Month: March 2024

Greetings! Here’ a Closer Look:

See you next week! Cheers.

On January 7, 2023, I wrote Drunk Redneck Attacks Matt Gaetz as McCarthy Claims Gavel. It might have been the last time something truly interesting and unanticipated happened in Congress. From that point forward, both Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his replacement Speaker Mike Johnson have ruled as the leaders of a Democratic majority, just as I said they would. In fact, they’ve been even more docile about it than I expected.

With McCarthy, I was pretty confident that he wouldn’t let us default on our national debt, and I was impressed when he cut a deal with the Biden administration and got the bills paid without losing his leadership position. But I knew and predicted he couldn’t last much past the September deadline to avoid a government shutdown, and he didn’t. He tried reneging on the deal. He allowed meritless impeachment processes to proceed against both President Biden and his Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. It was all for nothing.

His successor Mike Johnson couldn’t change the math one iota. In fact, his slender majority kept shrinking and will soon be down to a single seat. Johnson wasn’t any more willing than McCarthy to suffer through a prolonger government shutdown that his party had no way of winning.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday pushed through a $1.2 trillion bipartisan package to fund the government for the rest of the year, with none of the deep cuts or policy changes that ultraconservatives had demanded. Those on the right fringe have been left boiling mad and threatening to make him the second Republican speaker to be deposed this term.

One of the key features of this Congress has been the Republicans Speakers’ usage of suspension of the rules. Normally, the Speaker pushes things through the Rules Committee which they control with an iron fist. But McCarthy gave away all his power on the Rules Committee to the far right Freedom Caucus in his wheeling and dealing to become Speaker. This meant his couldn’t get spending bills on the floor. The only alternative was to suspend the rules which got around the Rules Committee but introduced a two-thirds majority requirement for passage.

As you can imagine, once you concede that you’ll be needing mostly Democratic votes to pass your spending bills, you’ve lost the leverage to make “the deep cuts or policy changes that ultraconservatives…demanded.” This is what cost McCarthy his job, but it’s the exact thing that Johnson just did to keep the government open and operational.

Now, my point way back when McCarthy was still struggling to lock down the votes to become Speaker was that all of this nonsense was really unnecessary. At the end of the day, whoever became Speaker would rely on a Democratic majority and so why not elect a Speaker with mostly Democratic votes just the way we pass spending bills with mostly Democratic votes?

The whole last year and what’s left of this one could have been a lot more productive, and we’d already have funded Ukraine, for example. The silly impeachment nonsense never would have happened, and ironically the House Republicans would not hate each other so much and fewer have them would have retired mid-session.

I said it so many times I got burned out on saying it, but the functional majority in Congress is the bloc that pays our debts on time and passes our appropriations bills. This bloc was never going to be synonymous with the House Republicans in this Congress. They did not win a functional majority in the midterms and they never should have forced through a completely partisan Speaker. It was mistake for the GOP and for the country, and now we get to do it all over again in September when the funding runs out.

Will Johnson even make it that far? He could face a motion to vacate at any time. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green of Georgia was so chummy with McCarthy back in January 2023 but now she’s filed a bill to kick Johnson out for following McCarthy’s example. I think there’s a good chance that the Democrats will save Johnson, but only if he makes concessions, particularly on bringing a Ukraine funding bill to the floor.

In January 2023, I discussed what concessions the Democrats should demand in return for helping to elect a bipartisan Speaker, and it involved some power sharing on committees. I still think that’s a fair price, but I kind of doubt they’ll drive such a hard bargain on Johnson. I guess finding out will be the next interesting thing to happen in Congress.

I’m sorry that Kate Middleton has cancer. I hope it isn’t fatal. She seems like a nice person to me, and I don’t fault her for marrying into a monarchy, even if I think every thing the Windsors own should be melted down to pay for national infrastructure, social services and restitution. I do not like kings and queens. At all. But, like Kate,  I’m an American and the British can take their sweet time doing a King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette job on their royal family. That’s for them to decide.

What I definitely didn’t do is engage in speculation about where Kate has been since she had abdominal surgery in January. That’s in part because I do not care about the royal family, and in part because I seldom read articles by people who do care. But even after I realized her absence had spawned a million conspiracy theories, I still had no comment. Why?

