TGIF 9/4/20

Because of the Blue and Red conventions, the schedule here at veritable pastiche has been a little off, but I'm doing what I can to get us back on track. Let's dive into this week's roundup of random good and bad weeks.

Right off the bat, let's update on the primaries I mentioned in Tuesday's Knock Knock post. Remarkably, a Kennedy lost a state-wide race in Massachusetts for the first time ever.  Joe Kennedy III gave up his congressional seat to run for the Senate against Sen. Ed Markey, but fell short. In the other race, which was the focus of the post, incumbent Rep. Richard Neal, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee fended off his opponent, Alex Morse.

So, did the results tell us anything about the fickle Dems, that they kept a 70-something progressive in the Senate and kept a 70-something traditional Dem in the House?  Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. But we do know that the professor who apologized 'in case he made anyone feel uncomfortable' will not be going to Washington, and in the end that's probably a good thing. 

Moving on to national stuff, no surprise that the president's trip to Kenosha caused some stir, right?  It seems that our fearless leader wanted the owner of a burned-out business to appear on TV with him, and so he found one. Trouble is, the guy who appeared with Trump was the former owner of the business, according to the man who bought it from him several years ago. There might be a semantics issue here - property owner vs. business owner - but honestly, did anyone not expect something like this to happen?

Trump's visit was followed by Joe Biden's, which was described by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, as being "worlds apart - in substance and style - from" the president's.

Biden wore a mask when he spoke. Trump did not.  Biden spoke by phone with Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot seven times by a white Kenosha police officer, and met with Blake's family. Trump did not. Law enforcement was a central presence and theme of Trump's visit, but not Biden's. Trump spent a lot of time decrying violent unrest and rioting and looting. Biden spent a lot of time discussing inequality and racism and poverty and heard impassioned pleas from Black residents about the way African Americans are treated by the criminal justice system.

Worlds apart, indeed. In polling done after the end of the RNC, Biden held onto his lead in Wisconsin; we'll have to see if anything changes after these two visits. 

Speaking of Biden and Trump, I've got a question for you:  How long did you live in your childhood home? And if your family moved from your childhood home, did you have any input in that decision?  I'm asking because I actually crack up every time Trump tries to sell the tale that Biden "abandoned Scranton" for Delaware. It's comical, it really is. And ridiculous, as this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out. Here's an example of Trump's 'abandonment' claim, from remarks he made in Old Forge, PA.

He keeps talking about, ‘I was born in Scranton. I lived in Scranton.’ Yeah, for a few years, and then he left for another state. You know the state. But this Scranton stuff. That’s why I figured I’d come here and explain to you one thing. But I think you people know it better than I do. He left! He abandoned Pennsylvania. He abandoned Scranton.

The claim is insane - Biden's family moved to Delaware, and they took 10-year-old Joe with them when they moved. Should he have stayed behind? Fended for himself like a feral cat on the streets?  And that the comment is coming from the man who actually just abandoned New York to move to Florida, giving (perhaps not-quite-legally) Mar-a-Lago as his permanent residence. Seriously, is there anything Trump won't say, won't lie about?

Well, here's one that we're kind of thinking might be totally made up: the rioters and looter and vandals dressed in black on a plane that is either leaving DC heading out to the great city of Wherever, or it's coming to DC for the convention. I'm not sure which direction the plane was flying, because he's told the story with it going in both directions., And, of course,  I can't determine how fast the train was going in the opposite direction after leaving he station some moments later than the plane took off, because of course we don't even think the plane existed. Well, it probably did because "a person" as on board and it's all being investigated (by Scully and Mulder? By Snitty Snitty Bill Bar? Who actually knows?)

What else? Oh -- 

• Nancy Pelosi's hair appointment. 
• A congressman being shut up by Facebook for purposefully misinterpreting CDC data on coronavirus deaths.
• Peter Navarro's lousy coronavirus deals.
• More concerns about the census - from inside the Census Bureau.

Hope that's enough for you. There was more, of course - there's always more.

TGIF, everyone.

Knock Knock. Who's There? Fickle Democrats

Fickle Democrats who?

Fickle Democrats who sometimes forget what they stand for, when it's convenient for them to do so. And no, this has nothing to do with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, I'm talking about the race for Congressional seats.

