Yesterday, “Choose Love” managed to get a donation request ou for Turkish and Syrian victims of the earthquake. I’m not on their mailing list (at least I wasn’t), so they must have worked with other groups to get it out so fast, and therefore you may also have received it. In case you didn’t and want to help, here’s a link. I went from there by clicking on the logo to a page which has an “About us” link which provides some credentioals, including the number by which they are registered as a charity in the U.S., so anyone who is dubious can investigate further. OXFAM also came though with a request. Tonight, of course, is the State of the Union address. I plan to watch it, but if you don’t wish to, or aren’t able to, Robert Reich’s prediction is a short take today.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Robert Reich – The state of Joe Biden’s union: The return to democratic capitalism
Quote – America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases…. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders — not just shareholders but employees, consumers, the communities where they produced goods and services, and the nation as a whole. Click through for full opinion. Benjamin Franklin’s warning – “if you can keep it” – comtinues to echo through my mind.
The New Yorker – The Hunt for Russian Collaborators in Ukraine
Quote – The most obvious cases are those in which a person took up arms against Ukrainian forces or was involved in spying or sabotage to aid the Russian war effort. But assessing culpability can get murky at the level of local governance. “We’re looking for people who worked for the benefit of the Russian occupation,” Kravchenko told me. “But does that apply to a welder or carpenter who maintained buildings or equipment for the occupiers? Or people responsible for critical infrastructure?” There wasn’t an easy answer or policy, he said. Click through for story. At least we didn’t have to get bombed and invaded before finding ourselves in the situation of having to wonder whether our friends, family, and beighbors are collaborators.
Glenn Kirschner – Pence conceals Trump crimes then profits off them in book; the need to reform ethics in government (It’s likely called misprision because that word, which originally meant just “take wrongly,” was from its inception mostly applied to actions of government officials. For the rest of is, there’s “aiding and abetting” and “accessory before/after the fact.”)
Meidas Touch – Jan 6 Insurrectionist gets BRUTAL sentence and COLLAPSES in Court (as a former Marine myself, I say it’s a step in the right direction. It probably includes concurrent service. Consecutive would have been better.)
Politics Girl – Fund the IRS (Like me, you probably learned this at your mother’s knee. Yet there are still peole who don’t get it.)
Armageddon Update – Really?
Woman Pulls “Aggressive” Dog From The Shelter Minutes Before It’s Too Late
Beau – Let’s talk about the Colorado River and deals….
Yesterday, it was pretty quiet – until late last night, when there was (literally) earthshaking news – from Turkey ans Syria. To quote Heather Cox Richardson, ”
A deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey late tonight has caused damage in Syria, and was felt in Lebanon, and Israel, as well. It has collapsed buildings, sparked fires in ruptured gas lines, and prompted Italian authorities to warn of potential tsunami waves. Aftershocks, including one of 6.7 magnitude and another of 5.6, have continued to hit in the wake of the first quake. Millions of refugees from Syria’s civil war and internally displaced persons live in the region of the epicenter, in tents and other temporary housing. It is winter there.” Winter in the Mediterranean is not the same as winter in the Colorado Rockies, but it is still no picnic. At least our President is on top of it.
The 19th – Two years in, Biden has prioritized nominating women of color as judges
Quote – While Jackson’s historic confirmation was the most visible sign of systemic change in the judiciary, the president has prioritized diversity throughout the federal court system. Biden’s judicial appointees are the most diverse of any U.S. president to date in terms of race, gender and professional background. Of the judges appointed by Biden in the past two years, 75 percent are women, 47 percent are women of color and 67 percent are people of color. Click through for details. Few white people are in a position to make Blck History – and of those few, most don’t (or do it wrong.) I’m pretty sure Joe doesn”t expect (or care about) being named in Black HIstory. He’s just doing the right thing.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Sometimes those who are the most engaged in political activism can also be the most naive. I don’t know how otherwse to explain how those of us who have been working on civil rights, civil liberties, and voting rights since the 50’s, and gained so much, have also lost so much. Did we fail to watch our backs? Did we miss the signs? Or did we see the signs, but were unsure of how to respond? Now it appears we need to do it all over again – or our kids and grandkids do, those of uswho have any. We and/or they will need to come up with better plans for how to keep what has been won. I know, it sounds tiring. I feel exhausted myself. But it’s that or slide into fascism.
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Civil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics
A group of voters lining up outside the polling station, a small Sugar Shack store, on May 3, 1966, in Peachtree, Ala., after the Voting Rights Act was passed the previous year. MPI/Getty Images
For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. As a scholar of American voting rights, I believe their long game is finally bearing fruit.
In that case, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a case, Merrill v. Milligan, that might gut what remains of the act after Shelby.
