True Things 12, With Some Opinions at the End

I was interested in how many of Mike Johnson's constituents receive SNAP benefits* and came across a map of House districts, which indicated the percentages of SNAP recipients in each.  In Johnson's district, Louisiana's 4th, 16.9% of the residents receive SNAP.  And won't, starting tomorrow.

Percentage ranges are differentiated by color on the map - the darker the green, the higher the percentage.  The highest range - 18% and over (ooh - Mike missed it by 1.1%!), is represented by a very dark green, indeed.  

There are only 33 Congressional Districts in which the percentage of SNAP beneficiaries is 18% and over, so I looked into it.  They range up into the high 20s, with Pennsylvania's 2nd District at 32.7%.  That's northeast Philadelphia, clearly a tough place to live.

I wondered who represented these districts, arguably the poorest in the country.  I looked it up (Wikipedia is a great help), and here is the answer:

  Democrats:    26

  Republicans     7

No wonder the Republicans are letting SNAP expire, and not using the very funds put aside for this emergency to ensure that it continues.  Although it's hard for me to understand how those seven Republican Congressmen (and Mike Johnson, who's 1.1% from being the eighth) live with themselves.   

* - Opinion:  none.  Mike Johnson has a constituency of one.

True Things 11

You probably saw this, but I just read about it:

Two days ago South Korea presented Donald Trump with a gold crown. This occurred on the sidelines of a global economic summit that Trump did not attend.

It's a replica of an ancient crown, and only gold plate, not solid, but it's not clear that Trump knows this.

Question:  Is this a brilliant dunk on Donald Trump by the South Koreans?  Even a little bit?  Trump was also awarded the ancient Kingdom's highest honor - the Grand Order of Mugunghwa.  Really?  I would be the last to poke fun at someone else's cultural artifacts, but - really?  This is the President who awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ed Meese, a bunch of sportsball players, Antonin Scalia, and Rush Limbaugh.  So... ?

True But Not True Thing

 "No more SNAP benefits for you until the Democrats let us take away your health care."

                                                                                    Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

He said it, but just not in those words.  What he actually said:

"I haven't seen that.  I don't know anything about that."

Or was that what he said about expiring Medicaid benefits?  Or about the President hijacking the appropriation process?  Or about not swearing in Adelita Grijalva?  Or about the Epstein files?  Or about Donald Trump's effectively abolishing the House of Representatives?

He did say that he "'deeply regrets' that millions of Americans will lose SNAP benefits," after working hard to pass the Big Ugly Budget Bill in July, which cut $186 billion from SNAP, and after not using his leadership position to release the $6 billion SNAP emergency fund.  

So once again, a prominent Republican is either ignorant, or lying.

Could it be that we are seeing the resurgence of the Know-Nothing Party?  

Nah.  Still the Lying Liars that Lie Party.

The Local View

 

                                                                                                   Provincetown Independent, today

That's No Ballroom...

 

                                                                                                                                - Mark Hamill

Breaking My Word

From Heather Cox Williamson this morning:

Yesterday the Trump administration said it would not use any of the approximately $6 billion the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) holds in reserve to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The government shutdown means that states have run out of funds to distribute to the more than 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to put food on the table...

... Yesterday’s USDA memo also says that any states that tap their own resources to provide food benefits will not be reimbursed.

So even when the government is functioning (?) again, it will not allow SNAP recipients to use the food reserves they applied for and were guaranteed.

Remember:  SNAP benefits will be eliminated (Nov. 1) because the government is shut down.  The government is shut down because Congressional Republicans and the President (?) don't think that a particular segment of America should get the health insurance supports that they were promised.

This means two things:

1 - Republicans have no interest in using government to make sure we all have the bare minimum.  This pisses me off, but it's nothing new

2 - Republicans have broken America's word to Americans.  Which means they've broken my word to my friends and neighbors.  The really pisses me off.

True Things 10

"I'm the President and the Speaker."

                      President  (not Speaker) Donald J. Trump

"We don't need to pass any more bills."

                     President Donald J. Trump, to GOP Senators

“It is clear that Donald Trump has effectively abolished the House of Representatives”

                      Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Two things about these things:

1.  Trump is saying that the separation of powers, a foundation of the Constitution, is no more.

2.  Trump is saying that he is consolidating power.  This is a foundation of Fascism.

All these things are true things. 

True Things 9 - Karma

You're familiar with this response to a bizarre occurrence:  "You can't make this stuff up."  In some cases, you can't make it up because if you did, it wouldn't be realistic enough for anyone to 1) believe it or 2) enjoy it as entertainment.  Even fiction needs to comply with the unwritten rules of connection to the real world:  it needs to fit, somehow, with our notion of how the world works.  If it's just randomly bizarre, or extreme, or improbably coincidental, it's not worthy of our attention.

