All posts by Joseph

Political Rants

Week One.

A lot might be said of any administration’s first week in office, Because we’re coming off of a presidency like no other, and not in a good way, there’s going to be a tendency among members of the press to be more deferential than might otherwise seem appropriate. On a human level, that’s understandable – White House correspondents are happy to see the daily briefing return, and to see it managed with a lot less tone. After four years of being subjected to withering attacks from Trump and his crew, reporters are breathing a sigh of relief and, I’m sure, hoping that this signals a return to the normal routines of previous presidencies, when there existed a more generally congenial symbiotic relationship between the press and the press office. (There was symbiosis between Trump’s administration and the press, but it was of a more corrosive variety.) They want their cheap-glamor White House Correspondents Dinner back, roast and all.

I’m not sure they’re going to get their wish this time, not entirely. The media universe is much more fragmented now then it was even five years ago, and the broad flaccid consensus that the mainstream media so worships may prove elusive. This is a divided country, with what looks like a larger number of people on the side of our standard mediated democratic governance, and a large minority seemingly (and in many cases openly) advocating for autocracy. It’s really more than advocacy, though – large numbers of them have been moved to violence, murder, and active disruption of the constitutional order, such as we saw on January 6. Now the vast majority of the insurrectionists have melted back into their home communities, unmolested, perhaps celebrating their success at delaying the electoral vote certification beyond the statutory deadline. Millions of people believe ridiculous lies about fraudulent votes in the last election – it’s hard to move on from that fact.

As we approach an impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump’s second, Republican senators are taking issue with the process, attempting to stop the trial by arguing that because Trump left office, the issue is moot. When the facts aren’t on their side, Republicans always go for process. They’re doing everything they can to obstruct the majority. I have to say, it is not surprising but still shocking that, after that Trump-fueled hate mob busted into the capitol looking for Pence’s head and those of the Congressional leadership, these senators can still casually tut tut over the effort to hold the former president accountable. They were almost impaled on the end of a pitchfork just three weeks ago, and yet they still go to bat for the outside strategy … and for every rube to remain duped. Un-effing-believable.

I started critical coverage of the Biden administration on this past week’s episode of Strange Sound, with a focus on foreign policy. I encourage you to do the same, even if just for your own edification.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Space friends.

2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, not many people gave Nixon the credit he deserved as a singer of songs. Not President Nixon, of course – he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. I mean the Nixon android from Ned Trek. Now THERE’S a chanteuse if ever I heard one.

Oh, hey … what’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up. Space, that’s what …. waaaay up. We were just thinking about potential markets for our music. One could be the local Firemen’s Field Days – those rustic events always cry out for entertainers. We might pick up maybe four, even five new listeners. Then there’s the people across the street, up on the third floor. They seem weird enough to like us. We could ask. I suppose if I put Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out on the street with sandwich boards and a bell, we might be able to drive up some interest. Then there’s the overseas market and what we call the over-skies market – outer space. Lots of untapped potential there.

Sure, there are logistical issues, right? I mean … we could send Marvin to Mars with the sandwich boards and bell, and see if anybody on that dusty little world bites. That may be a bit too retail for the extraterrestrial market. We need to do broad-spectrum outreach – the kind of marketing that blankets entire solar systems with positive messaging. Even if we get one one-hundredth of one percent of the punters on, say, Aldebaran three, that’s enough paying customers to keep us in pub cheese for the rest of the year. And it’s only January! This could be like those automated robocalls, always fishing for a live one. We may have to piss off whole civilizations with our annoying spam calls in order to reap a few hundred listeners, but hey …. interplanetary harmony is greatly overrated. When’s the last time Earth had a serious dispute with its nearest celestial neighbors? Not recently, that’s when.

But what is the music of the spheres?

The next question is, do we have the kind of music that the public wants on, say, Aldebaran three? Well, there’s no way to be sure. We can make an educated guess, though. Or we could ask our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee whether he has any ideas. (That could be dangerous, however.) We do have some idea of space alien music tastes just from recent media reports. The Guardian, for instance, did a story on a signal from Proxima Centauri that was detected by radio telescopes. The signal contained a single pure tone at around 982 MHz. That sounds like one of those Cage compositions, right? So maybe we need to go in more for the longhair stuff to get the Centauri crowd rocking. Matt and I are talking about doing some one-note songs …. and I DON’T mean One-Note Samba (which actually has more than one note in it).

That’s where Mitch Macaphee comes in – we need a big-ass antenna to broadcast our one-note tunes into deep space. Get to work on it, Mitch! We’ll work on the songs, you build the radio telescope. From each according to his/her talents.

Political Rants

That happened.

This is the first blog post I’ve posted since the end of the Trump presidency on Wednesday at noon. Congratulations, America – we got the stiffs off the property. That’s the good news. As in previous years when presidents I despised were defeated and sent packing, my inauguration day focus was on the departure of the jackass, which I watched this week with great pleasure. In the end, Trump slunk away out the back door of the White House, into his government provided chopper, over to Joint Base Andrews where he gave a farewell address that, one would hope, every school child will learn by heart … just so that there’s a chance we will never have to do this again. (Fat chance, right? This is America, after all.) “Have a good life,” said the now ex-president in one of his last utterances as Chief Executive of the nation. Like that’s a choice, right? He’s had one, but that was preordained by the gods of money.

The network coverage of the transition of power was about what you would expect. The focus tends to be on the pomp and circumstance, the traditions, the contrasts between the incoming and outgoing administrations, the bipartisan spirit of continuance, etc. Inasmuch as the riotous attack on the Capitol building took place only two weeks before the inaugural ceremony, it was impossible for them to avoid the inherently divisive nature of what was taking place. No matter how much they show Mitch McConnell grinning ear to ear (behind his mask, of course) or Roy Blunt joking about Amy Klobuchar, the fact remains that the Republican party was all-in for Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, that more than 145 members of the House caucus voted not to accept the electoral count, and that more than eighty percent of registered Republicans believe the president handled himself well during the transition period. It takes more than a little bunting to conceal that magnitude of support for, frankly, what amounted to an attempted coup.

Still, let’s dwell for a moment on the fact that Trump and his minions are gone. Let’s take a moment to celebrate the fact that this would-be autocrat no longer has his finger on the nuclear trigger, or the other vast powers of the presidency. Let us rejoice in the fact that his attempted coup was a failure, even though it provides a road map for future coup plotters. Let us be thankful that there has thus far been no replay of the pitched attack that took place on January 6, though many of the responsible parties remain at large and their enablers in Congress remain in office. Let us be hopeful that the new administration will deal seriously with the COVID crisis and other priorities, even though we know we will have to push them to do the right thing.

Indeed, the best way for us to celebrate this transition – and the end of that awful thing that happened these past four years – is to stay on our toes and remain active. That’s the only path forward.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.