In 2016, the President’s Cabinet consists of 15 Department heads (all named Secretary, except the Attorney General of the Justice Department). These are the highest ranking government executives in America, besides the constitutionally elected President and Vice-President. The Vice-President is considered part of the Cabinet. Each of the 15 Cabinet officers must be approved by the Senate, after nomination by the President. In addition, there are seven other government officers considered of Cabinet rank.
New Names Since Yesterday
After sorting through the bushel basket of new names offered for Trump’s Cabinet, the best we can do, relying on something more than gossamer wings, is add four more names to the Washington Post’s main tracker list.
These newish potential cabinet members are:
- Gov. Nikki Haley (South Carolina) for Secretary of State
- Shirley Ybarra for Secretary of Transportation
- Michelle Rhee for Secretary of Education
- Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education
Our high altitude Potential Cabinet Summary is now at 55 serious or semiserious names, of whom 52 are White, and 3 are Asian-American (all born in the U.S.). Among the entire candidate slate, 10 women are proposed for six different departments. There are no African- Americans or Hispanics n the list. I’m sure this is purely a coincidence.
Adding possible new names from other respectable news sources (we include Breitbart, as they are a direct Trump campaign outlet), we expand the list by five more potential candidates:
- Former Gov. Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) for Secretary of State
- Former Governor Rick Perry (Texas) for Secretary of Energy
- Bill Hagerty for U.S Trade Representative
- Steve Hadley for Secretary of Defense
- Retire Gen. David Petraeus for Secretary of State
Updating the Washington Post’s list with reports from elsewhere, the notable candidate pool is now up to 60 names, 57 of whom are White, and 49 are White Men (82%), not counting Pence or Trump. Overall then, 95% of identified Trump possibilities are White, including both men and women, but not Trump or Pence.
America, get out your polarized, double-glazed, prescription Ray Bans. Those glasses need to be right by your side, for ready access.
Take note that Trump’s coterie of 49 White Men are not just any White Men. They are nearly all of them, to borrow a phrase from writer and novelist, Stuart Stevens*, “White Men of Wealth and Privilege” (WMWPs, for short). I’m also sure that the folks in DWA will immediately feel the strong bond and connection of Trump’s WMWPs with the fabric of their own lives, their anger and frustration about being screwed over.
The Orphan Basket of three departments with no candidates yesterday is smaller now that some potential choices for Secretary of Education were listed today. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Labor still find themselves neglected, out in the cold.
Just to add a little spice to the mix, while the CIA Director is not an actual Cabinet position, it is nonetheless an important advisory position for the President. It is one of the approximately 1,200 presidential appointments which require Senate approval, among the total of nearly 4,000 significant positions that the President is responsible for filling, to administer the executive branch of government.
There are two names in the CIA Director basket as of this evening (Thursday). They are Rep. Mike Pompeo (Kansas) and former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Michigan), both of whom are White Males. The Trump Cabinet vetting process just keeps on getting better and better.
Don’t Give Us a Hard Time (Yet)
The Trump campaign points out it is still early, and time to chill, in two articles today:
From Trump’s favorite organ, Breitbart:
“Putting together a federal government is a big task,” his former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told reporters. “It’s false to say it’s not going well. Everything up there is very smooth.”
Trump rejected the negative reports on Twitter as “so totally wrong,” and lashed out at The New York Times as “fools” for their transition coverage.
And the Washington Post adds the following:
Hoekstra said the Trump team was “going to expand its outreach, absolutely. But they’re going to do it in a methodical way.”
Methodical is one way to explain their expanding process. It might not be the most apt.
What to Make of Cabinet Selection Progress So Far
They say it is often best to Go With What You Know. And here we have the Trump transition team carefully, methodically following that maxim, in double-spades, full throated compliance.
Trump is certainly unpredictable, and he may yet throw over all the Team’s hard work, but 10 days after the election, 15% of the time expired from the 10 week Transition until inauguration. So far, Trump’s Cabinet is on track to look Whiter than the 61% majority White America, all of whose citizens they intend to serve fairly.
