lummi island wine tasting Aug 8-9 ’25
Hours this weekend:
4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
painting by Anne Gibert
This week’s wine tasting
Mas des Bressades Rosé ’24 France $14
Bright and refreshing classic Rhone blend of grenache, syrah, and mourvèdre, with splashes of Carignan and Cinsault; nice flavor balance of bright red fruit, wild herbs, and a vibrant, spicy finish.
Domaine de l’Amauve La Vigne de Louis France $15
Youthful nose offering freshly crushed berries, mild spices, and garrigue. Rounded and supple palate with fresh red berry flavours and a vibrant finish.
Brunelli Martoccia di Luca Rosso di Montalcino ’22 Italy $24
Classic, dignified structure with approachable, wonderfully bright fruit; bright nose of cranberry, cherry, and slate; smooth, integrated tannins, and thoughtful, composed finish.
Economics of the Heart: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
The basic idea of fair elections is for citizens to decide their government representatives in a way that gives all candidates an equal shot at being elected, and all voters a guarantee their votes will be counted correctly. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought us back from the Depression and created an American middle class where education, opportunity, and social stability became widely available…and synonymous with “America.”
However, since even before the New Deal, extraordinarily wealthy financio-political interests have been working together to bring an end to any thought of an “American middle class.” The century-old financier-entitled wet dream has long been to replace Constitutional government with an oligarchic autocracy controlled by their small cadre of multi-billionaire, white-supremacist, misogynistic, and sadistic white men who claim to be doing God’s work by making people miserable.
Which brings us to the John Birch Society. It was a surprise just now to learn that the real John Birch was actually a patriot who worked closely in military intelligence in China during WWII with iconic WWII hero Gen. Claire Chennault. Birch was grotesquely murdered by Chinese Communists while on a peaceful mission— definitely not a guy who would ever have had anything to do with the ultra-Right Society that bears his name.
No, the JBS was actually launched in 1958 by ultra-conservative businessman Robert Welch. The Wikipedia discussions of the values and goals of Welch’s JBS is an uncannily prescient description of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation/Federalist Society Plan to turn our country into Welch’s Nirvana and our Dystopian Nightmare.
That historical perspective fits pretty much everything we have been seeing since 2016. It also puts asterisks and exclamation points on the recent move by Texas House Republicans to further stack the election deck against Texas House Democrats for the next election...( let’s hope there actually is one and it’s actually fair…)
The recent inspiring argument from California Gov. Gavin Newsom for Democratic States to fight back with our own gerrymanders of Congressional districts to turn more of them blue in ’26 has sparked a growing and tangible realization that (duh!) Blue states could in fact take back the House by out-doing the Reds at their own game.
It’s not just a good idea; it’s a Long Overdue good idea!
lummi island wine tasting Aug 2-3 ’25
Hours this weekend:
4-6 pm Friday (more crowded!) & Saturday (less crowded!)
This week’s wine tasting
Harken Chardonnay ’23 California $15
Billed as the “return of oaky chardonnay,” these guys select fruit from scattered unnamed California vineyards. But the bad rep of “oaky chard” was from over-oaking crappy fruit, and this one is nicely balanced.
Wolftrap Red ’22 South Africa $14
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish. Terrific value!
Pandemonium Cab ’21 California $24
From French Camp Vineyard high above Paso Robles, where hot days and cold nights produce flavorful layers of jammy black fruit, spicy aromas of leather and licorice, chalky tannins, and a well-rounded finish.
Economics of the Heart: Fascism Comes to America
In May of 2016, the Brookings Institute published a warning about the Tweetster’s candidacy. With surgical precision it identified him as a Fascist threat to our nation and laid out a remarkably prescient road map of what to expect, outlining in detail how similar figures (Hitler, Mussolini, Putin) have been able to transcend conventional politics by directly mobilizing a substantial population of followers with their outspoken disdain for the authority of the status quo.
In such circumstances, it suggests, the human race breaks down into groups of those who jump on the bandwagon, those who mumble and try not to make waves, and those who pretend it’s all just politics as usual. And of course, all of us who at some point in our lives took oaths to defend the Constitution and are still looking for ways to do so.
