Month: February 2023

The House Republicans couldn’t even elect one of their own as Speaker without the proceeding devolving into a near brawl, so I am not surprised that they couldn’t behave themselves during President Biden’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday. The White House is reportedly ecstatic that the GOP’s “boos, taunts, groans, and sarcastic chortles” helped Biden paint them as “unreasonable and chaotic.” The CNN flash poll of State of the Union viewers found 72 percent with a positive reaction and “71 percent said Biden’s policies will move the country in right direction — up 19 percentage points from before his speech.” That’s an unqualified success.

Biden needed it considering the results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll which found Donald Trump leading  him in a hypothetical 2024 rematch, 48 percent to 45 percent. The highlight of the night came when Biden noted that some Republicans are calling to sunset Social Security. When this was met with howls of disingenuous protest, he calmly smiled and said, “Good, I guess it won’t be a problem then.” He effectively enlisted the political opposition in a demonstration of the unpopularity of their position on the debt ceiling. After all, if they can’t touch Social Security, they can’t make any realistic proposal to cut spending to the degree they’re demanding.

Overall, it was the least boring State of the Union speech I’ve ever watched, despite being quite lengthy. Partly this is because Biden’s speech impediment, which he mostly overcame in his youth, creates some tension and suspense. Partly it was because it was raucous, with plenty of fraught interaction with the audience. Mainly it was because Biden delivered a down to Earth speech which was light on acronyms, jargon, and budget line items and heavy on common sense rhetoric and comical political baiting of his opponents. He certainly didn’t lack self-confidence or behave defensively like you might expect from someone with poor reelection numbers.

I don’t recall any State of the Union speech making a lasting difference. They’re always held almost two years before the next federal election. But I’ve seen presidents get a nice bump in approval numbers after an effective speech, and I suspect Biden will see that come to fruition.

Ironically, the White House telegraphed beforehand that he was going to emphasize bipartisanship rather than delivering red meat to his supporters, and he certainly began that way by graciously congratulating Kevin McCarthy on becoming Speaker and Mitch McConnell on his record setting longevity as a Senate leader. But once the Republicans decided to vocally complain and interrupt, he brought down the hammer. I think Democrats everywhere quite enjoyed the spectacle, and it seems the larger public took Biden’s side.

It was a good performance, and a good night.

Hey everyone! Howdy howdy. This is the 300th post in this series that I started back when this place was still known as Booman Tribune. When I started this series, I wasn’t sure I even intended it to run this long. It was the aftermath of the 2016 election, and let’s just say that there was a lot of finger-pointing and yelling going on. I was clearly frustrated with a faction that was nominally self-identifying as left, but using Trump-like talking points to justify who HRC was such an awful candidate, and using the sort of lowest-common-denominator rhetoric to justify exclusion, rather than inclusion. As The Dude (The Big Lebowski) might have said under those circumstances, “this will not stand, man.” So, I found a video of a cover of Bob Marley’s “One Love” that emphasized multiple cultures, ethnicities, etc. as a way to say FU to that, and essentially challenge anyone seeing that particular diary to just deal with it. I got responses that were very positive, and I kept posting new diaries in this series each week (with some occasional breaks). I learned we had at least one ABBA fan in our community at the time, and just how eclectic our tastes were. I do miss those days.

One thing that occurred to me recently is that I really haven’t posted any Creedence Clearwater Revival videos during this time. It’s time to correct that oversight. I know that Martin and I had our share of differences, especially during the early days of Booman Tribune, but we continue to share something in common: an affinity for one of the greatest films of the 1990s, The Big Lebowski. The soundtrack itself is brilliant, and includes the song I will share below. Say what you will about The Dude, but he is a big fan of Creedence. The song the Coen Brothers chose for the soundtrack was one of CCR’s feel good tunes, and that fits the vibe of the film, which is as close to a feel good film as the Coens could make.

So without further ado:

As a kid, I certainly heard this song on some FM radio stations. The band had long since split by the time I was listening to their songs, but I quickly became a fan. Regardless of what I might have been into at any given time, if I found out that John Fogerty had a new record drop, I was interested.

I don’t know what the future holds, but we need to give ourselves some space to feel good. It’s important. We live in turbulent times. Escapism may be out of the question, but finding moments of comfort is necessary to stay balanced.

Cheers. Hopefully I’ll see y’all next week.

Over the last couple of years, as I’ve watched the conservative freakout about African-American studies, Critical Race Theory, supposed cat litter boxes in classrooms, etc., I’ve begun to wonder how shows like Sesame Street were ever tolerated, especially in the Deep South. It turns out, there’s an interesting history there. Sesame Street debuted in November 1969, just two months after I was born to a Head Start nursery school teacher and a Manhattan advertising executive. With scenes built to reflect neighborhoods in the Upper West Side, Harlem, and the Bronx, the show naturally reflected an integrated cast and an urban sensibility. My parents, who also made sure to find me black playmates from an early age, encouraged me to watch the show. It no doubt helped me to see interracial friendships and relationships as part of the natural order of the universe rather than something problematic or revolutionary. So, yes, it successfully promoted a progressive mindset about race.

