A poem for our time, from our time, for the State of the Union, and 2019, from Houston poet Leah McElrath.
(Untitled)
I have threaded
the balls
that were on
your bodyonto
this special necklace
crafted
for tonightForgive me
but they are mine now
so small
and orange
Special tip of the old scrub brush to Leah McElrath, on Twitter.
1 Comment | 
History, Nancy Pelosi, Poetry, Politics, State of the Union | Tagged: Donald Trump, History, Nancy Pelosi, Poetry, Politics, State of the Union | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Barbara Jordan would have been 83 today.
(Thanks to Pam for alerting me to the anniversary, back in 2008.)
In her stirring keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, held in New York City in Madison Square Garden, Jordan said:
A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation.
In this election year we must define the common good and begin again to shape a common good and begin again to shape a common future. Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.
I covered that convention as a stringer for a western television station. I recall the spirit in the hall when Jordan spoke, and the great spirit that enveloped the entire convention and the City of New York. After the convention every night the cops would stop taxis so delegates could ride. I remember watching two cops help a woman out of a wheel chair and into a cab, and the cabbie saying that the cops had never done that before — and he liked it. Jimmy Carter came out of that convention, and won the election, defeating Gerald Ford.
43 years ago. In 2008 I wrote: “Barbara Jordan didn’t live to see her party come up with a woman and an African American man as the top two candidates for the nomination. That’s too bad. She could have given a great, appropriate speech. Maybe the Dems oughtta just run a film of Jordan from 1976.”
Barack Obama won that election in 2008, and Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 2016. Jordan didn’t live to see that, either.
In 2019, we face a Constitutional crisis again, with a crook in the White House hoping Americans forget about the Constitution. If ever we needed ghosts to come back to help us, we need the ghost of Barbara Jordan now. We could just run a film of her speech at the House Judiciary Committee markup of the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon.
Also:
Leave a Comment » | Art, Barbara Jordan, Famous quotes, Heroes, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: Barbara Jordan, famous speeches, History, Impeachment, Politics, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I love this ad from Allstate Insurance. “Still Standing.”
ISpot describes the ad:
Allstate tells the story of the Angel Oak on Johns Island, South Carolina (known as “The Tree” by locals). It’s rumored that it is the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River and remains standing despite all the harsh weather and natural disasters it has faced over the past 500 years. Allstate likens its strength to the resilience that resides in us all and says it’s humbled by the courage shown by Hurricane Florence victims, offering up helping hands in partnership with the American Red Cross.
Dennis Haysbert narrates the ad, but without appearing himself, as he does in several other Allstate ads.
It’s not the oldest tree east of the Mississippi; there are cypress trees much older even in South Carolina. The name “Angel Oak” comes from the surname of a man who owned the land once, not from any angelic action or legend.
Even through corrections of the legends, the tree stands, a beautiful monument to endurance of living things, and trees. Allstate’s ad is a feel-good moment, and the feelings are worthwhile. Endurance through adversity is a virtue. The Angel Oak itself suffered great damage in a 1942 hurricane, but recovered.
Here’s a tourist video showing off more the tree, and the supports used to keep branches alive, similar to the supports we saw in China supporting 2,000-year-old trees.
Honoring trees is a worldwide tradition, and a great one. We don’t honor trees nearly enough, in my opinion.
More:
3 Comments | Advertising, Botany, History, Nature, Travel, trees | Tagged: advertising, Angel Oak, Charleston, Nature, South Carolina, Travel, trees | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Chess games of the rich and famous. Max Ernst, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
Pattern on the wall is created by the unique louvers in the ceiling, designed to let in natural light, but avoid direct sunlight which might damage the art.