Partly it’s because I’ve grown physically ill as a result of watching people wallow in misinformation. But it’s also because the official explanation was that she’d had surgery and would be back after Easter. That was a good enough explanation for me. Why should I care if it is isn’t true? If she were dead, they’d tell us.

Anyway, she came out on Friday as told the world that she has cancer and had been primarily concerned with talking to her young children and reassuring them. Now the Washington Post reports that people feel super guilty about all the nasty insinuations they made about her and her husband and their marriage, etc.

And then of course there’s the other side that’s not apologetic at all and blames the royals’ media relations outfits for incompetence. And that’s fair enough, but I still think spending your life cracking jokes at monarchs is only a solid gig if it’s in the sincere effort to dethrone them. Most of these people might as well be drooling over the stars at the Oscars.

Anyway, I hope she gets better.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey 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.

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.

I’ve now finished the foliage. The painting is now done.

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

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

Prem Thakker of The Intercept takes a look at the blueprint of the Republican mind:

ON WEDNESDAY, THE Republican Study Committee, of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members, released its 2025 budget entitled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America.”

…THE REPUBLICAN STUDY Committee is the largest ideological caucus in Congress, and for the past 51 years, it has served as a principle priority-setter for the party. The committee was chaired as recently as three years ago by House Speaker Mike Johnson. He and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise still sit on the Executive Committee, while Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern serves as chair. Its annual budget is not binding, but it does offer a useful window into conservatives’ policy priorities, which can best be summarized as accelerating the planet’s burning, an indifference to mass shootings, and actively threatening consumers and workers.

Truer words…

As Thakker notes, however, the budget also targets the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the federal School Lunch Program. This is a provision that allows over 3,000 school districts and tens of thousands of schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students without respect to their parents’ financial situation. These districts have such a high percentage of needy students that it’s administratively simpler to just waive the eligibility requirement to reduce paperwork and hassle for both staff and families.

But free food for all students is an idea that is catching on, and that is in part why the House Republicans are so alarmed about the CEP.

Republicans have worked for years to undermine school lunch programs, but the staying focus on the goal, even in rhetoric, is notable given the warm reception some states have received in instituting universal school lunch. In Minnesota, for example, 70 percent of Minnesotans, including 57 percent of conservatives and 54 percent of senior citizens, were found to have approved of the policy change that took effect last summer — even after reports that the program was proving to be more costly than anticipated, due to greater-than-expected demand. Statewide polling in Pennsylvania last year found 82 percent of people supporting expanding their free school breakfast program to include lunch too, while 87 percent of Ohio K-12 parents were found in 2022 to support school meals for all, regardless of ability to pay.

Another seven states — California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and Vermont — have also passed universal school lunch programs, while at least 26 more states (including Washington, D.C.) are considering ways to achieve the policy too.

This isn’t the craziest idea. We don’t ask public school families to prove they’re poor before we provide their children with a laptop. Why should we worry about the cost of a bowl of cereal, some fruit and yogurt or a sandwich? Students do better if they’re not hungry, so why not just provide food for all students?

Most districts are funded by property taxes meaning that rich people are already paying a lot into the public schools, so letting their kids get a free meal isn’t something they should find so upsetting. But some people would rather pay extra to ensure that no one gets something they haven’t earned. That’s why we have a right wing to our politics. Assholes need to stick together, am I right?

The budget — co-signed by more than 170 House Republicans — calls to eliminate “the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the School Lunch Program.” The CEP, the Republicans note, “allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

“Additionally,” the Republicans continue, “the RSC Budget would limit spending in the program to truly needy households.”

So, it’s not just “accelerating the planet’s burning, an indifference to mass shootings, and actively threatening consumers and workers” that defines the GOP. They also want hungry kids.

Hi photo lovers.

It’s been a while. It’s been a lot longer than I planned on. Life gets in the way. I’ll leave it at that. Recently, I’ve been getting back to some of my favorite urban trails in my city. We’ve had a stretch of really good weather recently, and of course I will take advantage of that to get out and enjoy some fresh air and scenery. What I have for you all this time around is a photo of the Arkansas River, looking north.

