Some comfort songs to curb cynicism and bring us home to empathy

Our ability to feel pleased is impaired in this era by constant "breaking news" stories that are really just hot-button formulas to prompt us to click.

We have more in common with our political adversaries than separates us, but we are blocked from seeing how many of our interests are actually shared -- and how change and tradition co-exist.

Yes, there are real differences between left and right, but getting past the exaggerated differences is needed if we are to arrive at social and emotional health -- with opposition that includes empathy, and disagreement that includes respect.

These musical works of depth yet caressing genuineness help me get back to that state. When each of these songs finishes,  I am less cynical than at the start.

I invite you to listen....

                   

                                    Flower children greet the day with this 

                                            sweet, unpretentious classic.

 

Whitney Houston performs Dion's song of national healing --

A salute to the good who died young. 

The Seekers give us hope. If a group can be so good, and its members

so sincere, there's reason for optimism!

How could I describe the joy and power of this song? "It isn't easy but I'll try..."

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Muslim altruist Yusuf Islam, aka Yusuf/Cat Stevens turned a 1931 British-written Christian hymn called "Morning Has Broken" into an immensely popular top 40 song. A sixties U.K. pop luminary, Stevens became spiritual after surviving a near drowning in 1968, and converted to Islam a decade later, exiting the music profession to co-raise a family and run Muslim programs for poverty relief and peace.

 

Another version, from the MonaLisa Twins:

 

 

Acclaimed, eclectic Greek singer Nana Mouskouri performs a German language version:

 

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                 Danish jazz vocalist and composer Sinne Eeg does a particularly stirring job
                                    on Michel Legrand's "The Windmills of Your Mind."

Noel Paul Stookey kept his name off all credits for his "Wedding Song (There Is Love)" because he said it was given to him in 1971 from the realm of his god after he prayed. If any music could come from a supreme being, it is this joy and wonder provoking work of dazzling chords and loving words.

The Seekers, with the way we honestly saw love. This is recorded in a familiar '60s mecca.

One of the many Welsh pop music stars performs a timeless piece. Her version is the most moving I have ever heard. 

       In their native Australia, The Seekers, bountiful fields and venerable ancient texts.

Perfectly Unclear -- On LGBTQ, what did the President 'understand' and when did he understand it?

Someone who in 1971 referred to Archie Bunker as “a stupid old fellow” may not sound like a Nixon person, but it was in fact Richard Nixon himself who called his greatest fictional ally those words.

A White House tape reveals that as well as much that is more vintage reactionary Nixon, but also a mystery -- call it the “other” gap in the White House Tapes.

On this recording, Nixon tells H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman of a recent evening when, after watching a televised baseball game, he stumbled upon what he thought was a movie.

Nixon describes how in this broadcast he saw a “stupid old fellow” named Archie, two intelligent young men and a “nice girl” sitting in a living room. The characters are talking in a manner the 37^th President believed was “glorifying homosexuality.”

Haldeman explains to his boss that this was a weekly show, not a movie, though he never gets the name “All In The Family” out before Nixon cuts him off and launches into a detailed description of the plot.

In this episode, called “Judging Books by Covers,” an ascot wearing intellectual friend of Mike’s named Roger is presumed to be gay, or as the leader of the free world puts it in that tape, “queer.” At the episode’s conclusion, however, a virile, bulked up former pro football player, who is an acquaintance of Archie’s and a regular at the bar down the street, comes out to a disbelieving Archie as gay.

Nixon is appalled by this TV show and his strong reaction to it is part of a long Nixon-esque rant in this tape against gays (whom he calls “fags”) and the emerging movement for LGBTQ equality. The president asserts gay rights will weaken the United States, absurdly claiming that France and Britain fell from world superpower status because homosexuals became more visible in those nations.

Though he acknowledges gays likely include Aristotle, Socrates, and the wedding planner setting up Tricia’s upcoming nuptials, a hateful Nixon mixes up homosexual with pedophile during his tirade, and lumps the new visibility of gay Americans in with drug abuse as measures of moral decline.

Though statements like those coming from Richard Nixon would seem unsurprising, one thing about the president’s diatribe on this tape gives pause.