As regular watchers of Democracy Docket, we get daily updates on developments in many of the court cases brought against Project 2025’s ongoing assaults on our Constitutional rights. It is reassuring when such cases are either decided in favor of democracy or even delayed significantly in lower courts, as is the case for a huge majority of them. In the link above you will also find numerous ways to support its comprehensive efforts and add your effort to this vital cause.
The Carnegie Endowment, another source of democratic inspiration, noted in 2022 that “since the end of the Cold War, most democratic failure globally has been caused by elected governments using legal methods, such as gerrymandering and other technical rule changes” to achieve policies that willingly cripple democracy to ensure their side prevails by whatever means.
Indeed, it adds, “a paper classifying over 1,000 political parties, across 163 countries, by ideology and tactics, finds the current Republican Party far closer to authoritarian populist parties in Hungary and Turkey than to mainstream conservative parties in Germany or Canada.“
If we put these views together with the rising Maga Turmoil re the “Epstein Files,” we seem to be nearing a turning point as some Maggits are getting disillusioned, the Tweetster is getting more incoherent, the economy is faltering, and the discomforts of uncertainty and confusion are getting wearysome.
Signs of progress…
lummi island wine tasting July 25-26 ’25
Hours this weekend:
4-6 pm Friday (more crowded) & Saturday (less crowded)
This week’s wine tasting
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’23 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon, and a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Lancyre Pic St Loup Vielles Vignes ’20 France $18
100 % malbec; unfolds with dark, enchanting notes of blackberry, grilled plum, and jammy raspberry with accents of orange peel, vanilla, and tobacco spice, finishing with balanced structure, plush texture, and a lengthy finish
Alto Moncayo Veraton ’21 Spain $32
Deep red with scarlet rim; balsamic aromas with notes of chocolate and black fruits; warming in the mouth, expressive nuances of flavor, and an immensely pleasing finish.
Economics of the Heart: The Road to Oligarchy
Even after six chaotic months of Project 2025’s wanton destruction of our 250-year old democratic Constitutional government, we are still groping to understand exactly what we are dealing with and how to resist it effectively. So it was interesting to run across a cogent, detailed set of arguments by economist/political scientist C.J. Polychroniou that bring the reality of our present situation into focus.
While many of us have been aware and outraged for decades by the ever-increasing belligerence of Republicans in Congress, we were blind to the magnitude of the long-term plan for what is happening now, even though we all saw many of the pieces:
- Three decades of stacking Courts at all levels with ultra-conservative judges by ultra-wealthy members of the Federalist Society;
- Active encouragement of Russian misinformation on social media;
- 24/7 media misinformation from Fox, right-wing radio hosts, and always-angry Congressional Republicans (and lots more)
- Senate failure to convict the Tweetster on either the Ukaine bribe impeachment or the Jan 6 impeachment.
These remarkable outcomes defied logic at the time, but it is clear from current events that each of those steps was deliberate, well organized, funded with $billions, and methodically developed over several decades.
Collaborations likely included interests of Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and other oligarchies (Israel..?). Beginning with getting Reagan elected, then Bushes 1 and 2, and then the Tweetster, they have left tracks that lead directly to this current ongoing coup.
In his article Prof. Polychroniou observes that Trump and his team of loyalist co-conspirators and ultra-wealthy backers are fervent believers in the “natural right of the rich and powerful to shape society as they please and make government function as they see fit,” and that the grandiose goals of their breathtaking egos also include
- “Oligarchic state capture”
- White Christian nationalism as the “hegemonic project“;
- The rise of a new U.S. autocratic empire run by and for a handful of trillionaires.
The nonstop purposeful chaos has effectively distracted and deflected criticism as regulatory institutions are gutted or shut down altogether and power concentrated among a small cadre of admiring loyalists. Never mind that they are breathtakingly unqualified to run the agencies they now head…after all, their missions are to destroy them completely, not make them work.
