Congressional Black Caucus and Donald Trump

Politics is full of emotion. That's understandable. It's always been the case. But politics is also about reaching your goals and advancing your interest. Sometimes emotion can get in the way of doing that. For example, the Congressional Black Caucus recently declined to have a second meeting with President Trump out of the belief that Trump was so opposed to the CBC's agenda that any meeting would merely be a photo op for Trump. If you are so inclined you can read the whole statement here.

Some highlights:

Through an objective assessment, we see no evidence that your administration acted on our calls for action, and we have in fact witnessed steps that will affirmatively hurt black communities," While we agreed to explore possible future discussions when we first met, it has become abundantly clear that a conversation with the entire CBC would not be entirely productive, given the actions taken by your Administration since our first meeting. While you can solicit the engagement of individual members of our caucus, the CBC as a caucus declines your invitation to meet at this time.

As you are well aware, when the leadership of the CBC met with you on March 22, 2017, we presented you with a 130-page policy document because we recognized the opportunity to educate both you and your Administration on the difficult history of Black people in this country, the history of the CBC, and solutions to advance Black families in the 21st Century. Your Administration has yet to provide a response to the policies we presented. Additionally, your Administration has not followed through on a pledge you made to us to facilitate meetings with relevant Cabinet officials.

HBO Game of Thrones Season Seven Trailer (4)

My, my, my. What have we here. Yes, it's another HBO Game of Thrones Season Seven trailer. It looks like Daenerys has made it back to Westeros, but she might not be getting the welcome she assumed. And Littlefinger is still doing his skulking. I hope that Jon and Sansa learn who it was that betrayed Ned in King's Landing. Is Arya finally making it home to Winterfell? Can the Sand Snakes be make less annoying or hopefully written out of the story altogether?  Can Missandei and Grey Worm find happiness even though he's well..wormless? Who will be the Chosen One to defend the realms of men against the White Walkers? Jon? Tyrion? Daenerys? Hot Pie? We shall see.

Book Reviews: Sacculina, The Age of Zeus

Sacculina
by Phillip Fracassi

The various life cycles of Earth's fauna are amazing, wonderful, disgusting and full of horror. It all depends on your point of view. Certainly if cattle, hogs and chickens had the ability to communicate as we do and write down their thoughts for posterity they would all agree that humans are the walking embodiment of evil. What sort of sick b******s raise living beings, nurture them, feed them, ensure that they don't get sick, pump them full of antibiotics and growth hormones and then shove them into the slaughterhouse where they're shot in the head and ripped apart. Hmm?

Caterpillars wouldn't have nice things to say about wasps, while bison and deer would express nothing but white hot hatred for wolves. And yet in a very real way, morals are not as important as continuing to live and to reproduce. We place our lives and those of our children or loved ones or other humans above lesser beings. If I find an insect or rodent nest in my home I eliminate it without considering the morality of slaughtering those creatures. If a dog bites someone we often put down the dog, even if the bitten human broke a rule that was obvious to any self respecting canine. As humans we get to set all the moral rules and make every other creature on the planet subject to them, even if we are the only ones who are aware of them. We can do that because we are the most advanced creatures with a consciousness and a morality. We can also do that because we're at the top of the food chain. 

Sacculina is a novella, really more of a long short story that considers what might occur when that last condition is no longer true. I was reminded of the Cronenberg film They Came From Within. Sacculina is a taut thriller that also puts one in mind of some of Stephen King's or Michael Crichton's early work. The difference is that the characters are not quite as fully developed. But this is not a character driven story. The plot is what matters. 

Jason Whitlock Attacks Lebron James And Reveals His Ignorance

You may have missed it but a few weeks back someone wrote racial slurs on Cleveland Cavaliers small forward LeBron James' offseason Brentwood home. As far as I know the perpetrator hasn't been identified. Thanks to a demanding Day Job I didn't have a chance to write on it when it occurred. As you might imagine, as anyone would have been, James was upset about the violation of his home.

On the eve of his seventh straight NBA Finals, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James’ Los Angeles-area offseason home was vandalized with a racial slur, according to multiple reports. Los Angeles Police Department detectives are investigating an alleged hate crime after someone spray-painted the N-word on the front gate of James’ house in Brentwood, Calif. TMZ Sports first reported the incident, which has since been confirmed by the LAPD through the local NBC affiliate. Police were called to the home around 7 a.m. local time, and the racially charged graffiti was painted over within hours of its discovery, according to reports. 

