Barack Obama Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

US “Bregret” already?

The Indivisible:

As early as late November, I was reading about some voters for the Republican candidate for President feeling regret about their vote. It’s similar to how many people in the United Kingdom felt after the Brexit vote in 2016; they had Bregret.

djt has promised huge tariffs on goods from China. Somehow, Americans didn’t understand that that would likely result in retaliatory tariffs on American goods. Now, he’s suggesting a tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, our largest trading partners, even though we are in a USMCA (NAFTA successor) agreement that would preclude that from taking place until 2026.

This is presumably to”teach them a lesson” about US border security. The first rule of tariff wars is that no one wins a tariff war. If they respond in kind, which Mexico has already promised, this will increase the pain in Americans’ wallets.

Some contractors and farmers who supported him have talked about how they don’t know what they’re going to do if half of their workers are deported.

12 People Who Had Literally No Idea What Their Trump Vote Meant.

We don’t need no education

Hey, if the federal Department of Education is eliminated – a bill to do so has already been introduced – many of its services will also disappear. That’s the subtext of this link, which notes that Oklahoma has nevertheless found money to buy Bibles, optimally for every classroom.

Now, he says he can’t promise he’ll be able to lower grocery prices. An article in WaPo, behind a paywall, is titled, “After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits.” It begins:

“NEW CASTLE, Pennsylvania — Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.

“The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.”

Reaganomics redux

Here’s a fun fact from Heather Cox Richardson: “Laura Mannweiler of U.S. News and World Report estimated the worth of Trump’s current roster of appointees to be at least $344.4 billion, more than the gross domestic product of 169 countries. That number does not include Scott Bessent, whose net worth is hard to find. In comparison, Mannweiler notes, the total net worth of the officials in Biden’s Cabinet was about $118 million.

“The incoming administration will advance a different economic vision. Instead of trying to expand the economy through investment in infrastructure and manufacturing [as the Biden administration did], his team has emphasized cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations and slashing regulations. The argument behind this approach to the economy is that concentrating wealth in the hands of investors will spur more investment while creating an environment that’s ‘friendly’ to business will create jobs.”It’s classic Reaganomics trickle-down, crony capitalism at its finest.

“Don’t test us.”

After Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and inaugurated in 2009, with solid majorities in the popular and Electoral College votes, Republicans served as the “loyal opposition.” This concept “indicates that the non-governing parties may oppose the actions of the sitting [government] while remaining loyal to the formal source(s) of the government’s power, such as the… constitution.”

I jest. The Tea Party movement simmered up in 2009, clearly a disloyal opposition designed to thwart his efforts at every turn. That he got anything done, especially after his first two years, was pretty miraculous.

Yet the message from this incoming administration and their allies is that the Democrats just should shut up, get out of the way, and let Orange be Orange. Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: “You issued a message to the department the day after the election commenting that the military will follow ‘lawful orders’ from the new president—a thinly veiled and baseless insinuation that [djt] will issue unlawful orders.” Baseless? Eh. Yet, Pete Hegseth, the choice to head Defense, is a train wreck.

Tom Homan, the incoming border czar, “plans to bring harsh consequences to any sanctuary city leader who threatens to hinder efforts by immigration authorities from mass-deporting illegal aliens.”

djt’s sometimes wacky Cabinet nominees shouldn’t need to be confirmed by the Senate! His words should be sufficient for the process. His media censorship arsenal is growing.

Resistance

So what is the response? The Union of Concerned Scientists notes: “We—and our supporters across the country—have a vital role to play in defending the progress we’ve made at the federal level, advancing our goals at the state level, and exposing and pushing back against the abuses that are likely to come. We’re clear about the threats we face, but we must move forward with hope and determination.” A key tenet is “Protecting democracy, state-by-state.” California is on board.

The Indivisible Guide: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink is encouraging. It acknowledges the need to grieve for a while. I can’t live in despair for the next two or four years, and trust me, it would be very easy for me to do so. I’m holding onto the frankly uncomfortable thought that there will be a backlash to higher prices and other bad outcomes.

I know that some people are not there yet. Heck. I may not be there myself, but I pride myself on hoping I’ll get there eventually because the alternative is too dismal. There needs to be a response to what Cornel West called “American gangsterism crystallized, honest about itself, unashamed and bold.”

