Kelly Sedinger Archives - Page 5 of 17

A Sedingerian ARA post

the rules of curling

Kelly Sedinger asked a slew of questions for Ask Roger Anything. And he’s not even from New Jersey. (An old SNL reference.) This makes this a Sedingerian post. Or a Sedingeresque post. You decide.

What do you think of Spam? The actual food product! (I’m still stunned at how beloved it is in Hawaii; you can get Spam at McDonald’s there!)

When my then-girlfriend/now wife went there in 1995 with her parents, she reported the same phenomenon. By the way, I ended up going to New Orleans for work at the same time.

I’m sure I used to eat Spam when I was a kid, maybe in my twenties. As I recall, I liked it. But I’m not sure I’ve had it in the past four decades. I’ll have to try it again.

BTW, from the SPAM FAQ: The true root of the island’s love for SPAM® products goes back to World War II, when the luncheon meat was served to GIs. By the end of the war, SPAM® products were adopted into local culture, with Fried SPAM® Classic and rice becoming a popular meal. The unique flavor quickly found its way into other Hawaiian cuisine, from SPAM® Fried Wontons to SPAM® Musubi, and SPAM® products became a fixture for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Today you’ll find SPAM® dishes served everywhere from convenience stores to restaurants, reflecting a demand that is unmatched by any place in the world.”

Timeshare

For whatever reason, you are required to spend one week someplace that’s no more than an hour away from home. Where are you going?

There’s a timeshare in western Massachusetts that we’ve been to perhaps 25 times in the past quarter of a century. It was initially my parents-in-law’s place, but we’ve taken it over in the place few years.

Once, we were there when our then-baby daughter got a splinter, and we couldn’t get it out. So we took her to a doctor in Albany, then returned to the timeshare the same day.

Sports report

Do you understand the rules of curling? I do not. In fact, I’m not convinced the whole thing isn’t an elaborate prank.

I looked at the rules for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. And I STILL don’t understand them.

Favorite obscure sport?

Foot archery, of course. It is something that I could never do.

Food eating contests: your feelings? (I loathe them, but that’s just me.)

It’s fairly revolting, gluttony as sport; it’s on ESPN! And yet I know Joey Chestnut’s name.

What’s one lesson you learned from any one teacher you had as a kid?

My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Oberlik, taught us to count to 19 in Russian. I can still do that.

Milk as a beverage: Yes or no?

Yes and no. Yes, when served with cookies or, I suppose, pastries. No, when on cereal.

Why is my cat such a doofus? (I doubt you can answer this, but it’s been much on our minds of late)

One of my cats is a doofus. When I come in from outdoors, he runs to the door like he wants to go out. About four years ago, he did go out, and he was terrified when he finally returned over an hour later. Many felines are doofi.

Two more questions will be answered forthwith. Or with forth.

Ronald Reagan and “Are we doomed?”

American exceptionalism?

9-28-1982 President Reagan speaking at the podium at his 13th Press Conference in the East Room

Kelly Sedinger had two somewhat related questions.

I’ve come to believe very strongly that the election of Ronald Reagan is the inflection point whereupon everything went in the wrong direction. Thoughts?

Ronald Reagan is one of the most beloved Presidents ever. He regularly appears in the Top 10 lists of best Presidents.

This one, e.g., quotes a scholar who wrote about the Gipper “winning the Cold War, restoring American economic prosperity rooted in Judeo-Christian values, and optimism about America’s exceptionalism… He understood a) what the Soviet threat was about, b) what we needed to do to defeat it, and he left Bill Clinton a very strong hand. In many ways, we’ve been living off borrowed military capital of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when he inherited a military in disarray.”

However…

Yet, I think Kelly is mostly right. Every economic survey I’ve seen has shown that the disparity in the pay ratio between CEOs and employees began in earnest during his administration, thanks to tax cuts for the rich. The cliche that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is largely true.

