. The left hates America,” said Cruz. “It is the left that is trying to use culture as a tool to destroy America.”

“We are confronted now by a systematic effort to dismantle our society, our traditions, our economy, and our way of life,” said Rubio.

All of that is backed up daily by right wing media propaganda.

While it’s true that Democrats shouldn’t completely cede to Republican messaging, simply ignoring it isn’t an option either. Furthermore, in documenting coverage of the 2016 presidential race, the Berkman Klien Center at Harvard found that the media focused on supposed Clinton scandals and Trump’s “issues.”

So even if Democrats ignored the issue of immigration (something both Shor and Teixeira recommend), that doesn’t mean it won’t emerge as a hot topic.

Going back to Cohn’s example of Obama, there are two things Democrats can learn from him to improve their chances with working class voters. In order to combat the apocalyptic lies coming from right wingers, they can emulate the most important speech Obama ever gave – the one at the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge, that’s the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot, workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon.

It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo. That’s America…

For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction — because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it…

Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

Jon Favreau once said that “every election is a competition between two stories about America.” Obama’s speech is a story of America that counters the one being told these days by right wingers.

Jamele Bouie once pointed to something else we can learn from Obama. I’ll warn you that it can seem counter-intuitive at first. But he makes a great point. He suggests that, to the extent that Republicans make these elections about race and identity, candidates of color might be the best option. That’s not simply because they’ll automatically win with voters of color, “but because they won’t have to demonstrate the same social solidarity.”

Like Obama, they can stay somewhat silent on race, embodying the opposition to [Trump’s] racism rather than vocalizing it and allowing them space to focus on economic messaging without triggering the cycle of polarization that Clinton experienced.

In many ways, that is what Ed Kilgore noted about Stacey Abram’s “new Democratic coalition.”

African-Americans in the South have struggled to construct two-way biracial coalitions within the Democratic Party, and when they could it often required conspicuously nonprogressive messages. As the parties have continued to polarize, that path has become less viable than ever. There just aren’t that many white swing voters to whom to “reach out,” as the saying goes.

But the very different strategy pursued by Stacey Abrams looks like the future of biracial Democratic politics in the South: a strongly progressive (though not abrasively so) African-American who can expand turnout among a rising minority population while still appealing to increasingly liberal white Democratic and independent voters as well.

As an example of what that looks like, here’s an excerpt from the speech Abrams made after winning the Democratic primary for governor of Georgia.

We are writing the next chapter of Georgia’s history where no one is unseen, no one is unheard and no one is uninspired. We are writing a history of Georgia where we prosper together…For the journey that lies ahead, we need every voice in our party and every independent thinker in the state of Georgia…That is why we are here to ensure that all Georgians, from farmers in Montezuma to mill workers in Dalton, know that we value them. So that educators in Sparta and airport workers in College Park know that we see their efforts. So that former prisoners across our state who are working towards more know that we believe in their redemption.

Of course, Abrams didn’t win that election (perhaps due to Republican voter suppression). But at least in part due to her efforts, Biden won the state two years later and Georgia elected Raphael Warnock as their senator.

If Democrats emulated these lessons from Obama and Abrams, it would undoubtably ignite a backlash from right wing racists. But their votes aren’t winnable anyway. To the extent that working class voters (regardless of their race) are committed to preserving democracy and believe that we’re all in this together, they are an integral part of the Democratic coalition.

If you’d asked me, I would have predicted that the Air Force would have the worst COVID-19 vaccine compliance rate of any of the service branches. This is because I consider the Air Force the most Republican branch, and the most rife with conservative Christians. But it turns out the correct answer is the Marines:

Up to 10,000 active-duty Marines will not be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus when their deadline arrives in coming days, a trajectory expected to yield the U.S. military’s worst immunization rate.

While 94 percent of Marine Corps personnel have met the vaccination requirement or are on a path to do so, according to the latest official data, for the remainder it is too late to begin a regimen and complete it by the service’s Nov. 28 deadline. Within an institution built upon the belief that orders are to be obeyed, and one that brands itself the nation’s premier crisis-response force, it is a vexing outcome.