How djt Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6

‘A Day of Love’: The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom for their ultimate political gain.

Review: Across the Spider-Verse

Miles Morales

There have been recent Marvel movies that I’ve thought about viewing (Guardians 3, e.g.) and I still may. When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse came out, though, I HAD to see it. The fact that that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a pretty good gauge of popular culture on his Substack, loved it only added to my anticipation.

Spider-Man is my favorite character in the Marvel universe. During COVID, I saw all of the iterations of all of the Spidey films I had missed, which made No Way Home so delicious.

Still, my favorite webslinger film was the animated Into the Spider-Verse featuring Miles Morales. Across is a follow-up to that.

Isn’t it? The lengthy beginning of the film, before the credits, made me wonder for a time. Oh, yeah, there’s our young hero saving his neighborhood and frustrating his parents with… whatever secret he’s obviously keeping.

Gwen Stacy, a Spidey from a different sphere, shows up. This eventually prompts the Brooklyn-based teen to cross the Multiverse to join forces with other Spider-People to take on a calamitous villain Miles thinks he may be responsible for.

Without giving anything away, the film leans into the overarching mythos of the webslingers.

Obamaesque?

I was fascinated by the New Yorker article The Post-Racial Vision of “Across the Spider-Verse.” The subhead: “The movie treats its fantastical multiethnic team of superheroes and their forays into cultural determinism with Obama-like breeziness and tact.”

The key paragraph: “The appeal [of Miles’ character] is so universal—or, some might say, neutral—that even right-wing pundits who have dedicated the past few years to getting mad at every superhero or children’s film with a minority lead seem to have mostly given Miles Morales a pass. In what must have come as a surprise to its readers, ‘Worth It or Woke?,’ a Web site that disapprovingly assesses the wokeness of Hollywood releases, recently gave ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ a positive eighty-one-per-cent rating.

“Though it determined that the film took a ‘beloved character’ and ‘race-swapped in the name of Leftist virtue signaling,’ it briefly included the movie in its list of films that were ‘worth it.’ (The recommendation was ultimately pulled when the author of the review noticed that one of the characters had a ‘Protect Trans Kids’ sign in her bedroom.)” [Of COURSE it was.]

So Across the Spider-Verse has managed to walk the fine line of creating “representation” without ticking off the people who find the concept an anathema. Having Spideys from India and Japan, it appears, is OK by almost everyone.

The one structural difficulty is the same issue as Avengers: Infinity War; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1; and virtually every movie’s second act. I want to see the next film NOW.

Venue

I saw the film at the Regal Theatre at Colonie Center near Albany. It’s not my favorite venue, but, at the time, the Spectrum was closed on Wednesdays, fortunately no longer the case.

So many ads and infotainment! The noon movie started at 12:25.

Ron DeSantis is a snowflake

Dreams from Our Founding Fathers:

Having spent too much time thinking about the Republican governor of Florida over his book bans and other nonsense, I had privately concluded that Ron DeSantis is a snowflake. As I looked up the term’s meaning, you might think, “Well, maybe.”

Wikipedia defines it as “a derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions.”

On Last Week Tonight this month, John Oliver pointed to “a recent advertisement created by DeSantis and his team based on ‘Top Gun,’ which DeSantis’ camp called ‘Top Gov.’ In it, DeSantis is shown teaching new ‘recruits’ how to deal with the media, showing clips of how DeSantis himself has ‘never ever [backed] down from a fight.’

“In one clip, DeSantis seemingly stops a reporter from giving a ‘speech’ during a press conference. DeSantis is constantly complaining about the media taking him out of context. But in that particular clip, ‘he’s removing some pretty important context from the media,'” not letting her do her job.

Oliver notes, “He doesn’t hate all media – ‘even by Republican standards, the mutual affection between him and Fox is pretty extreme.’ During one four-month stretch, the network asked him to appear on air 113 times, nearly once a day, which is ‘just pathetic.'” Even a softball interview he did was pretty weird.

Entitled, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing views? Check.