Though history remembers there was an 18-minute gap in a crucial 1972 tape three days after the Watergate break in, let us talk about an obscure 14-second gap in this tape. It includes a beep tone lasting that long, and its precise timing hints at the Chief Executive covering something up. Yeah, Nixon and cover ups go back a long way, though I concede the evidence is far from perfectly clear.

And since there’s no pardon in the works for me if I get in trouble over this, I’ll say that this is just unfounded crazy speculation.

But there has to be some reason why the White House tape has 14 seconds missing. Here’s how the tape goes:

NIXON: “But the point is, I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it.... (14 second beep tone)... But nevertheless, the point that I make is that, God damn it, I do not think you glorify, on public television, homosexuality.”

One can’t imagine the beep's purpose being to cover up excessive anti-gay statements, because of the level of vitriol in what we have already heard. Was the language just too foul? C’mon, these are the Nixon tapes.

So that would leave the possibility that what’s blocked just after Nixon says he understands the homosexuality is an elaboration on just how he understands it.

                   ABOVE, listen to the TV Critic and Homophobe-in-chief

 

Could Nixon have said:

“I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. I mean from San Clemente to Key Biscayne, nobody decorates better than I do!”

Or…. “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Why do you think I was sweating so much in the ‘60 debate? Standing that close to Kennedy -- hubba hubba!”

Or… “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. The day someone fixed me up with a blind date named ‘Pat,’ I spent the week looking forward to some cute Irish guy!”

Or not. But this is a man who built his political career on a string of illogical insinuations that his opponents were communist-leaning, so Tricky Dickey may have earned a little innuendo.

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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, where he never missed All in the Family while growing up.  He turned out just fine, despite Richard Nixon's warning that the kids of America could be harmed by this episode:

CLICK to go to "Judging Books By Covers" from 1971, via Daily Motion

On state ballot questions, voters took the nation considerably leftward Nov. 3

No, Oregonians won’t be running through the streets singing “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but the state’s voters seemed to heed that John Lennon song’s lyrics which sum up drug trips as: “this is not dying” Nov. 3 when they approved controlled medical use of Psilocybin.

That’s the hallucinatory ingredient found in certain mushroom varieties which hippies, rock stars and other drug culture devotees have long sworn can take us to enlightenment, peace, or saber tooth tigers jumping out of walls in “bad trips.”

Oregonians approved ballot Measure 109 by 56 to 44 percent Nov. 3 directing the state to set up, over two years, a system of administering Psilocybin in supervised and licensed therapy sessions.

The campaign for the measure got a boost from a two-year study published in 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluding that in controlled therapy sessions, depression and anxiety patients can receive help from Psilocybin. The drug is a natural substance similar to the lab-created LSD, and which creates somewhat similar psychedelic mental experiences.

Measure 109 says patients using Psilocybin must be at least 21, among other qualifications. Users will not be allowed to leave the clinics until all mood altering effects have passed, which can take up to six hours.

Voters also approved measure 110, which revamps Oregon’s drug laws to end criminal penalties for small amounts of illicit drugs and expand treatment and recovery programs. It passed by 59 to 41 percent.

The Oregon drug policy reforms are the most influential of several important ballot initiatives approved by the voters in various states in November 2020, most of them decidedly in the progressive direction, but a few toward the right.

Colorado voters defeated an initiative to ban late term abortions by 59 to 41 percent; they voted by 58 to 42 percent to create a statewide program for family and medical leave; and approved by 51 to 49 percent restoring grey wolf populations on designated lands.

The wolf initiative gained momentum when the federal Interior Department in October took the species off the endangered list, raising a sense of urgency to protect the animals. But farmers and ranchers vehemently opposed the measure, saying grey wolves, which were nearly wiped out in the 1920s by hunting, will harm their livelihood and their communities’ economies. Still, the restoration plan approved by voters includes state reimbursement for those who lose livestock to grey wolves.

Is the clunky 1700s method on the way out?

Another close vote by Coloradans Nov. 3 adds their state's backing to a movement launched by the late U.S. Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana to end the archaic Electoral College. Colorado voters voted 52 to 48 percent to have their state join the Interstate Popular Vote Compact. That compact would direct all states to have their electors automatically vote for whichever candidate won the national popular vote for president, making the Electoral College moot.