With that in mind, today's True Thing, and the coincidental fallout:

• President Trump today cut off tariff negotiations with Canada over a TV ad, produced and aired by the Province of Ontario, that showed Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.  (This is a whole other thing in itself).
• The first game of the World Series will be played in Toronto tonight,* watched by millions all around the world.**
• The 'Star Spangled Banner' will be played before the game.

What happens during that rendition of our national anthem - in a huge stadium populated mostly by Canadians - is anybody's guess.  My guess is it will include the word "Boo!!" and it won't be referring to Halloween.

* -  The Toronto Blue Jays are the only reason why the term "World" Series has any legitimacy at all, as flimsy as that is.

** - 15.2 million last year.

Priorities

 “Since you can no longer afford insurance that covers X-rays, I can instead show you the plans for the White House ballroom.”

                                                                                                                            The New Yorker, today

No Poetry Inside

 Can I just repeat a post I did in April?  I listen to a community radio station, where all the DJs are volunteers and they play whatever they want.  One has started his three-hour show each week, at least since April, with "Broken Truth" by Tim Grimm.  Each week, and we still hear it, reliably, at 9:30 AM on Monday.  I just finished listening to it.  Again.

Here are the lyrics that I posted in April.  Nothing's changed.    

Last verse:

 Nine years we’ve lived with sorrow, nine years we shook our heads

The Times they are a Changin’, and Honey in the Lion’s head

It’s time we lift the hammer and ring them bells instead.

It’s time we stamp these fires out and let the Peace be spread...

Chorus: 

    Don't it break your heart ? Cause it breaks my heart

    Damn that man who tears this country apart

    He's got no shame, got no soul

    Got no poetry inside to make him whole...

That's what we've been doing, isn't it?  Lifting the hammers - not to break or damage anything or anyone, but to ring them bells.  Not to set fires, but to stamp the fire out.  It's hard, though, to stay positive, constructive, hopeful.  Most revolutions were, in part, at least, violent.*

It still breaks my heart.

* - The Velvet Revolution in what was then Czechoslovakia is a notable exception.  Vaclav Havel and the Czech people created a peaceful transition from post-WWII Communist rule to a parliamentary democracy with free and fair elections.  Havel is a particular hero** of this half-Czech American.

** - No just because he was friends with Mick Jagger.

No Kings Provincetown

Outer Cape showed up.  The park wasn't nearly big enough:

It's off-season, and Oyster Fest is going on in Wellfleet, so you'd figure everyone would be there.  Nevertheless:

Abbey really wanted to use the same sign message as we did in April.  I think it's because she didn't want to have to carry the sign...

One sign in P'town said:  "Antifa won WWII."  True, that.

This is what democracy looks like.  And we need to keep showing up.

True Things 8 - No Kings Day

 During an interview last spring, this exchange took place:

Journalist:  "Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?”

Trump:  “I don’t know.” 

See you in the streets. 

And A Couple of Opinions (and a fact)

The quote from Ron Suskind's article in the previous post, about those in power now determining what is real and what is not, is perhaps the most significant paragraph written in the twenty-first century about politics and policy.  The truth, evidence, facts, verification - we no longer base our political behavior and our understanding of policy on those things.  They are just tools to be manipulated.

Donald Trump was elected, both times, because the ground had been prepared.  Republican strategists - including the aide in the article - had been able to distract a large enough portion of the electorate from consideration of facts and evidence, and had helped them replace those verities with anger and outrage by replacing truth with fear.   There was no longer, as Arendt notes, a distinction between fact and fiction.  They were no longer needed.

And so we live in a post-truth world.  A fact:  The Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" the "Word of the Year" in - wait for it - 2016.  The Oxford Dictionaries are based in England, of course, and although America's struggle with the post-truth world could hardly have escaped their notice, you will remember that the Brexit vote was in 2016, as well.  

So, fourteen years after Suskind's conversation, the world, and its future, are fundamentally rocked twice by the truthful fact that truth and fact were over.

True Things 7 - A Compilation

This will just be true things.  A compilation, if you will, of true things.  You get to decide what they mean.  Let's go.

First:  On October 17, 2004, journalist Ron Suskind wrote, in the NY Time Magazine, about a meeting he had with a senior aide to President George W. Bush two years earlier:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Second:  Last Thursday, in a speech to executives of international news agencies belonging to MINDS International, a consortium of leading news agencies, Pope Leo XIV quoted Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism":

"...the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

Third:  Pope Leo XIV is the first American Pope.

Make of it what you will.

True Things 6 - A Two-fer

On Wednesday, at a roundtable on "Antifa," Donald Trump said "Uh, we took the freedom of speech away.”

The context was flag-burning, but really, do we care what the context was?

Today is a two-fer, because on Tuesday Senator Ted Cruz said "How 'bout we all come together and say, 'Let's stop attacking pedophiles?'"