Diminishing freedom

DeSantis, and the Florida legislature, are leading forces in what Weekly Sift rightly describes as Imaginary problems, real laws, real victims. The Stop WOKE Act and the Parental Rights in Education Act (a.k.a. Don’t Say Gay) have led to a functional book ban that DeSantis denied; he lies. He has taken over the trustee board of the New College of Florida. (Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, is offering admission to all NCF students to match their current cost of tuition. )

Not that Desantis is alone in his overreach. “To my knowledge, there has been no drag-queen crime wave. So why do legislators in 15 states find it necessary to pass anti-drag laws their states never needed before? The answer has more to do with changes in Republican politics than changes in American society.” Mark Evanier noted that “the current move to restrict drag shows and people dressed unlike the norm for their gender — whatever that is these days — is ridiculous.”

The author

From Business Insider: DeSantis’ first book was his 2011 tome, Dreams from Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama. The book’s title aimed to criticize Obama by playing with the name of the president’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. “DeSantis even used a similar cover to the one Obama had…

“DeSantis was also critical of Obama personally, calling him ‘first in his own mind’ and saying, ‘he actually believed that he was a historically special figure.’ In one section of the book, DeSantis wrote that Obama lacked the humility of George Washington, the first US president.

“He wrote that Obama had a ‘palpable cockiness’ and ‘made outlandish claims about his own significance as an individual.’ “He accused the Obama campaign of having a ‘messianic posture.'” All of that is his right, even as he seemed as obsessed with BHO as DJT was/is.

“Eleven years later, the DeSantis campaign ran an ad during his 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign that intimated DeSantis was uniquely chosen by God as a ‘fighter.'” DeSantis seems to despise Obama and yet emulates the traits he said he hated in the 44th President.

White House

I don’t know whether he’s actually running for President, let alone how he’ll do. Interestingly, some Republican members of Congress dissed him over calling the Ukraine war a “territorial dispute.” They must assume he is seeking higher office.

September rambling: perfect Yiddish word

Rebecca Jade interview, Middle Earth debate

An Ode to Oy — the Perfect Yiddish Word

And speaking of which: Rings of Power Cast Slams Racist Threats Against Performers: “Middle-Earth Is Not All White.” This hurts my head. Someone wrote, and I’ve misplaced the attribution, I’m afraid: “When did we stop being able to just sit down and enjoy something that’s been created? Just take all shows and movies as fan fiction of any book that they take it from and enjoy the creators’ stories.”

Sah Quah: More than twenty years after the American Civil War, an enslaved Alaskan walked into a Sitka courtroom and sued for his freedom

The Church Left on the Curb: A chance trash-day encounter reveals a 170-year institutional history

Bernard Shaw, CNN’s First Chief News Anchor, Dies at 82

Anne Garrels, the longtime foreign correspondent for NPR, dies at 71

Culcha

In Memorium Video from this year’s Emmys and going about a decade back

Jazz Pianist & NEA Jazz Master Ramsey Lewis Dies at His Chicago Home, September 12, at the age of 87

“Weird Al” Yankovic on the Long, Hard Road to Bring His Mock Biopic to the Big Screen

Ken Levine ends his blog, but his podcast will continue

At 100, Norman Lear Looks Back (And Ahead)

Whiz! Bang! Boom! Energetic Ads Hold Viewers’ Attention

Real Money, Fake Musicians: Inside a Million-Dollar Instagram Verification Scheme

Quentin Tarantino, Miramax Settle ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFT Legal Battle

Flin Flon: One Book’s Unlikely Survival

Has a computer ever passed the Turing test?

The Twisted Life of Clippy, Microsoft’s annoying paperclip. Its developers never imagined the virtual assistant would become a cultural icon.

Some good advice from John Green

Of Elbows and Tables

Best State Capitals to Live In – 2022 Edition. Albany, NY, is #9.

The Small Town In New York With More Historic Buildings Than Any Other

Can Something Be “Very Unique”? Modifying Absolute Adjectives

Now I Know: What About Bob (dot com)? and The Wisdom of Crowds of Sports Fans? and The Almost-War Over a Bear’s Missing Privates

Polly ticks

President and Mrs. Obama Become a Part of White House History with Reveal of Official Portraits, and Barack Obama just won the Emmy

How deranged anti-Obama conspiracy theories led America to Donald Trump

Fascist is a description, not an insult, and “Semi-Fascism”: The Shoe Fits

Judge Cannon’s Incredibly Flawed Trump Special Master Ruling

The faulty premise of the ‘2,000 mules’ trailer about voting by mail in the 2020 election

How Many Of ‘Her Emails’ Were Classified? Actually, Zero

Thomas, Barrett will further delegitimize SCOTUS when they fail to recuse on key cases

The Battle for Voters’ Imaginations over Abortion. Pete Buttigieg was correct.

