Spring Time In Anchorage And Other Thoughts

Springtime In Anchorage

Spring in Alaska is different.  We still have a significant amount of snow on the ground.  

And streets look like streams and small lakes.

But the sun is galloping toward the solstice at nearly 6 more minutes a day between sunrise and sunset.  People still say things like "more daylight" but the daylight starts well before the official time of sunrise and lasts longer than the official sunset.  

Georgia's Voting Wrongs Act

The news, of course, distracts me if I let it.  Reports of Georgia's new Jim Crow laws to suppress voting mention making it a crime to bring food or water to people waiting in line to vote.  Yes, that's outrageous.  But the food and water focus overlooks the fact that these new laws will continue making long lines for undesirable voters into something normal.  Lines long enough that they'll need to get water and food.  Apparently they didn't outlaw bringing bottles that another story says that Amazon drivers carry because they don't have time to pee under their demanding delivery schedules.  

Let's be clear, if people have to wait in line for an hour to vote, it means there aren't enough voting places or staff.  Requiring such long lines are clearly an attempt to prevent people from voting.  Republicans argue voter restrictions are to overcome voter fraud, a phenomenon Trump's lawyers failed to prove in over 60 court cases.  

And that's what the Republican party has been reduced to:  preventing people from voting, ads that lie and unfairly characterize Democrats,  gerrymandering, and voter suppression.  

In the Supreme Court an attorney siding with Arizona's Republican National Committee defended such practices as the only way Republicans can win:

“What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?" Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, referencing legal standing.

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said Michael Carvin, the lawyer defending the state's restrictions. “Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.”

Just as McConnell pledged to make President Obama a one term president, the Republicans in the Senate and House vote on legislation based on how it will help Democrats or hurt Republicans, not on what's good for the US.   

Democrats and those disillusioned with what the Republican Party has become, have to continue to do everything they can to get all those folks who don't normally vote to the polls.  They have to find ways to revise the filibuster rules so that the minority can't veto every piece of legislation.  

Word Matter - Especially In Headlines

I think it's important for every consumer of news to pay close attention to the words used in headlines.  Getting clicks means making headlines edgier and more confrontational than is warranted.  Republicans are working hard to frame what's happening with immigration as "Biden's Border Crisis."

Let's remember Biden has been in office just over two months.  And that the Trump administration delayed transition briefings that have always been routine parts of the transition of power from one president to the next.  Until Trump.  

By focusing on the border, the Republicans and the media that follow them, reduce the problem to the lump and not to the underlying disease that causes the lump - the dangerous conditions people endure in key Central American countries that force people to flee for their lives.  If you dig deep enough into these conditions you'll find the fingerprints of American Imperialism, from protecting US corporate interests, say in bananas, to the Iran-Contra arrangements that led to the US supporting repressive wars in the area.  

I also saw a link to the first Biden press conference that was headlined something like "hard hitting questions."  The video showed Kaitlin Collins pressing the president on whether he would run for reelection in 2024.  Really?  He's being evasive if he doesn't say yes two months into office?  That's hard-hitting?  No, that's not anything that takes any sort of research.  It's the kind of question that perhaps she's hoping she can get a momentary bump on her Twitter feed for being the first to get Biden to say he's running for reelection.  But it's a political question, not an informed question about policy that would be important for people to hear.  And Biden handled it appropriately, saying it wasn't something he's focused on.  That there are more important issues he's facing.  

Why Hasn't Biden Pushed Immigration and Gun Reform Already?

Biden's also getting criticism from some in his party for not pushing harder on immigration or gun control.  Politicians have to weigh what is important against what is achievable.  Immigration and gun control are still quite controversial.  Look at how the Republicans voted on COVID relief.  They were almost 100% no votes among Republicans.  Voting Rights should also be an easy vote.  Like COVID relief, it has strong the backing of US people, if not of all of their representatives in Washington DC.  Infrastructure is another highly popular and needed endeavor and one with lots of carrots for Republican lawmakers who want better roads and bridges in their states.  