And that was naturally a problem in much of the country. In 1970, Shreveport, Louisiana took Sesame Street off the air, weakly claiming that it was too expensive. In Mississippi, however, they removed it statewide.

In April 1970, members of Mississippi’s newly formed State Commission for Educational Television met to discuss Big Bird and Cookie Monster…

…the all-White commission decided Mississippi was “not yet ready for it,” according to one member, because it showed Black and White kids playing together. In a 3-2 vote, the commission banned “Sesame Street” from broadcasting on the state-run ETV network.

“The state has enough problems to face up to without adding to them,” an anonymous member of the commission, which was appointed by segregationist Gov. John Bell Williams (D), told the Associated Press.

There was a happy ending to this story, however. It embarrassed the state when this decision became national news, and there were was a lot of local dissent as well. The commission changed course.

ETV scrambled to lift the ban, promising viewers on May 23 that “Sesame Street”would air in a matter of weeks. The show appeared on local TV listings by June 8, and that fall, the board sponsored a special episode.

As part of a 14-city national tour, the cast of “Sesame Street” stopped by Jackson for a free live show on Sept. 6, presented in cooperation with the State Commission for Educational Television. Over the course of an hour, Big Bird and his friends Bob, Susan, Gordon and Mr. Cooper entertained families with songs, jokes and questions, encouraging audience participation.

It was not quite an apology, but a display of an uneasy alliance between a progressive show and a conservative board, all in front of an integrated crowd of ecstatic children.

At that point, in 1970, the tide of progress was too strong for even a state like of Mississippi to sustainably resist. But that progress has stalled out. Most notably, we can see that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is banking his presidential aspirations on his war against progressive racial education, calling it “not education but indoctrination.” He’s not embarrassed about the national media backlash but rather counting on issues like this to launch him ahead of Donald Trump in the hearts of the American right.

It DeSantis’s gambit works out, it will confirm that the pendulum has swing back so far that it’s essentially reset the nation back to the launch of Sesame Street, in a way wiping out all the progress on racial thinking I’ve seen in my life.

While I was tending to other obligations, the political world evidently went into a frenzy about a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon that was traversing the United States. The Pentagon eventually shot it down, albeit not until it was over the Atlantic Ocean and there was no concern about falling debris causing harm to unsuspecting American citizens.

It’s not clear why people went nuts about this balloon when at least three others violated our airspace during the Trump administration, and perhaps one other earlier in Biden’s administration. Yet, in general, I think it’s eminently reasonable to shoot foreign surveillance balloons down, and I’m not even sure how cautious I’d be about it.

To be clear, I accept the Pentagon’s explanation that the risk/reward ratio warranted patience, and they say they were able to jam its communications while monitoring its activities, so letting it fly might have been advantageous. What’s more, by giving it a water landing, they may recover more intact pieces that will help them reverse engineer the technology.

All in all, it shouldn’t be a particularly big deal, and I’m more concerned that it caused Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to call off his scheduled visit to China. Again, I don’t question the political and diplomatic call of cancelling, but I think the cancellation was unfortunate.

A lot of smart people are starting to predict a hot war with China in the near future, most likely related to the island of Taiwan, and I don’t think anyone should want to see that happen. So, I am very interested in seeing our two nations engage in conversations, and provocative actions are unhelpful at this time. In this case, we were provoked and responded appropriately, but I hope we can get the diplomacy back on track very soon.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is a Chincoteague, Virgina scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Over this I added some preliminary paint.

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.

Eric Levitz of New York magazine observes that the Republicans are demanding a balanced budget within ten years in return for paying our preexisting bills on time, yet they’ve ruled out any defense spending cuts or cuts to Social Security and Medicare. In other words, if we want to avoid a national default and international economic calamity, we must cut discretionary spending by 85 percent. That’s clearly not going to happen because even most Republican lawmakers would not support it.

A party serious about presenting a balanced budget could never take this approach. And if, in the end, the Republicans are going to have to settle for some modest cuts to discretionary spending, then why are they creating a hostage situation?

All this said, there are surely some modest spending cuts on which all Republicans can agree. But if your objective is merely to pare back spending on the margins, then you have no rationale for picking an apocalyptic fight over the debt limit; you can just press the issue during the negotiations over next year’s budget. The whole premise of obstructing a debt-ceiling hike is that the deficit has become a national emergency requiring extraordinary measures. Proposing mere tweaks to the federal budget belies that premise.