Chaldeans Blame Trump for Deportations

As you probably know if you've read any prior posts here I don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for resident adult non-citizens who break the law in any serious way and then receive a deportation order. I have even less sympathy for a group of people who voted for Trump and are shocked when he turns on them. It's what he is. It's what he does. Perhaps for the next election people might consider looking a little more deeply into a candidate's background and history or maybe even think about voting for something greater than their own narrow perceived self-interest. You can't or rather shouldn't identify as a "conservative" and then get p*****d off when someone enforces the law against you. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Stop resisting. Follow the rules and you'll have nothing to worry about. Obey the law. Isn't that what self-righteous conservatives tell blacks other people who complain about selective, harsh, or inflexible law enforcement? Well okay then. When he talked about immigrants who were breaking the law with impunity and causing havoc across the land President Trump apparently wasn't, despite what some Chaldean immigrants thought, only talking about Mexicans.

Standing in the living room of her brother's home in Sterling Heights, Lina Denha wipes away tears with a tissue as she recalls how federal agents arrested him early one Sunday morning this month. 
"To just come and grab him in front of his kids and family — that's not right," she said of the June 11 detention of Haydar Butris, 38, one of 114 Iraqi immigrants with criminal records arrested in Michigan.  "He's been here most of his life. He did a mistake. He paid for it. Now, he is a good father, has kids, a family. He works, pays taxes and everything. And you just come knock on the door, come out of nowhere and grab him? That's not right."

Denha's sadness turns to frustration as she expresses disappointment with President Donald Trump, whom she and some other Iraqi-American Christians in Michigan had supported. Denha's sense of betrayal is echoed across metro Detroit among some Iraqi-American Christians who voted for Trump because they hoped he would be sympathetic to their community abroad, where they are a religious minority, and in the U.S. "We voted for Trump," Denha said. "That's what we get from him? ... Obama is better than him, 100 times."

Michigan AG Attempts Justice For Flint

You may recall that the residents of Flint, Michigan suffered greatly because of the decision by the Republican installed Emergency Manager and crew to switch from Detroit supplied water to local water in order to save money. This proved to be not only a bad idea but also disastrous as neither the local infrastructure nor the local water was safe. As a result, residents of one of Michigan's most storied cities had to attempt to live in a stereotypical Third World manner with regards to water. The water was not safe to drink. It wasn't safe to use for bathing or showering. It wasn't safe for cooking. It wasn't safe to use for ice. It wasn't safe to use for washing your hands. It wasn't safe to use for anything at all.  Some people abandoned their homes. Others tried to make the best of a bad situation and reduced their exposure to the dirty water. Other people relied on bottled water for everything, a response that can get pretty expensive when you think about how much water you use every day

Elevated lead levels were discovered in children. The state leadership attempted to ignore the issue and/or insist that there was not a problem long after evidence showed that there was. Despite the fact that Steve Harvey thought that this issue was far enough in the past to joke about, it's not completely solved. It's not a joking matter. One person who doesn't see the humor involved is Michigan Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette. AG Schuette has charged five state and local officials involved in the Flint debacle with involuntary manslaughter. Some of these people are still being praised by Governor Snyder for their role in the cleanup.

FLINT, MI - Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has charged five water officials -- including a member of Gov. Rick Snyder's cabinet and a former emergency manager -- with manslaughter related to their alleged failure to act in during the Flint Water Crisis.

Music Reviews: Sarah Shook

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers

I'm not a huge fan of most country music. Usually the rhythms and tones aren't really my thing. But that said, country music is one of the basic building blocks of American popular music, along with blues, gospel and jazz. Everything is related if you go back far enough. Country rhythms pop up in Chuck Berry tunes. Ray Charles reworked country standards into soul ones. The father of country music, Jimmie Rogers, was influenced by blues artists. He was also known as a white bluesman. Rogers' yodeling later influenced blues titan Howling Wolf. Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley were influenced by black rock-n-roll and blues musicians. And on and on. One thing that the best forms of music share regardless of genre is emotional honesty. I first heard about Sarah Shook in a recent NYT review. I was intrigued enough to give her music a listen. I was happy I did. Now her upstate New York by way of North Carolina warbly alto voice may not be to everyone's taste. But I like her voice a lot. She is to me a pretty engaging singer. And she's not bad as a guitarist. The music she's creating doesn't require her or the other guitarists in her band to fly up and down the fingerboard constantly or show off everything that they know in under two minutes. Sometimes knowing what not to play and where to leave space for the vocals and other instruments is just as important as filling up the sonic voids. The guitar solos, when they occur, are usually short and to the point.

Shook's ability lies in songwriting and interpretation as far as I am concerned. She is an excellent example of someone who plays for the song. As a self-described left-wing bisexual vegan atheist civil rights activist working in a genre that has become more associated with reactionary politics, Shook shows, as many musicians of all races, both genders and various sexualities have done before her, that what matters is the emotion that a person puts forth in their music, not the singer's politics or other personal characteristics.