No, He Won't (True Things 5)

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said today, "The president would like to overhaul Obamacare, and give people health insurance that is higher quality and more affordable."

From January, 2017 through January 2019, 'the president' had a majority in both houses of Congress, and couldn't get enough Republicans to vote for their own version of a system of affordable healthcare for America, and it failed.

From January, 2019 through January 2021, the Democratic majority in the House passed several pieces of legislation focused on providing affordable healthcare to more Americans at lower costs (for example, H.R. 3 and H.R. 987).  The Republican majority in the Senate voted not to advance any of this legislation to the President for signature.

From January, 2025 through today, 'the president' has had a majority in both houses of Congress, and has not made any attempt to write legislation that would create a system of affordable healthcare in America, no less one that was better and cheaper than Obamacare.

Those are the true things.  As I've said, this is where I write the truth, plus things I believe.  

This is what I believe, knowing those true things:  Neither Donald Trump nor the Republican Party is interested in making the effort to create a system of affordable healthcare in America. If they were, they would have done it long ago.

I believe that John Thune is lying to us.

What do you believe?

Shutdown Blues

How's your shutdown going?  Yecch.

Republicans are acting as if they've got a high-value hostage, and are cutting off fingers (mass layoffs, no back pay) because Democrats won't  hand over the ransom.  Mike Johnson is actually using a hostage negotiation tactic - "The problem can be dealt with later, after the government reopens;" in other words, "Come out with your hands up and then we'll discuss your demands."  Yeah, sure you will.  Do I look like an idiot?  And what, I wonder, do Johnson and Thune think is "the problem:"  the elimination of Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies that expire at the end of the year, or the fact that they're not getting what they want?  If the former, they're acknowledging that what they themselves did is a problem; if the latter, yecch.

This seems a good place to put down a pet peeve marker.  A recent picture of Hakeem Jeffries shows him behind a sign that says "Save Healthcare."  "Saving Healthcare" is not what this is about.  There is still, and will be, healthcare.  Any issue in that realm we can lay at the door of RFK Jr., but that's a different story.  There is still healthcare available, if you can afford it, meaning if you're rich or, like Abbey and I, incredibly lucky enough to have employment-based insurance that continues after retirement.  This issue is "Affordable Healthcare."  I know that's an awkward phrase that doesn't play well in the media, but it's the accurate truth.  Sticking to the "Save Healthcare" trope opens Democrats to criticisms about being inaccurate ("Of course there's healthcare!  What's wrong with you?"), and about downplaying the needs of the majority of Americans who put off healthcare because it's too expensive.

Republican lawmakers and their high-dollar constituents can, apparently, afford all the healthcare they need.  We need to focus on the inhuman greed represented by their refusal to let all of us help everyone be healthy.

Showing Up

A thought about the outrage that is greeting the Administration's use of ICE to terrorize people of color, and their illegal use of National Guard troops to police cities that vote blue:  the outrage is the whole point.  Once you're outraged - mission accomplished.

There is a significant proportion of right-wing Republicans who need this and only this:  overweight, heavily-armed white men in fatigues swaggering through cities they've never been to.  That's all they need:  show them that on the TV, and they've got the wish-fulfillment fantasy that they need.  In their minds, they're on it, striding with their buds, guns ready, chests out, masks on, ready to rumble.  At least in their fantasies.  In reality, they're slumped on their couches in Middle America, not doing much of anything except complaining about things they don't understand.

They don't care about crime in Chicago or Portland or LA.  They don't care about any of the complexities of immigration policy, and they don't care that American citizens are being victimized just because of the color of their skin.  They just want to piss off liberals; to show them what it's like to be a real man.  They are products of Fox News, country music, the internet, and generations of toxic masculinity, and once those righteous bros start scaring those other people, no more need be done.  It's never been about accomplishing anything; it's about showing up.  That's all they need.

Bull in a China Shop

Just a thought about the Age of Trump.  I've never really been angry at Trump.  I've pitied him, because he is a pitiful, ignorant, amoral narcissist with powerful friends and his father's money.  Trump is not who is at fault:  we are at fault.  We voted him in, twice.

I didn't, of course.  Neither did you, probably.  But that doesn't matter.  That doesn't separate us from "the American people."  It doesn't even separate us from "the American electorate."  We let him in.  We knew he was a a pitiful, ignorant, amoral narcissist with powerful friends.  Now he's just being him, in an environment which happens to be custom made for his (and his powerful handlers') particular kinks.

A bull in a China shop is going to cause an enormous amount of damage.  But it's not the bull's fault.  The bull is just being a bull in a new environment.  It's the fault of whoever let him into the shop in the first place. 

Probably Mostly Accurate

 

“. . . and then Randy Quaid yells, ‘Hello, boys, I’m back!,’ and flies his jet right into the alien ship, blowing it up, and I think you all just need to be more like that.”

                                                                                                                    The New Yorker, today