The Nasher describes the work:
Like many of Ernst’s sculptures from this period, The King Playing with the Queen features an assemblage of diverse forms cast from containers and household objects. In a playful allution to the Surrealist love for the game of chess, a large, horned king rises out of a flat, tabletop arrangement of elements resembling a game board. He is at once the only player and one of the game pieces. This witty evocation of gamesmanship also intones darker themes of sexual manipulation and dominance. The king reaches out to grasp and move the much smaller queen, and at the same time, deceptively conceals another piece behind his back.
2 Comments | Art, Chess, Museums | Tagged: Art, Chess, Max Ernst, Nasher Sculpture Museum, Sculpture | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
People wonder what Beto O’Rourke is going to do. He set new standards for ethical campaigning in the race for the U.S. Senate in Texas last year, refusing to go low even when polls showed he could win that way, and came the closest to unseating a Republican statewide office-holder in a couple of decades.
More important, Beto inspired a loyal corps of voters and campaigners to get out and change things.
One of my campaigning colleagues called this morning, alerting me to an e-mail from Beto on February 18, 2019, the first since thank-yous after the election in November.
Beto put heft to his comments in El Paso last week refuting claims from the White House that El Paso is a city in crisis, with bumbling leaders. O’Rourke mustered the facts, and held on to the inspiration. His message, below.
Ed,
The President came to El Paso last week. He promised a wall and repeated his lies about the dangers that immigrants pose. With El Paso as the backdrop, he claimed that this city of immigrants was dangerous before a border fence was built here in 2008.
Beyond refuting his comments about border communities like ours (El Paso was one of the safest communities in the United States before the fence was built here), about walls saving lives (in fact, walls push desperate families to cross in ever more hostile terrain, ensuring greater suffering and death), and about immigrants (who commit crimes at a lower rate than those Americans born here), it’s worth thinking about how we got to this place. How it came to be that 11 million undocumented immigrants call America home, how we came to militarize our border, how we arrived at such a disconnect between our ideals, our values, the reality of our lives — and the policies and political rhetoric that govern immigration and border security.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the challenges we face are largely of our own design — a function of the unintended consequences of immigration policy and the rhetoric we’ve used to describe immigrants and the border. At almost every step of modern immigration policy and immigration politics, we have exacerbated underlying problems and made things worse. Sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes with the most cynical exploitation of nativism and fear. Much of the history of immigration policy (and the source for the graphs that I’m using) is powerfully summarized in a report entitled “Unintended Consequences of U.S. Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America” by Douglas S Massey and Karen A. Pren.
In 1965, the U.S. ended the bracero farmworker program in part because of the substandard wages and conditions in which these Mexican workers labored. And yet, after decades of employing this labor, with our economy dependent on the laborers and the laborers dependent on access to the U.S. job market, the system of low-cost Mexican labor didn’t go away. Many of the same Mexican nationals returned to the U.S., returned to the same back-breaking jobs, only now they were undocumented. Ironically, despite the intent of the 1965 law ending the program, they enjoyed fewer protections and wage guarantees in the shadows as they continued to play a fundamental role in our economy.
As this same population converted from being documented to undocumented a wave of scary metaphors was employed to gin up anxiety and paranoia and political will to employ ever more repressive policies to deter their entry. It was good for politicians and newspapers, terrible for immigrants and immigration policy. Thus began the “Latino threat” narrative. As Massey and Pren write:
“The most common negative framing depicted immigration as a “crisis” for the nation. Initially marine metaphors were used to dramatize the crisis, with Latino immigration being labeled a “rising tide” or a “tidal wave” that was poised to “inundate” the United States and “drown” its culture while “flooding” American society with unwanted foreigners (Santa Ana 2002). Over time, marine metaphors increasingly gave way to martial imagery, with illegal immigration being depicted as an “invasion” in which “outgunned” Border Patrol agents sought to “hold the line” in a vain attempt to “defend” the border against “attacks” from “alien invaders” who launched “banzai charges” to overwhelm American defenses (Nevins 2001; Chavez 2008).”
The fear stoked by politicians produced the intended paranoia and political constituency demanding ever tougher immigration measures. The result of this was not to stop undocumented immigration. Instead it caused the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States to grow.