Among America’s minority ethnic groups, Trump has identified 5% Asian-American candidates in his applicant pool (3 people), and no Hispanics or African-Americans. His total applicant pool does include 17% women, a notch below what we already have, but not in the sub-zero category. If a woman were to be chosen for every cabinet office where one is being considered, the ration would rise to a fairly respectable 26%, based on historical standards, if not fully representative of America’s talent and brain power.
For the moment, given Trump’s promises of fair inclusion for all of America’s citizens by gender and ethnicity, he is well short of his pledge. His minority pool is lop sided, exclusively weighted for Asian-Americans.
For the DWA who simply identify progress with people who look like they do, this is an achievement of real note. Trump’s cabinet may be 50% Whiter than America itself. This could be a reassuring throwback to the practices of the good old days. The proper start to MAGA, and the harbinger of good jobs and the return of proper moral values, that Trump has so earnestly promised.
Whatever else might happen to Trump’s promises on lower taxes, access to quality health care, and immigration and the Big Beautiful Wall paid for by Mexico, the inhabitants of DWA have no reason to complain about Trump’s top executive choice pool as of the second week of Transition..
Trump continually boasts that he hires only the very best, most excellent people to do a job. The open question of whether Trump’s current applicant pool is really the very best America can put forward for service to the nation in 2016 is another matter.
Maybe, Trump and the transition team should try a little harder.
America’s Intense Focus on Time and Timed Events
All Americans recognize the significant influence of thinking in figures of speech revolving around time. We know the story of Cinderella and the pumpkin coach ride home, running out the clock to preserve a win in an athletic contest, or anxiously wishing for the end of an awkward or painful date or social engagement. We often describe timed events ending at midnight; like the countdown on New Year’s Eve every year, or the well-known Doomsday Clock from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the World’s nuclear hazard situation.
Trump’s Transition and his Cabinet choices are on one such inexorable clock. There are 10 minutes (weeks) in the Transition for the change over to Trump Control. The clock is ticking every day.
America’s Countdown to Trump (10 Weeks Transition)
Some will cheer and celebrate on January 20. Some are despondent. Some accept the result, but with no enthusiasm. Some are uncertain and wait anxiously. Whatever your emotional state, this Political Clock doesn’t care; it just keeps counting down.
Trump and his Team may be ready or not. It doesn’t make any difference to the clock.
Here’s to America’s Countdown to Midnight.**
A Musical Coda on Syncopated Changes (Same as Yesterday)
When I was growing up in New York in the 1950’s there was a show on our CBS network station, WCBS-TV, every afternoon called The Early Show (1952-1967), which screened a variety of older movies. The show actually started in 1951 in the late evening as The Late Show:”. It was so popular that the next year a weekday afternoon version was put on the air (I believe it ran from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM).
The same theme song was used on both shows. I must have heard it play a thousand times. It is so catchy and spirit lifting, as well as being associated with free movies, that to this day I think it is the best, and certainly my favorite, TV theme music.
It is called The Syncopated Clock.
*A satirical, dark comedic political novel by Stuart Stevens, titled “The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear” was published in June,2016. It describes a contested Republican national convention and takes place largely in New Orleans. It was greeted with somewhat mixed reviews, but I think much of it applies to the 2016 Election and the absurdities we have just witnessed. Life imitating Art imitating Life, and so on, recursively.
The WMWP label is applied on page 55. Thanks to the author for the phrase that works. The book is currently available on Amazon.
America’s Bicentennial Logo (1776-1976)
**America’s Bicentennial (our 200th) birthday was celebrated o July 4, 176. On New Year’s Eve 1976, Elvis Presley gave a wonderful “Countdown to Midnight” concert in Pittsburgh’s Civic Center Arena, before a live crowd of 16.400 lucky ticket holders.
Louisiana’s Stae Flag Bicentennial Stamp (issued February 23, 1976)
Though he was to pass away only eight months later in 1977, his 1½ hour performance at midnight was a stunner. He was in top form. Elvis all the way, in a white jumpsuit, and with his patented leg left leg twitch. See for yourself.