The Democrat Bayh championed the Popular Vote Compact after leaving office in 1980. His U.S. Constitutional Amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote was tabled or filibustered six times from 1967 to ‘77.

Colorado voters, by a 63 to 37 percent margin, also gave the nod Nov. 3 to a measure reflecting rightist passions, a state constitutional amendment to require voters in Colorado elections to have U.S. citizenship.

As they voted 68 to 32 percent Nov. 3 to create a tobacco and nicotine tax, Coloradans also voted 58 to 42 percent to cut the state income tax. Taken together, those changes may amount to pushing the tax burden more to the poor, called regressive taxation, since cigarette use nationwide has heavily gravitated toward the lowest incomes.

Arizonans pointed the way unambiguously toward more progressive taxation (meaning taxing the wealthy more than the poor), passing the Invest in Education Act by 52 to 48 percent. The act, vocally opposed by many pro-corporate groups, raises the state income tax rate on earners of $250,000 or more by 3.5 percent, which is expected to generate a billion dollars in revenue to boost teacher salaries and make other improvements in public schools.

Illinois voters rejected by 55 percent to 45 percent a proposed amendment rescinding the state constitution’s requirement of a flat income tax rate. The amendment would have allowed a graduated income tax, which could have taken more from wealthy earners.

New Jersey’s state legislature passed and its governor signed a bill in September boosting income taxes on the well-to-do by dropping the level at which the top rate of 10.75 percent is levied. Formerly, New Jersey residents making $5 million or more paid that amount, but now those making $1 million or more will be taxed at that level.

In Virginia, which like Arizona is transitioning from a red state toward blue, voters in the D.C. metro area counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Loudon, voted yes on 13 out of 13 bond issues for health and human services, public safety, public transit, public schools, parks or general capital improvements. "Yes" vote margins were from 66 percent to as high as 81 percent.

Add to this, the much maligned 2016 election featuring a record number of public school tax referenda approved around the nation, and it is clear that Americans are no longer giving a free pass to the tax cut mantra.

Two non-taxation referenda reflecting what could be called anti-big brother feelings passed overwhelmingly.

Michigan voters approved 89 to 11 percent a referendum requiring a warrant to search a person’s electronic data. Georgians voted 75 to 25 percent to curb sovereign immunity, making it easier to challenge through lawsuits the constitutionality of a state action.

Several Georgia supreme court decisions since 2014 had expanded the doctrine of sovereign immunity from lawsuits in cases where litigation had sought to have certain state laws declared unconstitutional.

  

Brian Arbenz is a writer, commentator and activist living in Louisville, Ky. 

How Resistance Triumphed -- And Must Continue

 SCENES FROM AN UNRLENTING POPULAR STRUGGLE 2016-2020

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                                  ____________________________

                          But do complaints to corporations ever get action? Oh, yes!

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"Oh No!" The day those words resonated with the 5-year-old me

The Pink Suit

Boy with no father is dutifully attentive
To the great glass screen’s
Daily commands,
When the unrelenting persuasion
Stopped for a message not from any sponsor.

Reporters on the scene couldn’t confirm
What they instinctively knew was true, so
Doing their job of clamoring for anything
That amounts to official word,
They passed on to us two of them: “Oh No!,”
Which they heard spoken by the pretty woman in the pink suit.

And in no time the boy runs
Into the hallway, crossing two generations
And defying all propriety
To callously interrupt a sacred ritual
Of afternoon telephoning,
To recount to his PTA-organizing
And very Republican grandma
As best as his untrained five-year-old mind can
What just happened in some place called Dallas, Texas.

Any misgivings over such an impolite gesture
Vanished as she ended the call
With immediacy never again to be seen.
Seconds later, back in the living room
Where doilies draped the couch and
The Werner Sollman Jesus hung on the wall,
She consoles the boy with a light but constant embrace
And repeated assurances as all eyes are fixed on the screen
That, “It’s all right. We’ll have Johnson.”

The brave calm in her voice and her touch
Steadies herself as much as the boy,
Letting her draw comfort from a kindergartner’s innocence
While lending him her wisdom.

And as the boy ponders the words, “Oh no,”
Spoken by the pretty woman in the pink suit
In some place called Dallas, Texas,
His own primal feeling of futility
Never before graspable
Now has a two-word name.