Of course, I wasn’t off by much.

The holdouts will join approximately 9,600 Air Force personnel who have outright refused the vaccine, did not report their status, or sought an exemption on medical or religious grounds, causing a dilemma for commanders tasked with maintaining combat-ready forces — and marking the latest showdown over President Biden’s authority to impose vaccination as a condition of continued government service.

I suspect that the poor compliance rate with the Marines isn’t so much a matter of Trumpy infestation as it is a culture that emphasizes fearlessness and affects an air of indestructibility. Many Marines don’t want to admit that an invisible virus might be a formidable foe, or that they need more than their wits and inherent toughness to defeat it.

But they only need to look at the NFL to see that an outbreak of COVID-19 can decimate troop readiness, disrupt training, and negatively impact cohesion. We prize the Marines for their bravery and sacrifice, not their stupidity. We want them to be tough, not foolish.

Of course, it’s true that we don’t want to see widespread insubordination in any military branch. This is happening almost entirely because room has been carved out to excuse it by Trump-styled Republicans and operatives who say freedom is on the line.

They’re right that freedom in on the line, but not for the reason they suggest.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of Bodiam Castle in the UK. The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 8×10 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

For this week’s cycle I have continued to work on the reflections and water. Most of my efforts have been concentrated to the left side. You can start to see where things are going. I will be done next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Hi photo lovers.

Peak fall foliage came a couple weeks later than usual for us. Ordinarily, I am out right around the end of October trying to capture the vivid colors before the leaves fall off. We had an odd early autumn in which I was still running the A/C through mid-October, and didn’t turn on the heater til near the end of the month. That just doesn’t happen. The photo I took was in my community. I just happened to force myself to find some time to get out and enjoy the scenery. This closeup was one of my favorites from the set.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for just al little over three years. My original is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. I am using a replacement (thanks to insurance) that is identical. I need more time to research smart phones, especially at the high end. I prefer to get a device and keep it for four or five years. Most of my family seems to be gravitating toward iPhones, so I suspect I may eventually have to succumb and go to the Dark Side of The Force. In pandemic environment filled with uncertainty, my default is to avoid major purchases for as long as possible. So, unless something really goes wrong with my current phone, I’ll stick to the status quo for as long as possible. Keep in mind that my last Samsung kept going for over four years (the last year was a bit touch and go). Once I do have to make a new smart phone purchase, the camera feature is the one I consider most important. So any advice on such matters is always appreciated. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters seems to have commandeered it. So it goes.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Reading polling results of public opinion in the United States makes me want to put my head in an oven. I imagine it’s not dissimilar to sitting in a doctor’s office and learning that you have Stage 5 cancer. We all knew that we’d die eventually, but it’s tough to get a firm timetable on the continuation of American democracy. It ends in January 2023, and now it’s all about palliative care for those who still give a shit.

Here’s a gem from Quinnipiac that should stop your heart.

A slight majority of Americans (52 percent) say the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, 6 percent say it has moved too far to the right, and 34 percent say it hasn’t moved too far in either direction.

A plurality (43 percent) say the Republican Party hasn’t moved too far in either direction, 35 percent say it has moved too far to the right, and 13 percent say it has moved too far to the left.

So, fifty-six percent of Americans disagree that the GOP has lurched out of the mainstream. Just yesterday, 207 House Republicans voted against censuring one of their members for posting a video on social media that depicted him killing a Democratic member and fighting President Biden with swords. Also this week, the Wyoming Republican Party formally ousted Liz Cheney, the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, for the sin of being truthful about who won the 2020 presidential election. Despite these clear signs of newfound radicalism, a majority of the public thinks it’s the Democrats who have moved too far from the center.

Maybe you’re thinking that we’re just at a low point. Things will look up soon, surely, especially if Biden gets to sign his Build Back Better agenda into law. After all, the public really likes Biden’s agenda.

A majority, 58 – 38 percent, supports the roughly $2 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks, and expanding Medicare for seniors. The result is largely unchanged since early October.

But I’ve got news for you. Biden just signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which is also popular. The problem is that it was more popular before he signed it. It’s less so now.