Conservative legal strategists want the court to say that Alabama – where African Americans make up approximately one-quarter of the population, still live in concentrated and segregated communities and yet have only one majority-Black voting district out of seven state districts – should not consider race when drawing district boundaries.
These challenges to minority voting rights didn’t emerge overnight. The Shelby and Merrill cases are the culmination of a decadeslong conservative legal strategy designed to roll back the political gains of the civil rights movement itself.
A number of Southern states had a poll tax that was aimed at preventing by Black people, many of whom couldn’t afford to pay it. This is a receipt for a $1.50 poll tax paid in 1957 by Rosa Parks. Library of Congress, Rosa Parks Papers
Victory – and more bigotry
The realization of civil and voting rights laws during the 1960s is often portrayed as a victory over racism. The rights revolution actually gave rise to more bigotry.
The Voting Rights Act criminalized the use of discriminatory tests and devices, including literacy tests and grandfather clauses that exempted white people from the same tests that stopped Black people from voting. It also required federal supervision of certain local Southern elections and barred these jurisdictions from making electoral changes without explicit approval from Washington.
In fact, the VRA worked so well that it gave rise to another seismic political shift: White voters left the Democratic Party in record numbers.
As Washington protected Black voting rights, this emerging Republican majority capitalized on fears of an interracial democracy. Conservatives resolved to turn the South Republican by associating minority rights with white oppression.
In 1981, conservative political consultant and GOP strategist Lee Atwater recognized that Republicans might exploit these fears. He argued:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.“
‘Retard civil rights enforcement’
It wasn’t just Southerners who aimed to undo the revolution enabled by the Voting Rights Act.
Conservative political consultant and GOP strategist Lee Atwater, center, at the GOP National Convention in Dallas, Aug. 23, 1984, recognized that Republicans might capitalize on white people’s fears of rising Black political power. AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky
Reagan’s administration, according to voting rights expert Jesse Rhodes, used executive and congressional control to reorganize the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the Supreme Court.
The objective?
To undermine how Washington enforced the Voting Rights Act – without appearing explicitly racist.
One of the Reagan administration’s strategies was to associate minority voting rights with so-called reverse discrimination. They argued that laws privileging minorities discriminated against white voters.
Undoing progress
Here’s the background to that strategy:
The years following 1965 were characterized by the dilution of Black Southerners’ voting power. Realizing that they couldn’t keep African Americans from voting, Southerners and segregationists resolved to weaken votes once they’d been cast. They gerrymandered districts and used other means that would dilute minority voting power.
Conservatives during the early 1980s had become increasingly alarmed by the Supreme Court’s and Department of Justice’s preference for drawing racial district boundaries to give minorities more influence in elections in such ”majority-minority districts.“ These districts aimed to guarantee that minorities could elect candidates of their choice free from machinations such as vote dilution.
With little regard for vote dilution itself, conservative politicians and their strategists argued that majority-minority districts discriminated against whites because they privileged, like affirmative action policies, equality of outcomes in elections rather than equal opportunity to participate.
Edward Blum, a longtime conservative legal activist, has brought and won many cases at the Supreme Court rolling back civil rights gains. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By the 1990s, conservatives replaced federal officials who might protect the Voting Rights Act. In time, these developments, and growing conservatism within the courts, prompted conservative litigation that continues to shape civil rights laws.
A tidal wave of anti-civil rights litigation, led by a well-funded man, Edward Blum, flooded the court system. Blum sought to undermine the Voting Rights Act’s supervision of local elections and undo racial quotas in higher education and employment.
These cases, at their core, attacked the rights revolution of the 1960s – or rights that privilege minorities. The argument?
These protections are obsolete because Jim Crow segregation, especially its overt violence and sanctioned segregation, is dead.
New claim, old game
Nearly 30 years of Republican or divided control of Congress and, to a lesser degree, the executive office gave rise to increasingly conservative Supreme Court nominations that have not just turned the court red; they all but ensured favorable outcomes for conservative litigation.
These include the Shelby and Merrill cases and, more recently, litigation that seeks to remove racial considerations from college admissions.
In the Shelby case, the court held that the unprecedented number of African Americans in Alabama – and national – politics meant not merely that racism was gone, it meant that the Voting Rights Act is no longer relevant.
In fact, the rise of voter fraud allegations and contested election results is a new iteration of old, and ostensibly less violent, racism.
The Voting Rights Act was not only effective; Washington was also, initially, committed to its implementation. The political will to maintain minority voting rights has struggled to keep pace with the continuity of racist trends in American politics.
