The Friday Flashpoints
"I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future..." Words from the acclaimed Black poet Nikki Giovanni
With my love for English and storytelling established, nobody asked me but....
***The end of the week is here, and just as I predicted, House Democratic leaders have postponed a vote on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill due to the gaping divide on costs and provisions as esposued by key moderates and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
To their credit, the House and Senate passed short term legislation that avoided a government shutdown, a measure that President Joe Biden signed that will fund the Federal government through early December with more than $28 billion in disaster relief—and $6.3 billion to help refugees from Afghanistan. (While Haitians continue to get sent back to Haiti, if I might add…)
Still, while my sincere hopes continue to be that consensus on the more pressing economic matters can be reached, if the infrastructure and budget bills are not pushed through, I expect a really tough year ahead for Democrats who will have no one to blame but themselves for failing to get things done in Washington.
***Speaking of the government shutdown that was avoided yesterday, Facebook Memory just reminded me of the following post that I wrote eight years ago today during the first year of President Barack Obama's second administration: "I awake to learn that the Tea Party coalition of the Republican Party has forced the first Federal government shutdown in 17 years. Most of the comments that I have read from Tea Party affiliated congressional leaders suggest that the same believe that they have 'stood their ground' on 'core principles' by refusing to fund the government unless certain demands, namely a delay in the individual mandate provision of Obamacare, are met. So be it, but the same surely must know that Obamacare, like the rising sun this day, is rolling out right on schedule. As such, I must ask whether this shut down is symbolism at the expense of hundreds of thousands of federal workers simply to prove a point?"
Well, as the old cliche goes, "the more things change, the more they stay the same..."
***With regards to Washington gridlock, former Democratic presidential nominee, Secretary of State, Senator, and First Lady Hillary Clinton made a few salient points earlier this week about her wishes that Democrats would end the filibuster and force desired legislation through without regards for Republican cooperation.
Clinton questioned why Democrats are so transfixed upon: "Keeping the filibuster now, when you're dealing with a political party that does not respect the rule of law, does not even respect the process unless it works for them, you know, witness what they did to Merrick Garland when President Obama had every right to appoint a Supreme Court justice."
As I often write, "I'm with you when you're right" and in this instance, Mrs. Clinton is quite right with regards to how Republicans govern as opposed to how Democrats govern. Not only did Republicans refuse to give one of their own, longtime Republican Merrick Garland, an opportunity to be confirmed, but they reversed their whole "wait until the election is decided" stance from 2016 by waiting for nothing in 2020—when they pushed Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation through at a rapid pace only a few weeks before last year's election.
To this end, I’m here to state that lest Democrats forget that turnabout is fair play in love, war—and politics...
***While we continue to pray for an end to the Coronavirus Pandemic, I found it interesting to note that over the past few months, more American deaths have occurred in rural parts of the country than in metropolitan areas.
According to the latest article in The Hill, the "...seven-day moving average in rural areas is 66.8 confirmed cases per 100,000 while in urban areas it is around 43.3 cases per 100,000.”
Speaking about these discrepancies, Alan Morgan, the head of the National Rural Health Association, said: “There is a national disconnect between perception and reality when it comes to Covid in rural America. We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes. And there's no movement towards addressing what we're seeing in many of these communities, either among the public, or among governing officials.”
What vexes me at this juncture is how to get the unvaccinated, be they rural or urban, to vaccinate themselves? From where I sit to Hobbserve, When former President Donald Trump encourages his rural supporters at rallies to get the vaccine, he gets booed off the stage. When President Biden encourages his hold-out supporters to get the vaccine, they often fire back that they "need to do more research”—like they are actually qualified to analyze the efficacy of these drugs beyond the analyses of highly trained epidemiologists, pharmacists, and medical professionals.
Such events are truly sad, but in gallows humor style, I post the following meme that I observed on social media yesterday that captures the absurdity of the holdouts:
***While I fell asleep in the 4th quarter, I learned this morning that the University of Miami football team lost to the University of Virginia last night 30-28 when a field goal that could have won the game for the Hurricanes missed to the left.
When I awoke and logged onto my Facebook page, I noticed quite a few Florida State Seminoles fans poking fun at the Hurricanes’ loss that dropped them to 2-3 on the season. FSU fans, of course, have horrifying memories of field goal misses at the end of games against Miami during their Dynasty years that cost them at least two national championships.
But what struck me as odd this morning is that FSU is winless on the year, 0-4, and to me, there are no similarities between a slightly below average Miami team missing a game winning field goal, and those dominant, star laden FSU teams of the 90s that lost heartbreakers to equally dominant and star laden Miami teams in games that still capture the imaginations of all who played in them or watched at rapt attention.
As I often lament, I miss the days when Florida was dominating the SEC, FSU was dominating the ACC, Miami was dominating everybody, and Florida A&M was dominating the MEAC and Black College ball; I can only hope that before I leave this Earth, that there will be a return to college football normalcy in my beloved Sunshine State.
Flashback Friday: James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi
59 years ago this morning, citizens in and around Oxford, Mississippi arose to the stench of death and burned out buildings as a riot that began as a protest against integration in general, and specifically the pending enrollment of James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, left two dead, hundreds injured and thousands of dollars of university property destroyed.
By 1962, the images of National Guardsmen escorting Black students to class was not new in America, but the events that week at "Ole Miss" were the closest the country had come to open rebellion against the Federal government since the Civil War a century earlier.
Mississippi's notoriously arch-segregationist Governor Ross Barnett openly defied President John F. Kennedy, and was among the home state faithful at a football game chanting "states rights," the ancient rallying cry for slavery and Jim Crow, as the campus prepared for anarchy that would leave Ole Miss a burning and bloody mess a few days later.
Meredith would successfully enroll, but he remained largely a pariah throughout his tenure with some white students refusing to attend the same classes, while others sat far away from him (as shown above). Still, Meredith did graduate and by so doing, helped hasten the end of formal segregation deep in the Heart of Dixie.
Final Hobbservation
I leave you this Friday with a bucolic view of my favorite season, Autumn, along with words from one of my favorite British Romanticism era writers, Emily Bronte:
"Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;Lengthen night and shorten day;Every leaf speaks bliss to me; Fluttering from the autumn tree…”
Have a wonderful weekend!
🍁🍂🍁 Here's to fall, fall to peace 🍂🍁🍂