Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1462
Mom's obituary, Elon's loss, Booker's feat, Dem's fumble at the end, Abundance Agenda cynicism, Jane's bagels, weird old ladies staring, deafheaven
Good morning. Hi hi hi. Greetings from Somerville, MA. It is thirty-one degrees out, sunny. It was supposed to rain the whole time we are here for Jane’s “spring break,” so I will take what I can get, but man. Chilly.
I did not go out last night, I did not drink, I got to sleep to 8 AM, a full nine hours and I feel freakin’ great. Sleep is amazing. Sleep is amazing.
And I survived April Fool’s Day with only one joke’s on me! That was nice.
My mom’s obituary is out today. It was pretty heavily revised since I saw a draft last week, so there was a lot in there that took me straight back to my childhood this morning:
Kathy was known for her big smile, for her reciting of poetry, for breaking into song at a moment's notice, and for randomly bursting out into tears over some heartfelt reason like the oppressed in a foreign country. She was a staunch feminist, activist, Lion's member, boss, and smart-aleck, all at a whopping height of, at best, 5-foot, 2-inches.
Kathy loved to host large parties, and the Webbs' "Viewpointe House" on Farmers Loop in Fairbanks was a major gathering place in the late 1980's through the 1990's. One week, Kathy would host an event for the Democratic Party, and the next, her husband would host for the Republican Party. Kathy and the family hosted numerous foreign exchange students, traveling athletes, visiting politicians, and Lions Club members. At one point, with great surprise to her family because she did not like to cook or clean, Kathy got the inkling to run a B&B in the house for a few years. And, of course, Kathy hosted hundreds of parties for fellow educators: the NEA, the FEA, the Gene DeWild-era thespians, and all the beloved West Valley staff and faculty. Kathy remained proud West Valley Wolfpack for life.
Some of the best gatherings were during the holidays, when family and strangers alike gathered at their Viewpointe House. Kathy appreciated she didn't have to cook because her sister and sisters's in-laws would do all the heavy lifting in the kitchen and prepare the feast. The household was filled with laughter, love, music, and card games. Kathy could play a mean hand of Octo-Solitaire (that's what it's called when eight people simultaneously play solitaire mingled into one game).
Really drives home that most kids growing up in central Alaska in the 80’s did not have, you know, Sargent Shriver over for dinner.
So, you know, if you’ve ever wondered about me, “what’s up with this goth nerd being so obsessed with social justice politics,” well, there you go.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
Speaking of social justice politics, well, here we goooo. ‘Bout the best day we could hope for these days yesterday. Two florida seats that were plus-30 Republican just five months ago slid 20 points and are now just plus-8 Republican, replicating a nationwide trend in these last months. Provided we can make it to the mid-terms, these guys are gonna get trounced.
But the big one of course is Wisconsin. Now, I don’t want to sugarcoat things: the Republican candidate — no one knows their name, I certainly don’t — actually got 200k more votes than the last Republican candidate got for the same court a few years back. They fucking nailed it: “solid” (as any of them can be these days) candidate, rivers of money, a get-out-the-vote drive so effective it is literally illegal.
Buuuuut: hahahahaha Elon Musk blew $20 million dollars to lose by ten points, two points worse than the polling was before he got involed. I mean could there be a better gift. Yes, yes, of course there could. But I’m still gonna pause and savor it.
And even better dude was so butthurt that he didn’t tweet for four hours - his longest stretch recently was 20 minutes. Four hours that no one had to listen to that fucker. Sheer bliss.
And then we have Cory Booker. Now, look. I got some problems with Cory, especially lately. He rolled over on so many of Trump’s nominees, he hasn’t been doing shit. BUT the dude got the message. And Strom Thurmond’s fillibuster record needed to go and for a black man to break it is just majestic and when he broke it (after dealing with Schumer’s dumb-ass interruption) the first thing he did was point out that Strom Thurmond has a room (I think he meant building?) named after him in this senate, right over there. Wise. I really thought that was gonna go when Ossoff and Warnock took the two GA senate seats but I guess it hasn’t. Hrm.
I just tweetedskeeted about this, so I will just post those here rather than re-type it:
Put that on the public internet which I really don’t like to do anymore, but damn.
We paused watching Real Civil Engineer last night on Youtube at 7PM so Jane could watch the last minutes of Booker’s speech before he broke Strom’s record. It gave me about five minutes to explain the context to my daughter, but I didn’t really need to. She was immediately enraptured by Booker talking on the senate floor. Now, look, I doubt she was, you know, experiencing a political awakening or anything, but it was… something.
So, yeah, hats off, Senator Cory Booker. I did a little smack-talking about you a week or two ago, though I did point out you weren’t the worst Democratic senator. I am not sorry I did that, because you save the strong impression yesterday of someone experiencing the contrition of someone who’s heard his constituents complaints. BUT then again, you actually listened to those complaints and did something. So, hats off.
