Quick Question
When Cory Booker looks in the mirror, does he see Bill Clinton?
Reflection.
Booker yesterday during CNN’s climate change town hall for the Democrats’ announced 2020 presidential candidates told the crowd that even though he’s a vegan, they should eat as much meat as they want. See, beef-on-the-hoof grazing is one of the top contributors to deforestation on this mad planet. Those fires in the Amazon rainforest? Clear-cutting for cattle ranching likely has made them much more the inferno than they might otherwise have been.
The message should be, Hey, knock off gorging on bovine steaks and roasts for ten seconds wouldja? I mean, we don’t have to ban red meat but, jeez, maybe we Americans can try to eat a stalk of celery every once in a while, just to save, y’know, the world. But no, Booker wants to show said world he can be all things to all people, just like his apparent role model.
That splitting-the-baby-in-half type of rhetoric certainly was a hallmark of the Clinton oratorical archive. And, considering the fact that Booker embraces more than a few things, as did Clinton, that make progressives feel uncomfortably itchy, well…, the comparison is apt, no?
In any case, should the unlikely occur and Booker gains his party’s 2020 nomination, I’ll more than happily vote for him over the Mussolini-lite that occupies the Oval Office today. I’d much rather verbally batter Booker over his venial sins than endure Li’l Duce‘s cardinal sins anymore.
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Action Figures
We’re doing a dizzyingly quick turnaround on Big Talk this afternoon. Due to scheduling conflicts and unforeseen HIPAA issues, I’ll be recording today’s edition at 2:15pm at WFHB Tower, the world headquarters of the radio/online communications powerhouse that carries my hopefully-one-day award-winning program, editing and post-producing said interview, and shooting the resultant audio file over to hard-nosed new news director Kyrie Greenberg for airing at 5:30pm.
Phew.
Oh yes, my guests. Two of them. They’ll be Tracey Hutchings-Goetz, community organizer for Hoosier Action, and Kassandra (Kass) Botts, interim exec director of the Indiana Recovery Alliance. The two groups are working together to defeat this state’s Medicaid work requirements.
Hutchings-Goetz (L) & Botts
You may recall Hoosier Action’s founder and current chief, Kate Hess Pace, appearing on Big Talk twice already, the first time back in August 2017 and again this past January. Since Kate’s first appearance on the program, she’s moved her base of operations to New Albany and brought on Hutchings-Goetz to handle business here in Bloomington. HA is a member-driven nonprofit that seeks to get people involved in legislative change and voter participation.
BTW: Ain’t that a stinging indictment of the electorate in this holy land? The fact that advocacy groups have to stand on their heads to get people to vote seems downright bizarre. I dunno about you, but I was chomping at the bit to vote in the years leading up to my eighteenth birthday and I don’t think I’ve missed an election since. If I have, it was entirely unavoidable. Other people, apparently, think it’s way too much effort to stand in line for thirteen minutes and then fill out a ballot indicating their preferences for the future of this locality/state/nation/world.
Anyway, HA’s got several new initiatives either ongoing or about to be. The Medicaid work requirement is just one. Hutchings-Goetz and Botts’ll fill listeners — and me — in on the rest of their respective organizations’ plans.
Here, in case you want some good background on the genesis and mission of HA, is the full length Big Talk featuring Hess Pace:
Big Talk airs every Thursday at 5:30pm on WFHB, 91.3 FM. The following Monday, we present an approximately-eight-minute feature called Big Talk Extra during the Daily Local News at 5pm. Listen Mondays for added conversation with the previous week’s guest. As always, if you miss Big Talk, come back here on Fridays (or whenever I get around to it) for a link to the podcast.
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