Here’s why: as we made it harder for people to cross into the United States, we made it less likely that once here they would attempt to go back to their home country. Fearing an increasingly militarized border, circular patterns of migration became linear, with immigrants choosing to remain in the U.S., many of them ultimately joined by family members from their home country.
This government-created condition continued to feed on itself:
The “sustained, accelerating accumulation of anti-immigrant legislation and enforcement operations produced a massive increase in border apprehensions after the late 1970s, when the underlying flow of migrants had actually leveled off. For any given number of undocumented entry attempts, more restrictive legislation and more stringent enforcement operations generate more apprehensions, which politicians and bureaucrats can then use to inflame public opinion, which leads to more conservatism and voter demands for even stricter laws and more enforcement operations, which generates more apprehensions, thus bringing the process full circle. In short, the rise of illegal migration, its framing as a threat to the nation, and the resulting conservative reaction set off a self-feeding chain reaction of enforcement that generated more apprehensions even though the flow of undocumented migrants had stabilized in the late 1970s and actually dropped during the late 1980s and early 1990s.”
This would only get worse.
After terror attacks in the 1990s and in 2001, the Mexican immigrant was a ready scapegoat for politicians, and the intensity and brutality of enforcement and deterrence measures increased. In the face of terrorism that originated in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, the United States chose to conflate the war on terror with immigration from Mexico and Latin America.
With the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 the number of deportations skyrocketed, with nearly 400,000 sent back to their country of origin in 2009 alone. Not one of the 9/11 terrorists entered through Mexico — and yet Mexicans bore the brunt of this country’s immigration response to the terror attacks. Last year, the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism found that “there are no known international terrorist organizations operating in Mexico, no evidence that any terrorist group has targeted U.S. citizens in Mexican territory, and no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.” This year’s report found much the same: “there was no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.”
In addition, walls and fences authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006 pushed migration flows to ever more treacherous stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 4,500 human beings died crossing the border from 2006 to 2017. Far too many of them children.
In recent years, as Mexican migration slowed and then reversed (more Mexican nationals going south to Mexico than coming north to the United States), and as total undocumented immigration reached its lowest levels in modern history, the country was met with the challenge of tens of thousands of Central American families fleeing violence and brutality to petition for asylum in our country.
This too is an unintended consequence. Our involvement in the civil wars and domestic politics of Central American countries, in addition to our ability to consume more illegal drugs than any other country on the planet while leading a military- and law enforcement-first drug control policy, has helped to destroy the institutions of civil society necessary for those countries to function. They can no longer protect their citizens, and their citizens are coming to us.
And how do we meet this challenge? The President, using the same racist, inflammatory rhetoric of years past, seeks to build a wall, to take kids from their parents, to deploy the United States Army on American soil, to continue mass deportations and to end the protection for Dreamers. In other words, he seeks in one administration to repeat all the mistakes of the last half-century. And with past as prologue, we know exactly how that will end.
Not only will it lead to thousands of Americans losing their farms and ranches and homes through eminent domain to build a wall despite the fact that we have the lowest level of northbound apprehensions in my lifetime; it will lead to greater suffering and death for immigrants who are pushed to more dangerous points of crossing; it will fail to meet the legitimate challenge of illegal drugs that are brought to this country (the vast majority crossed at ports of entry); it will further erode our humanity and our standing in the world; and it will not do a single thing to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers coming to this country.
But we still have a choice. In this democracy, if in fact the people are the government, and the government is the people, we still have a chance to prove it.
We can decide that we’ll get past the lies and fear, focus on the facts and human lives in our midst, and do the right thing. The end goal is a stronger, safer, more successful country. Critical to achieving that goal is having immigration, security and bilateral policies that match reality and our values.