My interpretation is that Biden wants to go after the' easiest' of the important tasks first.  He doesn't want to get bogged down in the most controversial issues.  Once he gets Voting Rights and Infrastructure in place, he can focus on Immigration and Gun Control.  If he starts with the gun control and immigration, everything else could get bogged down and he'd have nothing but COVID relief (a big deal on its own) to show for the 2022 election.  But reporters on deadlines with pressures for clicks and no time for in-depth research, grab what's easy rather than what's important. 

But media that allow their journalists time to dig deep are able to come up with stories that give us background that helps us understand people and situations that are normally just names passing our eyeballs briefly.  

Today's LA Times had a lengthy story about the Ball family's making Chino Hills into a basketball center.  Before this, the only awareness I had of the Ball family was the incident where one of them was suspended from the UCLA team after shoplifting during a team visit to China.  There's a lot more to know - though the article barely mentions the China incident.  It's not the same as many of the stories in the NYTimes or Washington Post on critical issues of the day, but it is a piece that has some depth to it.  

[UPDATED 5:30pm -  Just got back to finishing today's LA Times and there's another article that goes into more depth about something - this time about racism in LA's surfing culture.  It focuses on two black friends who surf every morning and then one day got involved in an incident at Manhattan Beach.

"As emotions climaxed, a different surfer — white and older — inserted himself into the fray. He began calling Brick the N-word repeatedly. Then he called him a “donkey” and violently splashed water in his face. He also called Gage, a 25-year-old dancer and choreographer with painted nails and arms full of scribbly tattoos, a gay slur and told him to “go back to the streets.”

“Go down there … that’s where the Blacks used to surf,” the man added, referencing Bruce’s Beach, a once-thriving Black-owned resort at the center of a fierce land battle in Manhattan Beach today. (The property was taken through eminent domain more than 100 years ago. Local activists are calling for Los Angeles County to return the land to the living descendants of the Bruce family and for the city of Manhattan Beach to publicly apologize and provide restitution for its role in institutionalized racism.)

As the altercation ensued, a crowd of mostly white surfers surrounded Brick and Gage and refused to intervene. A Black passerby named Rashidi Kafele took notice and started filming. He wasn’t used to seeing Black surfers in the water and, upon hearing the N-word, knew he had to document it.

This was the first time Brick and Gage had been involved in a racially charged altercation in the water, but locals had seen instances like this before. Kavon Ward, founder of the organization Justice for Bruce’s Beach, says the situation “shows that nothing has changed in Manhattan Beach.”]

LA Times has an obituary of Larry McMurtry today..  Obituaries of famous people are a little different because newspapers tend to have drafts of them ready, especially as they get older.  

It talks about his growing up in Archer City, Texas listening to cattle herding stories from his grandfather to his opening a bookstore and writing books like Lonesome Dove and screenplays for movies like The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment.  Later, recovering from a heart attack and by-pass surgery, he joined friend Diana Ossana who worked to overcome McMurtry's depression.

"Ossana eventually got him back to the typewriter with the story of the 1930s outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd. “It was the way to jump-start him into life,” she said. “He was shriveling up and would have died.”

The pair collaborated on a number of novels and teleplays, but their cultural and aesthetic sensibilities most famously aligned in 1997, when Ossana recommended an 11-page short story about two gay cowboys that was published in the New Yorker.

“I don’t read short fiction,” McMurtry told her.

Twenty minutes later, they were writing a one-page letter to Annie Proulx asking to option “Brokeback Mountain.” They had a first draft in three months and, in 2006, accepted the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

Standing with the golden statue in hand, McMurtry, who had paired an Armani tuxedo jacket and shirt with bluejeans, gave a special nod to “all the booksellers of the world,” whom he thanked, 'from the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world ... contributors to the survival of the culture of the book, a wonderful culture which we mustn’t lose.'”

I also spent time responding to a long comment about White Privilege.  I won't repeat it here, but if you have any interest, you can see the discussion here.

Enjoy the weekend.   Passover begins tonight.