Unfooorrtunnaaaatteeely, that bit right after his yielding the floor where the Republicans just picked right back up working on confirming Matt Whittaker as the Ambassador to NATO (Matt Whittaker, you will recall, is that bald dildo salesman who briefly ran the DOJ under Trump 1 and was directly involved in Trump’s coup efforts) and not a single Democrat did anything to stop it, while, oh, you know, 200 million kids were watching the whole thing live on TikTok.
Now, I get that Booker maybe didn’t grasp, before, after, or during his speech that it would become the single biggest thing on TikTok ever. But it is deeply unfortunate that millions of kids witnessed all those Democrats not objecting to unanimous consent to move on to Whittaker’s nomination. It is deeply unfortunate that right after giving a moving speech about doing something, they… just didn’t do anything. That was a pretty sad messaging whiff. Not one senator had the wherewithal to put all that together in real-time and speak out, even if it was going to be ultimately fruitless. Really does speak to their uselessness as a batch.
I am sitting in my 3-season room at my workbench in the window looking out onto the street as I type this and two old ladies are staring at this house intently and it is wigging me out. There is absolutely nothing interesting enough about this house to merit these two old ladies doing this. And they have not seen me.
Whew. They walked away.
Been thinking about why this new Abundance Agenda book from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is sitting so poorly with me. Like, viscerally, I am not in a place to hear about a pleasing new version of Democrats that appeal to selfish people, but also I like to win and so maybe that is not a good enough reason. I do enjoy “Trump Take Egg” after all.
And of course, I ought to be able to decide on the merits of the actual argument not just my gut. And to a degree, I am into abundance for myself, you know? I mean, I think it ought to be illegal for anyone on the planet to be worth more than, say, $10 million. But $10 million is still a lot. I am still into abundance, I guess, conceptually. So why does the idea sit so poorly with me?
At first I thought it was something about the actual words “Abundance Agenda.” That the word “abundance” does not inherently speak to the soul of the left, to the urgency to help everyone.
But, then, I suppose that’s just in your perspective of the word: the words “freedom” and “justice” do not clearly and obviously state they are for everyone: in fact that’s the balliwick of the right: yes freedom and justice, but only for a few. But when we on the left use them, it is assumed they mean for everyone. So I guess I could be generous, assume positive intent, and assume they mean abundance for everyone.
But I kinda seriously doubt that because literally the only thing I’ve seen from this book tour is Ezra Klein badmouthing a perfectly good Biden policy to Jon Stewart, both of them knowing nothing about the actual policy and where it came from and deciding the whole thing was a government boondoggle and a waste of money. And I keep seeing that “Klein and Thompson advocate for reduced regulation.”
And I am a broad-minded individual but I cannot think of a single way “reduced regulation” has anything to do with equity and abundance for everyone. Seems a weird place to start. The downtrodden are not suffering under onerous environmental review regulations.
Also — and pretty much everyone I know of all political stripes disagrees with me on this — I do not care about government waste. I care about government kleptocracy. They are two different things. I care about the government making regulations to, you know, put more money into Trump or Elon’s or the Raytheon CEO (old school villan but still going strong!)’s pocket. But I do not care if we spent $20 billion to get more broadband to rural areas and we could have done it for $15 billion and $5 billion went to a bunch of, I don’t know, regional fiber layers. Don’t care. Money is made up. Government spends more money on buying shit from its citizens and I am mostly fine with this. It’s nice when the shit they buy (like more broadband!) is useful but it is not a requisite for me. I like endless government stimuli for everyone forever. Money is made up! Spend it while you can until you hit a hyperinflation wall.
I am not interested in a “pro-prosperity” party. Or, rather, I am not interested in such a platform over a “pro equity, pro-help” party. We can talk about abundance after everyone on the planet at least has the bare fucking minimum. I know this makes me a pinko but it is more important to me that all of Africa is fed than Americans get more abundance.
But maybe I am misinterpreting things. Maybe I need to fucking read the book.
Or maybe reading the book is how they get you.
We are listening to Deafheaven’s new album today, again. I like it. Good writing music. The shoegaze-death-metal alliance seems on the wane as these early pioneers of this betrothal drift slowly back into the death-metal-only lane. That is maybe fine I went and saw them last tour and it was getting a little milquetoast maybe they need to metal up.
Jane and I went to the Ukrainian place again this morning. They have their babkas back in stock. They gave her her bagel and it had cheese on the egg. Jane seems to be the only person in the world who likes her breakfast sandwiches with just egg. Which is very weird, because she likes cheese. I got a crepe. It was delicious. I forgot how good their crepes are. It was fifteen dollars. We are getting closer and closer to that scene in the Lego Movie being reality where the Barista says it’s forty dollars for a cup of coffee or whatever. Trump take egg.
Got a noise and metal playlist for you today, since I mentioned Deafheaven. Features mine and Nick’s newest death metal obsession, Bell Witch. Just great. Listen to the whole album will only take you two or three hours.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.