The work of protecting minority voting rights remains unfinished.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, what wouldn’t I give to see you, in your most terrifying appearance, swoop into the House and carry off Jim Jordan (and others, but if I started naming all the names we’d be here all week.) I know that’s not going to happen. But it does seem it will take something about that drastic, and at least that effective, to make any inroads. But it felt like that in the 50’s too. Maybe I’m just getting too old.
I am not squeamish about profanity – I can curse like a wounded Marine when the spirit moves me. However, when we use “four-letter” words at the least provocation, we do our language a disfavor.
When you first encounter spicy food, it’s quite a shock. The first time you try the El Diablo sauce, your mouth feels like a set for The Towering Inferno. A couple more times, and you have adjusted. However, if you use the hottest sauce too much, soon your taste buds become dulled, and you have to use hotter-than-hot sauce to taste anything.
So it is with profanity. The occasional f-bomb and s-bomb and other bombs are fine. If you use them only now and then, they can definitely liven up a conversation. However, when every third or fourth word out of your mouth is one that you wouldn’t learn on Sesame Street, soon the bleepable words lose their oomph. One or two oaths here and there are fine, but too many and they become bland.
Probably every language has its no-no words. They have a purpose, namely, to help blow off steam. Scientific studies have shown that swearing can actually help ease pain. That is why you cut loose with some PG or PG-13 rated language when you stub your toe or hammer your thumb. And that is all the more reason to cut back on your use of oaths – so that when you need them, they will be at full strength.
A long-ago co-worker told me that his mother, while she was in grade school, hear about a classmate getting her mouth washed out with soap because she said “fart.” William Shatner shocked a lot of people when he said “Let’s get the hell out of here!” in the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.” Back in the day, even mild profanity prompted strong reactions.
Kids these days are exposed to vulgarities right, left and center. As a result, they become potty-mouths before their ages are in double-digits. Kids think swearing is funny as all-get-out, so they will cuss all over the place.
Mark Twain wrote, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” However, overuse of dirty words takes away from their power. Ergo, use your strong language sparingly. Please keep oaths off protest signs – what’s wrong with one or two letters and a string of grawlixes? If we want profane language to provide relief and ease pain, we need to use naughty words less and family-friendly substitutes more; then we can save the “bombs” for when they are truly needed.
The Met Opera is taking (most of) the month of February off as regards live performances. But tht does not affect the radio broadcasts, which are featuring archival material. Yesterday, we heard an opera recorded exactly fifty years and one day prior – a matinee of Verdi’s “MacBeth.” One thing that made this broadcast special is that both MacBeth and Lady MacBeth are still alive – he is 99 and she is 85 – and new interviews with both were included as intermission features (Banquo is also alive – at 80, the baby of the cast – but that’s a smaller part, and he does not live in America.) The opera follows Skakespeare closely, unless you want to quibble about 3 witches becoming a whole stage-full, including the ballet corps (Paris would not perform any opera without a ballet.) Not to belittle the stars, who are in fact legends and have proven their quality many times over, but Verdi’s music is so powerful that no one needs to be an actor to pull it off. The music does the acting and rivets the audience. Performing in the original play is much more tricky.
Also yesterday, I received a petition from Lakota Law to increase indigenous representation particularly when indigenous experience is part of the story. Seems like a no brainer to me – but we are still fighting for it. This link should work to get you there.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Independent (UK) – Man missing both legs dies after cops shot him at least eight times
Quote – In a confrontation captured on video by a bystander and posted to social media, Mr Lowe, who uses a wheelchair, is seen holding a knife and scrambling away from multiple police officers who appear to be pointing weapons at him. Shortly thereafter, police shot Mr Lowe multiple times and killed him. Click through. I can hear all the white Republicans “But ha had a knife! And he stabbed someone!” None of that entitles police to replace judge, jury, and executioner. For God’s sake. were these supposed tough guys seriously afraid of a double amputee, trying to move on mere stumps? But to white Republicans, people of color are not actually human.
The Nib (Whit Taylor) – Black Mothers Face Far Worse Health Outcomes. How Do We Fix It?
Quote – The day after delivering her baby by emergency C-section, [Serena] Williams became short of breath and suspected she may have a blood clot, given her history of them. Walking out of her room, she notified the nurse of her condition but was told that the pain medication may have been making her confused…. The CT scan revealed that Williams was right; she had life threatening blood clots in her lungs. And coughing from the pulmonary embolism led to abdominal hemorrhaging at the site of her c-section incision…. Click through for full comic. I have often said that the the role of the comedian, since time immemorial, is and has been to speak truth to power (and I’ll keep saying it as long as I have breath.) Case in point here. This Black History Month (as always) cartoonists are saying in cartoons what no one else, apparently, has the spine to put into words. I’ll be using cartoons through the month when that happens.