It's hard to be in the majority in the House when your newest, youngest, most progressive members don't appear to appreciate the benefits of being the majority, and are hell-bent on pushing their agenda, which as we know was NOT the winning agenda in the party's presidential primary. But that's not stopping them, it sure isn't.

And, after the success of AOC and Ayanna Presley and Rashida Tlaib and others, there are now all sorts of young whippersnappers who are primarying the old-timers among the Ds, and are trying to knock them off one by one, and they don't seem to care how that might impact the House majority, or the ability to get the majority in the Senate, or to win the White House, all of which are hugely consequential for anything progressive getting accomplished in the next two to four years.

Yeah, it's hard to be a Dem alright; between the different wings of the party, each impatient with the other, and the purity tests, it's not an easy needle to thread. There's a race in the 1st District for Massachusetts that has caught some attention, from a whole host of perspectives, that illustrates this pretty well, I think.

• The seat is currently held by Rep. Richard Neal, who's chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Neal has the endorsement of the big national unions, some state unions, the late Rep. John Lewis, the Human Rights Campaign, and more. 
• He's been in office since the year his challenger, Holyoke Mayor Alex B. Morse, was born. (Not that there's anything wrong with being in office for 31 years...ahem). Morse is backed by progressive Dems and progressive organizations, including Move On and Our Revolution, which is the Sanders movement, among others.
• In addition to being the mayor, Morse also served as a guest lecturer at UMass-Amherst.

Outside groups have been involved in this campaign, (no surprise there - we're bombarded with them here in my neck of the woods every election), including American Working Families, which has thrown its support behind Neal. The group ran an ad which attacked Morse's record as Holyoke's mayor, said he was being bankrolled by outside groups (that always makes me chuckle, when the accusation comes from an outside group), and "hit him over 'sexual relationships with college students,'" closing the ad with an onerous voice-over saying

Alex Morse. Terrible judgement and a terrible record. 

After the ad appeared, American Working Families issued an apology and asked that the ad not be aired again, stating that it never intended the ad to see the light of day, that it was "accidentally sent to stations instead of a corrected version," and that they regretted the error. I'm not sure what was in the corrected version, but I can guess. Meanwhile, it was aired, it was seen, and it probably hasn't been forgotten.

Here's the thing, though, about the ad: Morse "ultimately acknowledged having had consensual relationships with some students" and at least for a short period of time, considered ending his race. But, there's a twist:

...the allegations against Morse were muddled after The Intercept published messages from some of the students who had made the accusations in which they discussed potential ways to hurt Morse's primary campaign. One student described himself as a "Neal stan" and expressed a desire to get an internship with the Congressman.

The whole thing is ugly, full of intrigue and party politics, and alleged anti-gay harassment, and yes, some of the students who made the accusations had their personal information shared on Twitter, so they'd feel the pain they deserved for their actions. All-in-all, a classic David and Goliath battle, played out on Twitter and elsewhere.

Now, those purity tests I mentioned, that the Dems are famous for? Among them are the ones about all victims of sexual abuse or harassment are to be believed, and that any hint of sexual transgression is enough to get you booted, right?

And let's not forget the longstanding concept that a person cannot have a consensual sexual relationship with someone who has power over them, whether it's a director and an actress, a supervisor and an employee, a police officer and people he's arrested, or a famous comedian making shadow hands over - not actually touching -  a sleeping woman's breasts. That 'imbalance of power' standard exists in the criminal justice system, in pretty much every HR manual, in most company policies, and in the Democratic Party rules.

Most people - even progressives, I'd guess - certainly wouldn't think that a 30-something female college professor who had consensual relations with her male students would be House of Representatives material, would they? Or that a 30-something male college professor who had consensual relations with his female students would be?

Did I mention that Morse is gay? And does that, or should that, give him a pass on the professor/student relationships? He knows his behavior was wrong; he admitted it was, and he apologized, using the classic "if I made anyone uncomfortable" language we've grown accustomed to hearing.

Now, maybe Morse was set up by bad actors trying to encourage a relationship, but he admitted having them, which puts the ball back in his court.