When We Rose to Fight COVID, We Were Deliberately Turned Against Each Other

The Return of the Bitter Politics of Envy

UN Report Highlights Ongoing Racism in the US

Nebraska HS newspaper and journalism program shut down over student-written commentary on LGBTQ+ issues. The shutdown of the prize-winning student newspaper after 54 years occurred because an edition in June contained student-written commentary on LGBTQ+ issues, the origins of Pride Month, and the history of homophobia, material members of the local school board considered inappropriate.

Demographics

U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

Most and Least Ethnically Diverse Cities in the U.S.

Demographic divide – the key differences in media and entertainment that continue to evolve between younger and older Americans.

New Data Reveal Inequality in Retirement Account Ownership

When and How Often People Marry Changes by Birth Cohort

MUSIC

Behind the Beats article about Rebecca Jade by the Smooth Jazz Network!

The In Crowd – the Ramsey Lewis Trio

The Comedians – Dmitry Kabalevsky. The second section, The Galop, is EXTREMELY familiar to me.

Wade In The Water – Ramsey Lewis

Jonchaies by Iannis Xenakis

Coverville 1412: The Clash Cover Story III and 1413: The Squeeze Cover Story III

Conductor Seiji Ozawa leads the Vienna Philharmonic in Strauss’s overture to Die Fledermaus

Hang On Sloopy – Ramsey Lewis Trio. I still have the Hang On Ramsey album on vinyl

If You Could Read My Mind – Gordon Lightfoot

General Colin Powell (1937-2021)

octogenarian with multiple myeloma

The first substantial story about the death of Colin Powell that I saw appeared in Common Dreams. “Colin Powell, Who Helped George W. Bush Lie Nation Into Iraq War, Dead at 84.”

Further: “It’s crucial to remember just how important Colin Powell was to selling the Iraq War, and how deliberately he used his public credibility to boost the lies that pushed us into the war. That is his biggest legacy.”

Certainly, as someone who was vigorously active in opposing the Iraq war for months before it began in 2003, I recognize the outsized role his United Nations presentation played in “legitimizing” the 2003 invasion. They never did find those weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have had.

Still, I’m uncomfortable defining most people over their biggest mistake. It is especially so when Powell acknowledged and regretted the speech repeatedly, calling it the biggest blunder in his career.

From Daily Kos: “Born in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican parents, Powell was a retired four-star general who served in multiple administrations. He was an icon of the Republican Party, serving as the youngest and first Black national security adviser under former President Ronald Reagan and first Black national security adviser and as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush.”

“In 2008, during then-candidate Barack Obama’s presidential run, Powell stood up to decry those who falsely called Obama a Muslim in order to discredit him… In his later years and during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, Powell began to move away from the party he had affiliated himself with for so long.”

Vaccine disinformation

It is true that Powell died of complications from COVID-19, though he was fully vaccinated. But it’s also accurate that the octogenarian was being treated for multiple myeloma, cancer that forms in certain white blood cells.

So when John Roberts, Fox News‘ co-anchor of “America Reports,” tweeted news of Powell’s death to promote vaccine disinformation, he was rightly blasted.

“According to… Roberts, Secretary Powell’s [breakthrough] death ‘raises new concerns about how effective vaccines are long-term,’ which is both manipulative and false, given the facts surrounding his health – namely that he was 84 and battling cancer that impacts the body’s ability to fight infections… Roughly 7,100 such deaths have been reported in the US, with 85% occurring in patients 65 and older.

“Vaccine disinformation is ‘a big reason behind low inoculation rates,’ the L.A. Times recently reported… Fox News aired claims that undermine COVID-19 vaccines on 99% of days in the last six months, according to research by progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America. Only two days from April through September didn’t feature the sowing of doubt about the safe and effective shots.”