Watch the King perform his last Midnight Concert on video here, including “Auld Lang Syne”
Elvis Sings “Polk Salad Annie” in Pittsburgh Concert, New Year’s Eve (1976)
There is a down home Louisiana angle to this event. At 49:00 of the concert video Elvis sings “Polk Salad Annie”, a country ballad he first recorded as a cover in 1970. The song was originally written and performed in 1968 by Louisiana native Tony Joe White.
From the Wikipedia entry for “Polk Salad Annie”:
“Polk Salad Annie” is a 1968 song written and performed by Tony Joe White. It was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Its lyrics describe the lifestyle of a poor rural Southern girl and her family. Traditionally, the term to describe the type of food highlighted in the song is polk or poke sallet, a cooked greens dish made from pokeweed. Its 1969 single release peaked at Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada, the song made #10 on the RPM Magazine Hot Singles chart.
The song vividly recreates the Southern roots of White’s childhood and his music reflects this earthy rural background. As a child he listened not only to local bluesmen and country singers but also to the Cajun music of Louisiana, that rare hybrid of traditional musical styles introduced by French settlers at the turn of the century.
His roots lie in the swamplands of Oak Grove, Louisiana, where he was born in 1943. Situated just west of the Mississippi River, it’s a land of cotton fields, where pokeweed, or “polk” grows wild, and alligators lurk in moss-covered swamps. ” I spent the first 18 years of my life down there,” said White. “My folks raised cotton and corn. There were lotsa times when there weren’t too much to eat, and I ain’t ashamed to admit that we’ve often whipped up a mess of polk sallet. Tastes alright too.. a bit like spinach.”
Sallet is an old English word that means “cooked greens,” not to be mistaken for “salad”; in fact, a great many cases of pokeweed poisoning result from this linguistic mistake. While it may be that record companies labeled the song “salad,” the dish in question was a “sallet” made of pokeweed.
Here is the best version I could find of Tony Joe White singing his own song, this time in a relaxed duet with Johnny Cash on his TV show (1970). There is a wonderful banter and celebration of the music between the two in this piece.
Watch Tony Joe White and Johnny Cash sing “Polk Salad Annie” together.
Pokeweed Plant and Berries (Phytolacca americana
For the botanically interested or informed among you, here is some of the entry for pokeweed from Wikipedia. Birds can ingest the plant safely, humans cannot eat it raw. It is considered a pest plant by farmers. But it has been a food source, properly cooked, mostly for poor folks on subsistence diets in Appalachia and the South.
American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), or simply pokeweed, is a herbaceous perennial plant in the pokeweed family Phytolaccaceae growing up to 8 feet (2 meters) in height. It is native to the eastern United States and has significant toxicity.
It has simple leaves on green to red or purplish stems and a large white taproot. The flowers are green to white, followed by purple to almost black berries which are a food source for songbirds such as gray catbird, northern mockingbird, northern cardinal, and brown thrasher, as well as other birds and some small animals (i.e., to species that are unaffected by its mammalian toxins).
Pokeweed—also known by a number of other names—is native to eastern North America, the Midwest, and the Gulf Coast, with more scattered populations in the far West. It is considered a major pest species by farmers, and that and the danger of human poisoning—its significant toxicity and its risks to human and animal health are consistently reported, with the whole of the plant toxic and increasing in toxicity through the year, with children at particular risk of its very poisonous purple-red ripe fruit—support arguments for eradication of P. americana. Even so, it is used as an ornamental in horticulture, and it provokes interest for the variety of its natural products (toxins and other classes), for its ecological role, its historical role in traditional medicine, and for some utility in biomedical research (e.g., in studies of pokeweed mitogen). In the wild, it is easily found growing in pastures, recently cleared areas, and woodland openings, edge habitats such as along fencerows, and in waste places.
Poke is a traditional southern Appalachian food. The leaves and stems can both be eaten, but must be cooked, usually boiled three times in fresh water each time. The leaves have a taste similar to spinach; the stems taste similar to asparagus. To prepare stems, harvest young stalks prior to chambered pith formation, carefully peel the purple skin away, then chop the stalk up and fry in meal like okra. Traditionally, poke leaves are boiled, drained, boiled again, then fatback is added and cooked some more to add flavor. Poisonings occur from failure to drain the water from the leaves at least once. Preferably they should be boiled, drained, and water replaced two or more times.