These measures also added to the debt. As a percentage, the debt went up more under Reagan than any other 20th or 21st-century President save for the war Presidents Wilson and FDR, and the latter, who served over three terms, was also dealing with the Great Depression.

The New York Times review of The New Jim Crow, which I quoted : “The book marshals pages of statistics and legal citations to argue that the get-tough approach to crime that began in the Nixon administration and intensified with Ronald Reagan’s declaration of the war on drugs has devastated black America.”

Reagan’s response to the AIDS epidemic before 1987 was notoriously awful.

30 March 1981

I’ve long believed that the success of Ronald Reagan in getting his legislative agenda passed in 1981 was partly due to surviving an assassination attempt. And with humor, no less: “Honey, I forgot to duck,” cribbed from boxer Jack Dempsey’s line to his wife the night he was beaten by Gene Tunney in 1926.

The Guardian article concurs. “Such displays of wit and courage under fire helped humanise Reagan and deliver a political boost that shaped his presidency. ‘His personal style of leadership endeared him to people on both sides of the aisle not only in Congress, but around the country… “I think the president and his team were smart enough to realise that here was an opportunity for his brand to demonstrate leadership and put forth ideas that he always believed in but now would perhaps have a greater chance of enacting because of his popularity.'”

During a Presidential debate in 1984, when asked if, at 73, he was too old to be President. Reagan replied, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Even Walter Mondale, his Democratic opponent, laughed.

Communicator

As much as I despised his policies, I understood his appeal. He was an actor, after all, and could call on a line in the script to respond to many situations.

On Quora, a guy named Jonathan Kurtzman learned from Reagan’s staff “how he prepared his speeches… He’d switch words to fit his voice, but then the secret was that he’d read the speech with a pencil and he’d underline each phrase so the words fit his natural breath, his natural cadence, and the emphasis he wanted. An old professional acting trick.

At the time, I wished he were a king with no Constitutional responsibilities at the time. He could go out and give those rah-rah speeches.

Reagan’s terms showed one inflection point. But at least he was still communicating regularly with House Speaker Tip O’Neill.

We fell off the cliff after 1994 and sleazy Newt Gingrich’s Contract On America. Oops, it was the Contract WITH America. It is an easy mistake for me to make. It’s strange, too, because President Bill Clinton was largely a fiscal conservative.

On balance

Scale of 1-10, with 1 being “We are doomed” and 10 being “We’ll get through this and we’ll be better for it”, how do you feel about America right now?

I’ll give us a 2. The greatest issue is climate change, which will screw up everything from food supply to transportation to the inability of homeowners to get affordable insurance for their properties.

The US is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy and inequality. U.S. Education Rankings Are Falling Behind the Rest of the World. We’re not among the 10 Countries With the Best Public Health Systems. Or the top 20. There’s so much more that I’d become depressed if I delved any further.

Yakkity yak

Meanwhile, listening to many of the 2024 Republican candidates who waffle about whether the actions of djt before and after the 2020 election were illegal and immoral is very disheartening. And watching tainted dudes like Gym Jordan and Matt Gaetz grilling Attorney General Merritt Garland would have been laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

You don’t need me to note that the information Americans take in is so fractured that we often operate in different realities. More worrisome, “death threats have become rampant as MAGA culture twists norms and makes once-marginal forms of violence mainstream.”

So why 2 instead of 1? Irrational optimism? Believing that there are enough people who believe in the American promise to turn things around? Yeah, probably. When one is a person of faith, you hope. Maybe it’s like rooting for the Yankees, Red Sox, or Mets, all of whom sucked in 2023. Maybe next year. Or not.

I’ll address all of Kelly’s other queries soon.

August rambling: unchallenged

new Red Cross guidelines

Voters in Ohio reject GOP-backed proposal that would have made it tougher to protect abortion rights. Poor Mike Huckabee complains that “the secular progressive left.. got one step closer to bypassing the legislative process and overturning pro-life, pro-family, and pro-God policies passed by duly elected representatives of the people.”