And now, we'll see which fickle Dem purity test matters: the one that says that sexual indiscretions are bad, the one that says progressives are good, or the one that says depending on who you are, an apology is fine and we'll welcome you with open arms.

The primary is today.  FYI, another one to watch? 39-year old  Congressman Joe Kennedy III is challenging 74-year old Ed Markey for Senate. AOC is supporting Markey....

Finding Freedom on Vacation

One of the things I love about vacations is how, if I allow myself to, I can truly leave more baggage at home than I bring on the trip.  I have to say, it's not always easy for me to 'vacate the premises'.

I'm one of those people who will never have a completely clean desk or a completely clear head, no matter how hard I try. I  typically worry whether I got enough done, or more importantly if I got the right things done before leaving for vacation. I have a very hard time turning off the drip, drip, drip of work-think, often coming up with things to think about just before I go to bed, or in the middle of the night when the cats move around, changing their positions and allowing me the luxury of changing mine.

And then there's my writing, and all of those ideas, and research, draft posts waiting for the right time to pull the trigger -- and I worry, what if the right time doesn't come, or worse, what if it does - will the post really ready, and will it hit the target?

And there's family, my own and my extended; relationships to manage, drama to reign in, and so on. And of course this year, we had the government shutdown to wreak havoc on things.

War Memorial Tower
Mt Greylock, MA

Somehow, even in the face of all that, I managed fairly well to grab freedom by the horns and throw myself into it, to fully enjoy the trip to the Berkshires and the week in Vermont that followed, to deal with things on my own terms and not dwell for long on all that other baggage.

I can still feel and hear and smell our walk on Mt. Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts where, they say, on a clear day you have 60 - 90 mile views. The day we were there, we could barely see six feet in any direction, but it didn't ruin our fun. I smile at enjoying, in the middle of the fog, a fun conversation with a couple from Eastern Massachusetts, who we ran into again later in the day at another stop, the natural bridge and white marble dam in North Adams. Together, we scoffed at the folks who thought there was "no reason to take pictures on such a horrible day". How silly, and short-sighted, that thinking.

Leaving Massachusetts after a couple of days, we wandered into Vermont, where we spent a week travelling up, down, across and diagonally, going to new places and revisiting some areas we had been two years ago just a few weeks after Hurricane Irene. There's been progress in many areas, places where if you were unfamiliar with the lay of the land, you'd have no idea what happened in 2011. You might not think twice about road work, for example, if you didn't know that after Irene, the road being worked on didn't even exist anymore.  On the other hand, you come across places like downtown Brandon, home still to buildings behind barricades, some that had their first floors almost completely washed away when the floodwaters created new paths and changed lives forever.

In places all along Route 100 and several other scenic drives that crisscross Vermont (are there any that aren't scenic, really?), there is scarring along just about every river, brook or stream. It's easy to spot; there are thousands of dead trees, lying grey in the otherwise vibrant Vermont fall. You can see the path the water takes now, versus the path it took before. There are rocks and boulders everywhere, strewn about like marbles in some bizarre game, the rules of which defy comprehension.

And yet, there's a sense of beauty to the damaged landscape. It's not the classic fall foliage beauty, which annually attracts leaf peepers by the busload to New England. Rather, it's a more dramatic beauty, the kind that makes a person smaller in the face of the sheer enormity and power of what created the revised landscape. And it's hard not to appreciate the resilience of what withstood that power, and the sense of glorious freedom and rebellion with which the remaining trees sort of flip the proverbial bird and shake their fists at Mother Nature, defying her, daring her to come back and try again.

It's that same sense of freedom and resilience that causes people to uproot and move there, like the guy who served us a great cup of butternut-apple bisque late one afternoon. Thirty years ago he left Connecticut to go skiing at Sugarbush and basically never went home. He spent the first few years in Burlington, but left when it started to feel too much like what he left behind. He moved to a smaller place in the Randolph area, and makes a living nurturing locals and visitors alike.

Like everyone - native, transplant or tourist - I hope Mother Nature doesn't unleash a force like Irene on Vermont again. And while I don't have any plans to pull up my Central New York stakes and move there, I do know that we'll go back, daring to experience that vacation freedom once again. 

Knowing how well it worked this time, and armed with the memories of a wonderful break from everyday reality, it's a challenge I'll be happy to accept.