 

Written by Brian Arbenz, ne' George Morrison on Nov. 22, 2013

The Jo Jo Factor - Could Biden Have Won Without the Libertarian Candidate Running? Very Possibly Not

Was Libertarian Jo Jorgensen 
the unintentional kingmaker?

Though the intangibles make it impossible to prove this with simple math, here is a very conceivable scenario: If Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen were not on Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona’s ballots we’d be agonizing right now over an upcoming second Trump term.

Those states have a combined 57 Electoral Votes, which, if added to Trump’s 232, would have given him 289 Electoral Votes and left Biden with 256. OMG, the thought of it.

Of course, we don’t have to think of it, except in the context of small parties’ tendencies to push the country decidedly in the opposite direction from which those parties themselves lean. (CLICK to see how a 1984 left walkout in Kentucky made McConnell a Senator.)

If the 1984 McConnell case is obscure, then do Nader and the Greens in 2000 ring a bell?

I was an organizer for Nader's Kentucky campaign in 1996, but was wary of his running four years later, and I supported the Democrats in 2000. And oh what we wouldn’t give to have two Gore-chosen Supreme Court Justices sitting where Samuel Alito and John Roberts sit today.

Of the four battleground states mentioned above, in a scenario whereby Pennsylvania still went for Joe Biden, but the other three for Trump, Biden would have 276 Electoral Votes, a win so thin as to add potency to Trump’s laughably weak legal challenges to the outcome, and subtract potency from a Biden presidency. Not a Trump win, but a much worse situation than the one we’re actually in.

So, let’s take the number crunch tour of these four states: Biden has won Georgia by 14,000 votes (2,472,278 to 2,458,250). To be sure, let’s give credit to the innovative and smart voter drive of Stacey Abrams and her Fair Fight organization -- it worked!

But let’s look at some math as well: Jo Jorgensen won 62,000 votes in Georgia, more than four times Biden’s margin over Trump in the state. The Libertarians historically have attracted voters with liberal and conservative mindsets, depending on the issue. But with marijuana legalization spreading within the major party duopoly, the Libertarians have been focusing on staunch anti-gun control and anti-tax messages, likely presenting many more Republican-leaning voters with an alternative.

Regarding left alternatives to the Democrats, there was no Green Party candidate on the Georgia ballot. As for the possibility that write-ins for Green Howie Hawkins took potential Biden votes away -- forget it, there were just 457 write in votes for president by Georgia voters.

Pennsylvania is not as clear; Hawkins also was not on that state’s ballot. Jorgensen was.

Biden won the state of his birth by 82,000 votes (3,444,794 to 3,362,693). Jorgensen won 79,000. There was a robust write-in total of 6,678 (States customarily don’t release the names of write-in vote recipients unless one of them wins).

Let’s amend our Pennsylvania scenario to see Green Howie Hawkins being on the state’s ballot and Libertarian Jo Jorgensen not being on it. That would likely have tipped the Keystone State to -- I can’t say it, but then I don’t have to.

On to Wisconsin: Biden won the state by 20,000 votes (1,630,716 to 1,610,151), while Jorgensen won 38,000. There also was no Green on Wisconsin’s ballot. There were 7,827 write ins, and Brian Carroll of the socially conservative American Solidarity Party won 5,266 votes.

A Wisconsin race without Jorgensen or the anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-death penalty Carroll is probably a race Trump wins.

In Arizona, it was close in 2020. Real close:

Biden won the state by 11,000 votes (1,672,143 to 1,661,686), while Jorgensen received 51,000. There was no Green candidate on the ballot, and there were just 551 write ins.

Those numbers spell: “Thank you, Jo Jorgensen,” as do Georgia’s and Wisconsin’s. Maybe Pennsylvania’s, too. But this sounds patronizing to the Libertarians, which is not my intent.

Nonetheless, running for office in a third or small party should be done to pursue a strategic outcome, not just to evangelize the party's doctrine.

Greens could accomplish a lot by visibly running candidates for the U.S. House and Senate. Someone of Ralph Nader or Jill Stein’s level of recognition might be able to win a House seat, or bargain with their votes to make the Democrats be more pro-environmental or pro-economic equity. They could then speak publicly for a slate of Congressional candidates in many states to gain seats and/or bargaining power for the Greens to move the Dems leftward.