A majority, 57 – 37 percent, supports the roughly $1 trillion spending bill to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, broadband and other infrastructure projects. It’s a dip since early October, when 62 percent supported it and 34 percent opposed.

The ink is hardly dry and already the public is souring.

The sad fact is that the people are pretty emphatic right now that they’d like to see the Republican Party back in power. They give Biden terrible marks on everything from foreign policy to COVID-19 to handling inflation to basic honesty, and although they say congressional Democrats are slightly more inclined than their Republican colleagues to “care about the needs and problems of people like them,” they still intend to vote for the Republicans.

Independents say 41 – 31 percent they would want to see Republicans win control of the U.S. House of Representatives, while 28 percent did not offer an opinion.

Americans say 46 – 40 percent they would want to see the Republican Party win control of the U.S. Senate, while 15 percent did not offer an opinion. Independents say 44 – 34 percent that they would want to see the Republican Party win control of the U.S. Senate, and 22 percent did not offer an opinion.

If there’s any ray of light in these survey results, it’s that Trump remains a drag on the GOP.

If a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate strongly embraces former President Trump and his ideas, roughly 4 in 10 Americans (42 percent), say they would be less likely to vote for that candidate, 29 percent say they would be more likely to vote for that candidate, and 27 percent say it would have no impact.

But I have to throw a wet blanket on any inclination for optimism here. The Republicans are absolutely dominating us despite the drag Trump creates. If he were removed from the picture, things could quite possibly get much worse.

A Marquette Law School poll finds that 60 percent of Republican voters want Trump to run for president again despite leading a failed coup attempt. Fortunately, only 28 percent of the overall public agrees, and he suffers from an upside-down 32-65 favorability number. The Democrats got a rude awakening in Virginia and New Jersey when they discovered that their suburban advantage, on which they heavily rely, wasn’t very robust without Trump in the Oval Office or on the ballot.

Could things improve from here? Yes, the objective conditions and mood of the country can definitely get better between now and next November, but it won’t matter much because after the redistricting process is complete, the Republicans will have a built-in House majority and there will be almost no competitive congressional seats left to win or lose.

When most voters go to the polls to elect members of Congress next year, the general election will essentially be meaningless. That’s because winners are being determined right now, by a small number of party officials who are surgically ensuring preordained victories in the majority of the nation’s congressional districts.

It’s almost impossible to conceive on any scenario where the Republicans don’t win back the House of Representatives, and their odds of winning control of the U.S. Senate are better than fifty-fifty. This is true no matter what the Democrats do or don’t do over the next year.

As presently comprised, the Republican Party is fascist and undemocratic, and they will not allow free and fair elections going forward. What this means is that we’ll be powerless to organize the inevitable backlash and ride it back to power. They won’t concede elections that they lose, and that assumes we can even win elections for these noncompetitive seats that are overseen by radical election officials and even more radical state legislatures.

As of now, there’s still a semblance of normalcy. Rogue and threatening lawmakers are still held accountable in Congress and lose their committee seats. That won’t last.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested that Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) should expect to be on committees if Republicans take the House majority, NBC News reports.

Said McCarthy: “They’ll have committees. They may have other committee assignments. They may have better committee assignments.”

I’m not ordinarily a pessimist, but I always try to shoot straight with you. Some of what we’re witnessing are things I’ve warned about for years. One way I endured the Trump years was my complete confidence that we’d win congressional power back in the midterms and then deny Trump a second term. There were plenty of data to back up my confidence although it was a closer call than I expected. The metrics tell me something different now.

More than anything, they tell me that however much the people may have voted for Biden in the hope for a return to normalcy, there is no normalcy on the horizon and efforts to provide it aren’t going to be politically rewarded. The only hope is to start fighting as hard as the Republicans are fighting. That means using the law (since it still exists for a little while longer) very aggressively. It means the effort to right the ship through reestablishing norms will fail spectacularly.