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. The distant hills in the background are in Crawford County, just a ways south of the Ozark Pleateau, which starts maybe a good half hour or so north of where I was standing. Across the river to my west is some unincorporated land in Oklahoma. I’m on the Arkansas side. It’s good to see that any remaining damage from the flood of 2019 has been repaired. I am grateful for some lovely scenery that is a very convenient drive from where I work and live.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for roughly five and a half years. My original LG v40 ThinQ is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. My initial replacement had a similar fate. I bought yet another version of the same phone about a year ago for hardly anything, as I simply didn’t have the time to really research a good permanent replacement. We will see how long this one lasts. 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, but I am determined to avoid going that route. The newer Samsung phones look really promising. Given the times we live in, my default is to delay any major purchases 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 (although 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 commandeered it. Presumably she’ll return it before she moves out. 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.

This NBC News story says that Donald Trump is seriously considering asking Sen. Marco Rubio to be his running mate. The article also mentions the immediate problem with that idea, which is that both Rubio and Trump are residents of Florida. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution prevents electors from voting for both a president and vice-president from the state in which they reside.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that if the Trump-Rubio ticket were to win Florida, as seems likely, the electors in Florida could not cast a vote for both of them. Presumably, they’d choose Trump in that case, but it could cost Rubio the vice-presidency. I don’t know what would happen. Maybe it would get settled by the U.S. House of Representatives. If Trump seems likely to push through with this idea, maybe I’ll research it further.

You may remember that this came up in 2000 when George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate. Both of them clearly were living in Texas at the time, and quite obviously Bush could not beat Gore without Texas, not could Cheney beat Lieberman. In that case, Cheney switched his prime residence to Wyoming which had a patina of plausibility. Cheney owned a residence there and he had served for years as Wyoming’s congressman in Washington DC. I think Cheney actually went so far as to put his Dallas home up for sale, and I know he obtained a Wyoming driver’s license.

Trump and Rubio will need Florida’s Electoral College votes so I suppose Rubio could try something similar but, as a sitting senator, I don’t think it would pass judicial muster. Which means Trump would have to be the one to switch residencies. He could become a resident of New Jersey for example, which I think he would prefer to New York at this point. But does Trump want to go through all that nonsense?

In general, he seems to want to create the most stress on the system as he can, so I guess I shouldn’t discount a fake move to the Garden State which is challenged in court, followed by some kind of insurrection, this time probably carried out by the left. Who knows?

Rubio would make a lot of sense. He might be just dumb enough to accept the job.

Happy midweek, everyone!

During my commutes as of late, I have been delving back in to my favorite era of King Crimson, which would have been around 1981-1984, when they released Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. This is a live version of “The Sheltering Sky” from Discipline, which was released in 1981. For part of the song, Robert Fripp is on lead guitar and Adrian Belew takes on rhythm guitar, and then they switch roles halfway through, allowing the listener to hear the different textures each of these two talented artists had to offer.

Adrian Belew is in the process of putting together a tour in which he and his ensemble (including ex-members of King Crimson) will perform those three aforementioned albums for their fans, old and new. I hope to catch that concert once it gets anywhere near my neck of the woods. I’d first heard Adrian Belew as a sideman for some of David Bowie’s albums, as well as of course Talking Heads. Hearing him as a full band member with King Crimson as a late teen was a revelation, as were his early solo LPs (Lone Rhino and Twang Bar King are my faves).

Cheers.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 50-47 to confirm Nicole Berner as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. She did not pick up the support of a single Republican. She got no support from supposedly moderate GOP women like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who both opposed her. She got no support from Lindsey Graham who often votes for Democratic judicial nominees. Graham abstained. So, what was so awful about Ms. Berner?

I suppose you can pick your poison. Maybe it was her undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies from Cal-Berkeley. That sounds pretty “woke” to me. Or maybe it was her Master of Public Policy and Juris Doctor from that same notoriously leftist campus. Or it could have been that she holds dual American-Israeli citizenship. That kind of biographical tidbit seems to arouse suspicion on both sides of the aisle at the moment. But standard issue conservative Jew-hating probably doesn’t explain opposition in this case. More likely, it has to do with this from June 2000:

Israel’s High Court of Justice this week ordered the government to register a lesbian couple as the mothers of the child they are raising.