The Evidence Against djt is Unchallenged. Here are the latest indictments (well latest before Georgia…)

The Heritage Foundation’s scary Mandate for Leadership 2025 will likely be a handbook for the next Republican administration.

Barbados, American Slavery, and Racism

How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S

The Black History of the Montgomery Brawl Folding Chair

Fishing While Black

White Mom Accused of Trafficking Biracial Daughter Sues Southwest: Based on a ‘Racist Assumption’

Global child sexual abuse probe that was launched after two FBI agents were killed led to almost 100 arrests

A Hollywood Insurrectionist’s Path to Extremism

A Pathogen Too Far: How the 1918 Pandemic Revolutionized Virology

On August 7, 2023, the American Red Cross implemented the FDA’s updated final guidance regarding an individual donor assessment for all blood donors regardless of gender or sexual orientation. This change eliminated previous FDA eligibility criteria based on sexual orientation. Here’s a Blood Donation Map.

New Buffalo Bills stadium cost overruns approaching $300M, AP sources say

The Biggest Weirdest Telescope We’ve Ever Built – Hank Green

I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)

There Will Never Be Another Second Life

Library staff closes the book on the missing money mystery after a patron leaves $1,200 in a novel she returned.

William Friedkin, Acclaimed Director of ‘The French Connection’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ Dies at 87. I’m pretty sure I saw The French Connection in Poughkeepsie.

Arthur Schmidt Oscar-Winning Film Editor on ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ and ‘Forrest Gump,’ [and a bunch of other noted films], Dies at 86

Paul Reubens, Comic Behind the Madcap Pee-wee Herman, Dies at 70

Robbie Robertson, 80, Dies; Canadian Songwriter Captured American Spirit

Rodriguez, Musician, and Subject of ‘Searching for Sugar Man,’ Dies at 81

A review of emo songs

Now I Know: The Woman Who Found Herself and An Odd Way to Celebrate Valentine’s Day and Christmas in August, Wisconsin Edition and How Atomic Bombs Blew Up the Counterfeit Art World and How Photography Stopped Disney’s Rollercoaster In Its Tracks and The Triple-X Law Firm

The blog was down

My blog was down for a couple of hours on the evening of August 3. I have this program called Jetpack that lets me know. This wasn’t very pleasant, but whatever. What made me someone crazy is that it went down at least four more times in the next three hours, anywhere between three and twenty minutes.

Then it was down for seven hours on the morning of August 12. Though I have the info backed up, it made me cranky. Should I be looking at other companies, and if so, which ones?

MUSIC

Somewhere Down The Crazy River – Robbie Robertson

The Weight – Featuring Ringo Starr and Robbie Robertson | Playing For Change

Gambia – Sona Jobarteh

Rock N Roll Heart – Lucinda Williams

In Your Love – Tyler Childers

Coverville 1452: Cover Stories for Robert Cray, Rush and A Flock of Seagulls and 1453: The Gamble & Huff Cover Story

Overture to a suite of incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mendelssohn

The Wizard and I – Ariana DeBose

Overture to The Magic Flute by Mozart

She Loves You – MonaLisa Twins

Random unrelated thoughts

tumult

Kelly wrote a brief blog post titled Random unrelated thoughts that are actually quite related.

I had been musing on the same theme. Specifically, his second point: “Americans are very, very, very bad at seeing how societal problems tie into one another.”

ITEM: Per this 2021 article: “The gas tax has not been raised in 28 years, and America’s infrastructure network is suffering the consequences. The tax was last raised in 1993 from 14.1 cents to 18.4 cents per gallon, where it remains today.

“Because the gas tax is not pegged to inflation, its purchasing power has eroded significantly over the past 28 years, and the tax is now ‘worth’ 45 percent less than in 1993; if the tax had been indexed for inflation each year since 1993, it would be approximately 15 cents higher in 2021.”