I’d say that we should do away with the legislative filibuster and pass voter reforms, and that we should develop an intelligent and politically savvy legislative plan for 2022, and that we should do more and better messaging. But most of that won’t happen and the rest won’t be sufficient. The coup-plotters are in the driver’s seat and if we don’t have a radical and preemptive response, they’ll do next November what they failed to do on January 6.

And we won’t come back from that.

According to Thomas Edsall, opinion columnist at the New York Times, Democrats shouldn’t simply panic heading into the 2022 elections, they should go into shock. Here’s how he introduces his case:

The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024.

While I have to agree with Edsall that things look bleak right now, a quote he presents from Robert Shapiro tells the story.

Biden and the Democrats have had almost all bad news: the pandemic is still going; the economy has not picked up in terms of perceptions of the expected increases in employment and economic growth not on fire; perceptions of what happened in Afghanistan; what has happened on the southern border; high crime rates, all amplified in news reports. It is all perception, and the latest is the increase in inflation and gas prices that people see/feel. The critical race theory controversy and perceptions of Democrats being too woke and extreme. The bad news is overwhelming.

Notice how many times Shapiro refers to “perceptions” – at one point suggesting that much of the bad news for Democrats has been amplified in news reports. A review of Edsall’s examples confirms that analysis.

Edsall eventually zeros in on the pullout from Afghanistan as the place the perceptions of Biden’s incompetence all started. But as I’ve written previously, that was a narrative created by the media.

Here’s what you’ll find at the link Edsall provided about “the persistence of Covid.”

The U.S. government’s overall response to the pandemic has been criticized, and state governments have also come under fire for enforcing rules that were not tough enough and lifting restrictions too early. However, the country’s vaccination rollout has so far been a success, with the U.S. one of the countries with the highest number of vaccinations administered worldwide.

Of course, the Biden administration was in charge of the successful vaccination rollout, even as it has been Republican governors that failed to enforce rules and lifted restrictions too early.

Similarly, the whole panic about a “crisis” at our southern border has been a lie propagated by right wing news sources and amplified by mainstream media. But here’s the story that isn’t getting as much attention:

After a major influx of migrants overwhelmed the southwestern border throughout much of the spring and summer, unauthorized crossings in October were down for the third straight month, federal authorities announced on Monday, with the number of Haitians plummeting by more than 90 percent.

Even in telling that story, the reporter fails to note that border crossings have always tended to be cyclical, picking up during spring/summer and then dropping in the fall/winter. It is also important to note that the numbers being reported are for border apprehensions. That is significant because of a major change underway with migrants on our southern border. In the past, they have primarily been undocumented immigrants (mostly from Mexico) who wanted to evade apprehension and enter the country to work. But currently they are refugees, which means that they present themselves to authorities requesting asylum. Is it any wonder that apprehensions are up significantly?

Finally, Edsall includes inflation and supply chain shortages as part of the bad news for Democrats without mentioning skyrocketing employment and rising wages. That’s pretty typical in news reports. The fact that there is a perception that the economy is in bad shape right now is amplified by this dichotomy:

US Retail Sales hit another all-time high while Consumer Sentiment is at its lowest level in 10 years.

Watch what they do, not what they say. pic.twitter.com/x2Md4zFAj0

— Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) November 16, 2021

Americans are spending like crazy, but Consumer Sentiment is at a 10-year low. Here’s how Reuters reported on the numbers for retail sales in October:

The solid report from the Commerce Department on Tuesday suggested high inflation was not yet dampening spending, even as worries about the rising cost of living sent consumer sentiment tumbling to a 10-year low in early November. Rising household wealth, thanks to a strong stock market and house prices, as well as massive savings and wage gains appear to be cushioning consumers against the highest annual inflation in three decades.

The media’s fixation on doom and gloom, despite Biden’s accomplishments, was captured by Tyler Pager, who recently wrote that the president is not being gloomy enough. Eric Boehlert noticed and responded.

The [Washington] Post basically hit Biden for not inciting general panic with his public comments regarding the challenges the U.S. faces today, as we come out of an unprecedented global pandemic, which has scrambled economies around the world.

Doesn’t this feel like a media trap? If Biden had spent his first year in office leaning into doom-and-gloom rhetoric, it’s almost certain outlets like the Post would criticize him for it and ask why can’t he be a more optimistic leader, like Ronald Reagan.