The ruling was denounced by fervently Orthodox legislators, who called the decision degrading to the sanctity of the Jewish family.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on Monday that registering the two women as the child’s mothers did not reflect a biological relationship to the child, but a legal status.

The Interior Ministry, which refused to recognize the women, had argued that it is biologically impossible for a child to have two mothers.

The couple, Ruti and Nicole Berner-Kadish, have been together for seven years and hold dual Israeli and American citizenship.

Now, that seems Woke! as hell. Massachusetts didn’t permit gay marriage in the United States until four years later. And there are still many states that do not permit second-parent adoption by same-sex couples.

But Ms. Berner didn’t stop with winning landmark LGBTQ+ rights decisions.  She spent three years working as a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood. I can’t think of any organization more likely to make Republicans see red, but the SEIU labor union is a contender. Ms. Berner has worked there for years, eventually rising to be general counsel.

Now, the 4th Circuit encompasses the two Carolinas, the two Virginias and Maryland. As you might imagine, this isn’t an historically left-leaning court. Now that Berner has joined it, the court has 8 Democratic-nominated judges and 6 Republican-nominated judges, with an additional judge who was jointly nominated by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. On the whole, the 4th Circuit is now modestly to the left of center. And that’s one positive consequence of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election. Berner is the third Biden nominee to sit on the 4th Circuit, which exactly matches the three that Trump put there.

I don’t know how Berner is going to rule on cases, but I do know that she never would have had a chance to sit on an appeals court if the filibuster were still in place for judicial nominees. Her background and identity are too threatening to the right.

On the flip side, there are a lot of people on the right who are sitting on courts now who are threatening as hell. I’m looking at you, Aileen Cannon.

Donald Trump has exactly one week to come up with more than a half billion dollars in liquid assets or New York State “could seek to freeze some of his bank accounts and seize some of his marquee properties.” I don’t know exactly how that process will begin, but we’re talking about 20 percent of Trump’s total worth, and, as Timothy Noah notes, much of the rest is already accounted for. There’s the $91 million bond he just secured from Chubb for his E  Jean Carroll defamation appeal.

There’s $392,000 that Trump paid The New York Times a couple of weeks ago for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s $938,000 that a judge last year ordered Trump and his attorney to pay Hillary Clinton for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s $382,000 that a London judge earlier this month ordered Trump to pay Orbis Business Intelligence, founded by Christopher Steele (of the “Steele dossier”), for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s the aforementioned $5 million that Trump paid earlier in the Carroll case. There’s $110,000 in contempt fees that Trump accrued for bad-mouthing New York Attorney General Letitia James during the civil fraud prosecution.

There’s whatever penalty the IRS may impose when it completes its audit of Trump’s 2015–2019 tax returns. There’s whatever lawsuits Trump’s current lawyers will file when he (or various Trump PACs, or the Republican Party) get tired of paying them. On top of all that, Deutsche Bank’s loans to Trump require him to maintain $50 million in “unencumbered liquidity” and a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion.

Noah’s account is incomplete,  which is why he speculates that Trump may soon be the first ex-president since Ulysses S. Grant to declare bankruptcy.  And bankruptcy isn’t going to save him.

New York Attorney General Letitia James already granted Trump a 30-day grace period to secure a bond. She did not need to do that. But the time is almost up and Trump’s lawyers admitted in court on Monday that getting the money is a “practical impossibility” for him. This is for three reasons. First, it’s a shit-ton of money that he needs. Second, the companies that write these kinds of bonds do not accept real estate as collateral. Third, Trump is well known for not honoring his debts. In simple terms, Trump is not good for the money.

Anyone who swoops in now to save Trump by handing him a half billion dollars is going to do it expecting to be recompensed in some other way than repayment of the loan. What would Russia want? What would Saudi Arabia want? What other country might see an angle in this?

Maybe it can be laundered through Jared Kushner who already accepted a multibillion dollar gift from the Saudis. But what if Trump doesn’t win election and goes to prison instead? I guess sovereign nations can just write it off as a loss. Are there independent billionaires willing to take the same risk?

Trump is being taken down to the studs and yet still looks like at least even money to win the election in November. It’s a crazy situation. See you next Monday to see whether he’s able to wriggle out of the trap one more time.