Stacey Abrams’ building Fair Fight was a another smart strategic approach, working within a beyond partisan framework to fight voter suppression, an inspiring movement that is catching on nationwide.

But running as a third or small party presidential candidate, as said, should be done eyeing a specific outcome that advances the public policies the party advocates. That outcome cannot be intangibles such as increased visibility or rallying the populace, given the unabated rightward White House policies in the four years after Nader and Stein’s runs in 2000 and 2016.

It must be measured in how many Electoral Votes a candidate believes they can win, and how many coattail Congressional seats for their party their candidacy realistically can generate. If the honest answer is 0 to both, run for Congress instead, or help out with Fair Fight.

                                                            ________________________________________________ 

Brian Arbenz is a political activist, observer and commentator living in Louisville, Ky. USA.

Our Dream Has Come True. We Beat Trump. Now What?

Biden won. That’s the reality. No qualifiers. No near slip up at the end that again defied the opinion polls.

The story should not be framed as Trump’s surprisingly strong performance in states where Biden was sure to cruise to a win. That pundit line thrived for a couple of days because it was rural votes that were counted first in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Philadelphia and Detroit ballots had to be forced out of post offices by judicial Heimlich maneuvers from federal judges.

When all the ballots are counted, Biden will have beaten an incumbent president by 5.3 million popular votes and he will have won more than 300 Electoral Votes.

That’s a walloping, by any historical standard, given the innate advantage of the incumbency. Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush by 5.8 million votes in 1992, and FDR’s ousting of Herbert Hoover during the depths of The Great depression was by 7 million.

Biden’s final win was just about as strong as the polls showed his advantage being in the last two months, though on election night and the next day, media phraseology was all about OMG, here we go again; Joe Biden will write “What Happened, Vol. 2!”

Biden’s final popular vote advantage being smaller than what polls projected simply reflects the normal leveling off of the leader’s margin when actual votes are cast, and that drop never taints a victory or the mandate of the incoming president.

George H.W. Bush led Michael Dukakis by 12-to-14 points throughout October 1988, then won the actual popular vote by eight points. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s lead over President Bush was about 8-to-10 poll points throughout the race, then he actually beat Bush by five points, 43 percent to 38, with a strong protest vote of 19 percent going to Ross Perot.

Unlike in 1976 and 1980, when Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, respectively, held leads of about 30 points after their nominations, then steadily lost ground until they were in toss-up races in the final week, Biden’s 2020 performance was one of consistency -- never slipping during the general election from a solid, but not overwhelming lead.

Along the way, the author posted this meme
to remind voters of the final goal. 

And President-Elect Biden is smart and politically savvy. He isn’t projecting a backing off his agenda because he did not win the coveted Senate majority; he is outlining his plans to use executive orders immediately to reverse dozens of the worst moves of President Trump, Education Secretary Betsy Devos and other extremists in this administration.

Of course, without a Democrat Senate majority, single payer health care and a $15-an-hour minimum wage are not going to become law in the next two years -- but would they necessarily even if the Senate were in Blue hands, or if the Democrats pull to a 50-50 tie after the Georgia run offs in January?

A Democrat majority built on wins in North Carolina and South Carolina the Democrats almost got and/or Georgia wins might well be one which could not count on Senators from those conservative states to vote for a bold progressive agenda. Susan Collins or Mitt Romney might be as willing as southern Democrats to support health care or minimum wage bills.

If a Republican Senate majority does result, as frustrating as that would be to Blue hopes, it may actually offer a form of cover from the spectacle of a Democratic Party failing to get its agenda through its own Congress, something the Republicans succumbed to in 2017.

The next four years are unclear. Will a vastly improved Coronavirus response, a successful vaccine, and economic improvements win the voters’ goodwill, or will the the big corporate domination of our lives still keep us chained to poverty jobs?

For now, let’s appreciate the fact that we longed to truncate the Trump racist, hateful war on empathy, and by standing strong, refuting disinformation, and voting strategically, we did it.

                                                    ___________________________________

Brian Arbenz, of Louisville, began resisting four years ago by attending the Women's March in Washington on 1/21/2017. That was just the start, and even with Biden as president our resistance against hate and exclusion must continue.