This is why the vast infrastructure bill became necessary. And of course, certain people – OK, Republicans – are taking credit for a bill they voted against. But there would have been no need for the massive legislation if the gas tax had been raised periodically.

Living wage

ITEM: The federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. That is insane. Several states have a higher threshold.

When market pressure to raise wages occurred, the general argument was why that kid working at Mickey D’s should make $15/hour. It became a shock to the system for many employers.

However, employers would have more easily absorbed the increase if the rate had increased incrementally.

A related topic: the ideal CEO-to-Employee Pay Ratio. This article notes that “The phenomenon of firms with overpaid CEOs and underpaid employees is not new. In 1977, the late Peter F. Drucker, arguably the most famous management thinker, suggested the pay ratio between CEOs and employees be a maximum of 25-to-1.

“However, in 2011, he scaled it slightly back to a ratio of 20-to-1. Drucker said at the time: ‘I have often advised managers that a 20-to-1 salary ratio is a limit beyond which they cannot go if they don’t want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies.'” Yet the ratio is ten times that. Hospital executives are overcompensated, while nurses are underpaid, for example.

From THR. “A-list actors are known to pull in larger paydays, but SAG-AFTRA advocates for all of its 160,000 members, including background actors, singers, dancers, and stunt performers. Only 12.7 percent of SAG members make the annual $26,470 needed to qualify for union health insurance, according to some guild members. Actors made a median salary of $46,960 in 2021.”

Meanwhile, “when he re-upped at Disney as CEO, [Robert] Iger’s 2023 pay package was valued at $27 million. [Warner Brothers’ David] Zaslav’s 2022 compensation package hit $39.3 million.” So Iger is making over 500 times the median SAG salary, yet calls the unions’ demands “just not realistic.”

Democracy

ITEM: With more indictments of djt come more defenses by the usual suspects. The former prez speaks with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, “who leads the House GOP’s messaging efforts,” and their responses parrot their handler. The term “unpresidented” – I mean unprecedented – is thrown around a lot. No president has been charged so often.

But this article from Foreign Policy was helpful. “Trump is just one of 78 political leaders in democratic nations who have faced criminal charges since the year 2000.”

“In the past five years alone, South Korea has convicted two of its former presidents on corruption charges… Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of bribery in 2021… Just last year, former President of Bolivia Jeanine Añez—who stepped forward as a proposed interim president in 2019 following the resignation of her predecessor, Evo Morales—was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was accused of illegally taking over the presidency.

Bibi

Possibly most instructive: “Prosecuting a former leader can also ignite political tensions and destabilize domestic politics. One of the most contemporary examples is Israel, where the charges of corruption against Benjamin Netanyahu sparked a political crisis in 2019 that continues to run its course. It resulted in a tumultuous power swing that saw five elections in four years with Netanyahu returning as prime minister in December 2022 despite his legal troubles. It’s unclear whether he’ll be found guilty, or whether the courts could enforce a guilty verdict.

“Now back in power, Netanyahu has proposed a sweeping judicial overhaul that would give him final say over judge appointments and his government the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions. The proposal led to mass protests this year, and opponents call it a conflict of interest as Netanyahu remains a criminal defendant.”

When leaders aren’t held to account, bad things can happen to democracy.

Recent Supreme Court rulings

rogue court

I wanted to write about recent Supreme Court rulings, some of which I found both disturbing and frankly baffling. Baffling because the justification for taking up at least some of the cases at all were specious. The words weren’t coming, so I have purloined others.

Arthur noted the case that “involved a fundamentalist ‘christian’ web designer who thought one day she might like to create wedding websites, but her religious views compelled her to refuse to create a website for a same-gender couple, in the event she ever started providing such services, of course, and if a theoretical same-gender couple ever tried to hire her services. While the supposed ‘injury’ to her was entirely hypothetical, she sued the State of Colorado, anyway—well, the ultra-far-right ‘Alliance Defending [sic] Freedom [lol]’ sued on her behalf.