I don’t think it will prove possible for Speaker McCarthy to pass any budget at all this year because he can only afford to lose four votes. The gap between what the deficit hawks are demanding and what is political survivable in terms of domestic spending cuts is too great for budgetary unanimity within the caucus.

I honestly have trouble seeing how McCarthy can survive as Speaker without ultimately relying on Democratic votes, and I don’t see the Democrats lending him a hand. I think he’s doomed.

Did you ever wonder what jazz might sound like when played by a generation entranced by TikTok? Maybe you have. Maybe you haven’t. Some answers do exist, though. I’m going to share an NPR Tiny Desk concert featuring DOMi &  JD BECK (keyboards and drums, respectively). They are definitely young, and at the beginning of their careers. In terms of how they sound, if you enjoyed what the late Chick Corea was up to at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, or enjoyed the sort of Nu Jazz artists of the 1990s, you’ll have some idea of their influences. They also capture our current zeitgeist on a vocal piece. They’ll drop the occasional F-bomb, but then again anyone who checks out my posts is probably well into adulthood or retirement age, so we can live with that. Duos involving drums and another instrument are hardly new in jazz. You can go back to at least the mid-20th century to find the first examples of such combos. When they click, they click. I think these two musicians have some promise. I hope you give their work a whirl, if nothing else.

As the recording artists I grew up on pass away, I am increasingly finding comfort in younger artists. The kids are alright. Really.

Cheers!

In general, I believe serving as a governor for six years and then at the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations are excellent credentials and preparation for serving as president of the United States. Nikki Haley also spent three terms in the South Carolina House of Representatives, so she has legislative experience which can be helpful in dealing with Congress. I like that she was treasurer and president of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and more recently she’s been on the corporate board of Boeing, so she has some insight into several echelons of the business world.

Naturally I don’t have much sympathy with Haley’s politics since she’s a Republican, but I don’t think she’d be out of her depth as president. And that’s comforting because I definitely believe George W. Bush and Donald Trump were out of their depth, and I think an argument can be made that Ronald Reagan was winging it for most of his two terms in office. He had some instincts and gifts that helped him compensate, but the Gipper’s lack of knowledge about the government and the world compelled him to delegate to an unhealthy degree, and it led to predictably poor results.

Haley plans to officially announce her candidacy for president in Charleston, South Caroling on February 15. And I welcome her entry into the competition. But I am a bit confused about how she expects to win the nomination.

The Republican Party is currently a white nationalist conservative Christian fascist movement, and Haley is a religious minority, a racial minority, and a woman. The Republican voters are currently organized around a general panic that non-Christians are taking over, that non-whites are overrunning the country through both legal and illegal immigration, and that children are becoming confused about their gender and sexual identities and roles. Haley, a Sikh child of south Asian Indian-American immigrants, is the embodiment of this panic.

Her strengths lie in foreign policy experience and establishmentarian business credibility. This is the role George Herbert Walker Bush played, but that kind of Republican is not what the MAGA horde is looking for in a leader.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a much clearer path to the nomination both because he’s a white male Christian, and because he’s organizing his message around protecting traditional white male dominance.

Haley will play along with the anti-woke messaging of the GOP because it would be politically suicidal to do anything else, but she’ll never be convincing in the role.

Against Trump, it’s already clear that she’ll argue that it’s time for a new (younger) generation of leadership, and she can get some good mileage out of that argument. But she won’t be the only younger candidate challenging the disgraced ex-president for the nomination.

Haley will lower herself in a vain effort to win the hearts and minds of virulent misogynists, racists and religious bigots, and in the process she’ll wipe out any appeal she’d otherwise have to the tolerant middle that is just looking for pragmatic and competent leadership.

The current GOP cannot be led by a decent person, and anyone who would seriously attempt to lead it must first abandon all decency. It can’t be rescued from within.

But it might be possible to wage a third-party candidacy from the center-right. In my opinion, Haley has already debased herself too much just to get to this point, but I can imagine her running a serious independent campaign based on real issues.

Mitt Romney might have done the same instead of setting the land speed record for lying. But Romney knew winning the nomination required him to endorse the alternate reality set up by a white nationalist fascist movement. It was an odd choice for a Mormon, but ambition was more important to him than moral rectitude.

Basically, I understand why people want to be president, but if you want to be president to do some good, you really shouldn’t run as the standard bearer of a blackshirt army, especially if you’re a religious minority. If you’re a religious minority, you should be terrified of fascist movements and work to defeat them.

I can’t help but see Haley’s decision to run as a Republican as indicative of a fatal character defect. I don’t see how she can win or why she would want to win. I understand her ambition, and I could even see her being a half-decent conservative president of a center-right party. But I think her campaign is doomed from its inception because it’s flawed in its conception.