In Case You Missed It (v1)

In case you missed any of this week's posts, here's a quick recap.

Sunday School 9/1/19, continued my weekly look at who's talking with the talking heads, brought us a couple of the Dems vying for the 2020 presidential nod. Here's Julian Castro on the desire for younger folks at the top of the ticket:

While the three leaders -- Biden, Warren and the non-Dem - are "very talented individuals," Castro thinks that as they get close to the Iowa caucuses, "people do want a new generation of leadership." To that end, he thinks the voters need to take a chance, as they did with JFK, Carter, and Obama.

And, Beto O'Rourke, on polls vs. policy:

You know, more than I worry about the politics or the polling, more than I care about what the NRA has to say on this, I care for my kids, and this country...  This triangulation, poll-testing every move, that's what got us here in the first place.

Monday's Grains of Salt post - a recurring focus on Syracuse and Central New York, talked about a new, mixed-use park being developed in the city's Near West Side neighborhood, designed to help answer this question:

What do you do with 77,000 square feet of vacant land adjacent to one of the country’s most innovative public broadcasting stations within one of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods?

In Tuesday's post, Walmart Goes Where Others Fear to Tread, it was painful to make a comparison between the changes made by the world's largest retailed to do something about guns, and the lack of effort on the part of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who reiterated his lack of commitment to doing his job thusly:

I said several weeks ago that if the president took a position on a bill so that we knew we would actually be making a law and not just having serial votes, I’d be happy to put it on the floor.

My Wondering on Wednesday post, the 180th in this series, focused on the president's weather forecasting, his golfing (in a way that might surprise regular readers), and his 'enrichment efforts, among other things. Here's a snippet, related to Trump's 'suggestion' that Mike Pence stay at Trump Doonbeg property while attending meetings in Dublin, fully on the other side of Ireland:

In total, nearly $20 million has been spent at the Trump family hotels since 2015 by various mostly Republican political groups, including Mr. Trump’s own political committees, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics.

I delivered a post from The Update Desk  on Thursday, about my social experiment with the Democrats (and Bernie) and how they're handling outreach efforts. I' signed up on all of the top ten candidates' websites, and eventually heard from all of them, on a variety of topics. Here's what they aren't talking about:

The economy, education, foreign policy, health insurance, or immigration, unless they included those in a 'general' message. No email addressed any of those issues individually, likely because the candidates are gearing their efforts towards whatever is the flavor of the day - the climate change Town Hall, the debate, and the August 31st filing deadline being among those flavors.

And finally, Friday brought us the latest TGIF 'good week/bad week' news, featuring (among others), Boris Johnson, who had a really bad week. I mean, he lost two votes, people crossed over to the dark side in the middle of debates, and then, even his little brother abandoned ship - which made me think of another famous family member.

In a tweet, he pointed to an "unresolvable tension" between loyalty to the family and the national interest.  Which leads me to declare that Ivanka Trump also had a bad week. Now that she knows it can be done, she can stop being complicit in her father's nonsense, and the longer it takes for her to do it, the worse her weeks become.

That's all for this week. Coming next week, in addition to our regular features, I'll have an update on some recent polling, as well as a look at what is - or isn't - going on in Albany.