In all of my years of watching politics, I’ve never seen the chasm between perception and reality this big. That is primarily because right wing media paints Biden as an incompetent fool on a daily basis, while mainstream media is addicted to bad news with no context. The combination of the two presents a distorted reality.

It has become conventional wisdom to accuse Democrats of having a messaging problem. There’s probably some truth to that. But when the entire weight of the news media is pushing against your message, the deck is stacked.

This moron is going to jail. It is too bad the moron who inspired him will probably skate like he always does.

Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap became a visual icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison by a federal judge in Washington. His lawyer had asked the judge to impose a sentence of time already served, basically the entire 10 months since the insurrection, during which Chansley attracted more attention for demanding an organic diet while in jail and giving an interview to “60 Minutes.”

[…]

Chansley, 34, was photographed parading shirtless through the halls of the Capitol with a six-foot spear, howling through a bullhorn and then sitting in the vice president’s chair in the Senate. He became known as the “QAnon Shaman” because of his appearances at gatherings of the “QAnon” conspiracy theorists and his Shamanic religious beliefs.

Glad he’s going to jail, but give me a fucking break with this “shamanic religious beliefs” bullshit, Washington Post. He’s no more a “shaman” than I’m the Pope. In fact, having paid the fee to be ordained by the Universal Life Church, an organization that seems to tacitly admit it only exists so lay people can officiate at their friends’ weddings, I have more religious bona fides than that Chansley schmuck.

Not that the word shaman means anything anymore, other than “well-to-do white people running around in the woods hallucinating on ayahuasca and banging on bongoes while appropriating someone else’s religious beliefs, until the next big white people trend comes along”—Chansley’s just an idiot wearing a fur hat. He has no religious training, didn’t even manage to complete community college, and got his ass booted from the Navy for refusing an anthrax vaccine. In the two years he served, he never made it past the second-lowest rank in the branch. So he’s as lazy as he is stupid. Oh, and he’s also an anti-semite, as the Post subtly reminds us.

Prosecutors quoted Chansley offering a prayer while sitting at the dais of the Senate, thanking God for “filling this chamber with patriots that love you. … Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.”

“Globalists,” of course, is code for Jews, although Chansley’s probably too stupid to realize that. His lawyers, naturally, tried to say he was crazy.

“Mr. Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment,” Watkins wrote in his sentencing memo. He said that a psychological evaluation earlier this year found that Chansley suffered from schizotypal personality disorder, anxiety and depression.

“Mr. Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment cult deprogramming” is more like it, given his enthusiastic embrace of the ludicrous QAnon conspiracy.

There are only two only sad things about the example being made of Chansley. One is that that Washington Post never identifies him specifically as a domestic terrorist, which is exactly what he is.

The second is that the piece of shit who inspired him isn’t going to jail himself, and probably never will.

I predict he won’t do too well in prison.

Hi everyone. I am still swamped, so this will probably have the feel of being more of a fly-by. Every once in a while, I’ll be listening to some video on YouTube and I’ll see something pop up in the suggestions that gets my attention. A couple months ago, a video from someone who goes by Ethel Cain was among those recommended. I gave it a listen and was hooked. Her voice sometimes gets compared to Enya. I get a Mazzy Star vibe from her work – it’s very melancholy, and seems like it would have fit in with Mazzy Star and similar artists from the early 1990s. The aesthetic from her videos has a sort of retro feel to it as well. The vehicles may often be recent, but she loves to incorporate cassette players, VHS, old-time TV sets, etc. She seems to capture the despair of living in rural America in a way that is empathic (she grew up in the rural South). She’s also used her platform to promote transgender people, which I find really cool (Ethel is transgender female). Here’s a vid:

She’s still a fairly young artist. Much of her work is self-produced, which she prefers. So there’s definitely a DIY aesthetic that is part of her vibe. If she gets a few breaks, I think she could develop into a formidable talent. If you dig Americana, give this a shot. If you dig this track, check out her other songs. If not, no worries.

Cheers.