Poke sallet festivals are held annually in several small southern communities, in remembrance of the plant and its historic role, festivals that have evolved to be local community celebrations only remotely related to the plant as a food or medicinal and individual festival references below). Published locations for the continuing festivals include:
Arab, Alabama; Blanchard, Louisiana, outside of Shreveport: Gainesboro, Tennessee, 90 miles east-northeast of Nashville, near the Cumberland River; and Harlan, Kentucky.
It is easy to feel as if irony is dead after the election. Or, if not dead, at the very least comatose in the ICU in critical condition, with fading vital signs. I fist heard Tony Joe’s song while I was a college student in the Northeast. At the time, I knew enough biology to hear the title, clearly and distinctly, as “Poke Salad Annie”. My impression required no further checking or investigation. For 50 years, my error lay dormant, undisturbed and uncorrected. Now it turns out, I was misinformed on two counts out of three for the simple name of a song I liked immediately, and have listened to and enjoyed at least one or two hundred times over the years.
The traditional southern Louisiana dish is properly named polk sallet, as I now know. I was half-wrong in identifying “polk”. It does refer to pokeweed, but with a variant name. The second error was not my doing, but probably stems from a record company executive in California, who thought the real second name “sallet” was too provincial for nationwide record listener tastes, just a little too much southern or country.
The irony is that if someone, unaware of the actual food tradition and practice, had tried to make or eat an actual poke salad with raw leaves or shoots as described in the perceived song title, they would have made themselves quite ill. They would quickly rue their error as they found themselves heaving and retching in the bathroom, for their trouble in eating a healthy green salad.
Just the kind of mistake a transplanted Yankee, or a careless, market-driven Westerner trying to dress up something common might make, with unintended consequences.
Fortunately that set of circumstances never happened for me. I enjoy nearly all the glorious food choices we have in Louisiana, including soul, creole, and cajun cooking. The one food group I have never acquired a taste for is the wide variety of cooked greens so prevalent here in southern Louisiana dishes and soul food (collard greens, turnip greens, and mustard greens, among them). I think you either need to be raised on them from childhood, so you associate them with home, or have a more adventurous palate, if you come upon them later in life.
Pokeweed (Cooked) Nutritional Values (per USDA): Low Fat, Good Protein, High Level of Vitamins, Los Sodium. What’s not to like?
So I have missed the potential pleasure of eating cooked polk sallet greens by choice, and no one has ever served me a raw salad with pokeweed shoots and dressing, by good fortune. I think I will leave it like that. A little less pleasure and a little less pain.
Here is Elvis’ Pittsburgh Concert (1976) set list for real fans. What a range of American music for his time!
- Elvis Presley Pittsburgh Concert (December 31, 1976)
- See See Rider
- (‘Ma’ Rainey & Her Georgia Jazz Band cover)
- I’ve Got a Woman (Ray Charles cover)
- Amen
- Big Boss Man (Jimmy Reed cover)
- Love Me (Willy and Ruth cover)
- Fairytale (The Pointer Sisters cover)
- You Gave Me a Mountain (Marty Robbins cover)
- Jailhouse Rock
- O sole mio (Eduardo di Capua cover) (performed by Sherrill Nielsen)
- It’s Now or Never
- My Way (Claude François cover)
- Funny How Time Slips Away (Billy Walker cover)
- Auld Lang Syne (Robert Burns cover)
- Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins cover)
- Tryin’ to Get to You (The Eagles cover)
- Polk Salad Annie (Tony Joe White cover)
- Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot cover)
- What’d I Say (Ray Charles cover)
- Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry cover)
- Love Letters (Dick Haymes cover)
- School Days (Chuck Berry cover)
- Fever(Little Willie John cover)
- Hurt (Roy Hamilton cover)
- Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton cover)
- Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Charles Hart cover)
- Reconsider Baby (Lowell Fulson cover)
- Little Sister
- Unchained Melody (Les Baxter cover)
- Rags to Riches (Tony Bennett cover)
- Can’t Help Falling in Love
Holy Cow! What a concert to have attended in person