Last week, we welcomed the President to one of the safest cities in the United States. Safe not because of walls, and not in spite of the fact that we are a city of immigrants. Safe because we are a city of immigrants and because we treat each other with dignity and respect. A city that has the opportunity to lead on the most important issues before us, out of experience, out of compassion and out of a fierce determination to see this country live its ideals and rise to its full potential.
We can learn from the errors of our past, have the courage to do what’s right while we still have the chance, and ensure that the President doesn’t commit this country to making mistakes from which we may never recover.
It’s up to us.
Beto
What do you think about immigration and actions Beto proposes? Comments open; as Beto asks, speak with respect, please.
5 Comments | History | Tagged: 2020 Campaign, Beto O'Rourke, Immigration, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Of course you’re already flying your flag today, for Presidents Day 2019.
Presidents Day is that hybrid holiday designed to create a three-day weekend, and consolidate previous practices of having two holidays, one on Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, and another on Washington’s birthday on February 22 (Gregorian, or New Calendar).
February 2019 marks the third year in a row the U.S. is without a functioning president, but we celebrate the day anyway.
More:
4 Comments | Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History | Tagged: Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This should be worthy of watching, and of future commentary
Bookmark this video. Sadly, you’ll have much use for it over the next two years.
Tip of the old scrub brush to The Weekly Sift.
More:
2 Comments | Dunning Kruger Effect, Dunning-Kruger Effect, History, Management, Science | Tagged: Dunning-Kruger Effect, History, Management, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Beto O’Rourke, to the Texas State Democratic Convention in Fort Worth, Texas.
Sound feed came from a microphone on the camera, and not from the arena sound system — so it’s rather crummy.
But I’m not finding the official Texas Democratic Party version of this speech all the way through. And I think it ought to be preserved.
It’s not a usual “thanks for supporting me; let’s go win” convention speech. It demonstrates what happens when a thinking candidate tailors remarks to the audience in the hall, somethings thinking as she or he goes.
It’s why Texas should have sent him to the Senate.
Beto O’Rourke keynote at the Texas State Democratic Party Convention in Fort Worth, in June 2018. Fort Worth Star-Telegram video, screen capture.
2 Comments | Campaigns, Democratic Party, Elections, History, Politics, Texas | Tagged: Beto O'Rourke, Elections 2018, History, Politics, Texas State Democratic Convention | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
“People don’t grasp the short-term consequences of saving the planet.” Cartoon by Pat Chappatte @PatChappatte, New York Times Syndicate.
From CleanTechnica.com (with additional information added here from the House of Representatives official site):
116TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. RES. 109
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ (for herself, Mr. Hastings, Ms. Tlaib, Mr. Serrano, Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, Mr. Vargas, Mr. Espaillat, Mr. Lynch, Ms. Velázquez, Mr. Blumenauer, Mr. Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania, Mr. Castro of Texas, Ms. Clarke of New York, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Khanna, Mr. Ted Lieu of California, Ms. Pressley, Mr. Welch, Mr. Engel, Mr. Neguse, Mr. Nadler, Mr. McGovern, Mr. Pocan, Mr. Takano, Ms. Norton, Mr. Raskin, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Lowenthal, Ms. Matsui, Mr. Thompson of California, Mr. Levin of California, Ms. Pingree, Mr. Quigley, Mr. Huffman, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Mr. García of Illinois, Mr. Higgins of New York, Ms. Haaland, Ms. Meng, Mr. Carbajal, Mr. Cicilline, Mr. Cohen, Ms. Clark of Massachusetts, Ms. Judy Chu of California, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell, Mr. Moulton, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Meeks, Mr. Sablan, Ms. Lee of California, Ms. Bonamici, Mr. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, Ms. Schakowsky, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Levin of Michigan, Ms. McCollum, Mr. DeSaulnier, Mr. Courtney, Mr. Larson of Connecticut, Ms. Escobar, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Keating, Mr. DeFazio, Ms. Eshoo, Mrs. Trahan, Mr. Gomez, Mr. Kennedy, and Ms. Waters) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Science, Space, and Technology, Education and Labor, Transportation and Infrastructure, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, the Judiciary, Ways and Means, and Oversight and Reform, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
RESOLUTION
Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create
a Green New Deal.