Worse, “it emerged that, allegedly, someone named ‘Stewart’ had contacted her through her website’s contact form to try to hire her web services for his marriage to his ‘husband’. The problem was, the whole thing was faked by someone…. He also had no idea his name and details had been used in a Supreme Court case.” The guy, I’ve read, is mortified by this.

And lower courts had passed on the case, but the Supremes took it on.

The ruling allows for violations of well-established public accommodation laws. Specifically, advocates in Massachusetts and elsewhere fear the effect of the ruling. Will some business owners have the right not to serve customers based on personal or religious beliefs?

See also the People for the American Way (PFAW) analysis.

Student loan forgiveness

This piece by the new Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) suggests that CJ John Roberts was intellectually dishonest in his opinion. In her dissent, Elana Kagan said as much. “From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint. At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury, the majority decides a contested public policy issue properly belonging to the politically accountable branches and the people they represent.”

Teresa M. Hanafin addresses some of the questions Boston Globe readers s have asked. “Many of those folks, relieved of that debt, would have helped give the already robust economy a boost: They’d have been able to buy houses, pay down other debt, start small businesses, rely less on other social service programs. It even helps with their mental health.

“Asking why today’s students should get debt relief when yesterday’s students didn’t is a question that could be asked about any social program. Do you think that elders nearing the end of their lives when Social Security was introduced in 1935 demanded that it be squashed because it hadn’t been enacted when they were 65? Should we stop giving food stamps to single mothers simply because most of us don’t need them?

“I’m sorry, but that question is so typically American: If I can’t have it, then neither can you. Oddly, conservatives have that attitude only when it comes to poor and marginalized people; they’re fine with social welfare benefits such as tax cuts for wealthy households and corporations and subsidies for fossil fuel companies…”

See also this PFAW piece.

College Affirmative Action

From PFAW: “Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a powerful dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson. As she has in the past, she pointed out that the far-right justices’ assumptions around race are not based on reality: “

[T]he Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.

Some interesting responses have emerged. lawsuit Uses SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling to Go After Legacy Admissions. “’Harvard’s practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni…must end,’ said one advocate.”

Another fix: With End of Affirmative Action, a Push for a New Tool: Adversity Scores

The broader issue

The Weekly Sift covers these cases but also the broader context of a court bent on overturning precedent, disrespecting lower courts, and ahistoric rules of interpretation.

Arthur: “The court’s far-right Republican majority is doing the one thing that Republicans have long pretended was an unpardonable sin: They’re legislating from the bench.”

Vanity Fair also has taken the wider view: America Has a Supreme Court Problem. “Hillary Clinton tried warning us. Now, what do you do with a rogue Court?” In other words, she told you so.

“A year ago, in their joint Dobbs dissent, justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and former justiceStephen Breyer wrote that the ruling ‘breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law…. It places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.’”

Did anyone REALLY believe the anti-abortion activists would leave the issue to the states? At least some Republican candidates are looking for a federal restriction.

From NCRM:Well-known political expert, author, journalist, and CEO David Rothkopf is blasting conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court after their disastrous rulings…, warning the Court is now a ‘threat to democracy’ and suggesting some justices should be ‘considered’ for impeachment.” Specifically, Justices Alito and Thomas.

The “conservative” response

I’m always monitoring some of the rightwing media. The Daily Signal wrote a piece called To Gain Power, the Left Seeks to Destroy the Supreme Court, which I shan’t link to. The piece bashes Pelosi, the Squad (AOC, et al.).

It seems, in a linked Tweet to suggest that there WASN’T a “stolen Supreme Court seat.” Obama wasn’t allowed by the Senate to replace Antonin Scalia (d. Feb 13, 2016) but djt could replace RBG (d. Sept 18, 2020).

Perhaps off-topic, or maybe not: “Do you remember America?”