The article also notes that though the Tweetster has always been anti-labor, the very anti-labor agenda of Project 2025 aiming to roll back all labor reforms under the Biden administration, outlaw public sector unions, and rewrite a hundred years of labor law, could be the most damaging administration the U.S. labor movement has ever faced. Ironically, its laissez-faire product and market regulations could crush the Fox-addicted white working-class which helped the Tweetster return to power.
lummi island wine tasting July 18-19 ’25
Hours this weekend:
4-6 pm Friday (loud & crowded) & Saturday (lower key)
to move a mountain is easy
to change one’s nature is more difficult…
This week’s wine tasting
Novelty Hill Stillwater Creek Chardonnay ’22 WA $22
Aromas of lemon verbena, thyme and apple blossoms; creamy fruit flavors of mango, lemon curd, pineapple, and crème brûlée.
Angeline Cab Sauv ’23 California $16
Fruit-forward with aromas of lush cherry, cassis, rich cherry, and plum flavors with hints of vanilla and soft oak that over-deliver for the modest price.
Can Blau Can Blau ’20 Spain $16
From the lovely Montsant wine region SW of Barcelona; aromas and flavors of cocoa bean and ripe, dark fruits and berries; seamless texture and silky finish that improve with aeration.
Economics of the Heart: The Politics of Anger
Jemez River, NM (Wikipedia)
Years ago I did numerous meditation retreats at a Zen center on the Jemez River in New Mexico. A friend from those days told me he had been hosting a morning group s at his home in Colorado for a few interested locals.
He told me a fellow had come sporadically but after a while told my friend he was stopping. “That’s okay,” said my friend, “when you’re miserable enough, you can come back.” Some months later the fellow showed up at the door early one morning, saying, “okay, I guess I’m miserable enough.” They both laughed, and he kept coming.
This memory came up while reading several articles today on “the politics of anger” invented, fostered, and refined into a potent political weapon by Republicans since about 1990.
First came the angry talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones, and more. Their attitudes were snide and insulting, their politics mean-spirited and angry and their comments targeted whichever Democratic politician had been chosen by the editors as the Target of the Week (or month or year) for their slanderous, false, mean-spirited narratives.
Those broadcasts dovetailed perfectly with Gingrich’s angry Speakership in the early 90’s, and set a tone for Republican politics which has only grown more arrogant, hostile, and vicious, to be emphatically punctuated by Mitch McConnell’s blocking of Obama’s Supreme Court nomination and their whole party’s failure to impeach the Tweetster either of the two times he was convicted. And now, of course, Project 2025.
Over the last six months the nation has been bombarded with a mountain of lies to bring us to this moment where we cannot rely on our Constitution, because it is deliberately being ignored. We cannot rely on Congress, because it is controlled by Republicans who want to abandon it. We can’t rely on the Constitution, because even though the lower courts generally stick to it for guidance, the Supreme Court majority still leans toward a replacing the Constitution with a Christian autocracy ruled by white billionaires.
So with all that going on, hopes dimming, tension and anxiety building, there is beginning to appear a small light growing not in our government, but in ourselves.
Below are links to three articles worth a read. In a way, these ideas take us back to our founders, who united in revolution against a tyrannical king.
ref 1 “We have become an indig-nation where discourse is replaced by discord, and debating one’s rivals turns into debasing them, all backed by self-serving tones and punctuated by reddened faces, bulging veins, and wild gesticulations of irritation.”
ref 2 “Prior research has shown that political attacks communicated by independent actors (rather than candidates) can be especially influential in shaping political beliefs. Social media algorithms reward and amplify attacks precisely because they’re engaging. Studies show this makes outrage more potent and visible, giving users a warped view of what the public believes.”
ref 3 “political cynicism as an attitude that’s rooted in distrust of political actors’ motivations. It goes further than healthy skepticism, they say, because it involves wholesale rejection of people and processes in democracy, and an underlying belief that politicians are guided by corrupt, self-serving, personal interests, rather than service to the public good.”
ref 4 “recent civic uprisings in authoritarian regimes often involve ordinary individuals — novices with no prior links to organized activism…despite the threat of repression, presenting a puzzle for traditional theories of political participation.”
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