Whereas the October 2018 report entitled ‘‘Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC’’ by the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—
Whereas, because the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation;
Whereas the United States is currently experiencing several related crises, with—
Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘systemic injustices’’) by disproportionately affecting indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’);
Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—
Whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen, but many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations; and
Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal is a historic opportunity—
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—
[End of text]
In the Senate, the companion (and matching) resolution sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. Edward J. Markey is S. Res. 59. It was referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (See more information in the Congressional Record, pages S1140-1142. Senate cosponsors are, “Mr. Merkley, Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Gillibrand,
Ms. Harris, Ms. Warren, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr.
Booker, Ms. Klobuchar, and Mr. Murphy.”
More:
Tom Toles in the Washington Post, June 18, 2018.
3 Comments | air pollution, Economics, Environment, History, U.S. Congress | Tagged: 116th Congress, air pollution, Economics, environment, Green New Deal, H. Res. 109 | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima Island – At sea with USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) Jan. 16, 2003 — F-14 Tomcats assigned to the Black Knights of Fighter Squadron One Five Four (VF-154) fly by Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima Island. VF-154 is part of Carrier Air Wing Five (CVW-5) embarked aboard Kitty Hawk, conducting Carrier Readiness Certifications. Kitty Hawk is the Navy’s only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier and operates out of Yokosuka, Japan. Photo by U.S. Navy, Lt. j.g. Greg Kausner
You want to mark your calendar so you remember to put your U.S. flag up on those dates designated by law and tradition, right?
Which dates in February? Here at the Bathtub, we’re running behind on the news — we’ve missed marking Massachusetts statehood.
You may fly your flag on state holidays, too — which of those dates do we see in February? Is there a good list?
Though we don’t mark it usually, February 14 is the anniversary of the first recognition of the Stars and Stripes by a foreign government, in 1778. The French fleet recognized the ensign carried by Capt. John Paul Jones, at Quiberon Bay — painting of the event is at the top of this post.
February 23 is the anniversary of the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, in 1945 — 74 years ago. We should probably watch for proclamations to fly the flag on that date, an anniversary made more important simply because so few survivors from among the veterans of that war and that fight can be expected to live to see the 80th anniversary. Regardless any official, formal proclamation to fly the flag for the Iwo Jima events, you may always fly your flag.
Please visit earlier posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, on the death of Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who took the widely-released iconic photo; on the death of Charles Lindberg, pictured in the first flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi; on the death of Raymond Jacobs, the last-surviving veteran from the flag raisings; and on my visit to the Sunset Parade at the Iwo Jima-themed U.S. Marine Memorial overlooking Washington, D.C.
A Youtube poster edited a part of the Army’s documentary, “To the Shores of Iwo Jima,” showing the flag raising on film, and added in some other images for a less-than-three-minute look. (Alas, that edited version is gone — here’s the full 20-minute movie; propaganda at its best, for noble purposes.)
Wave your flag!
More:
Caption from the U.S. Navy, via Wikipedia: Photo #: 80-G-K-21225 (color) “First Recognition of the American Flag by a Foreign Government,” 14 February 1778. Painting in oils by Edward Moran, 1898. It depicts the Continental Navy Ship Ranger, commanded by Captain John Paul Jones, receiving the salute of the French fleet at Quiberon Bay, France, 14 February 1778. Earlier in the month, after receipt of news of the victory at Saratoga, France recognized the independence of the American colonies and signed a treaty of alliance with them. The original painting is in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. [A larger version is available for download at Wikipedia.]
Yes, this is an encore post. Defeating ignorance takes patience and perseverance.
2 Comments | Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, U.S. Flag | Tagged: Fly your flag today, History, U.S. Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for February, 2019.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
