Sunday School 11/18/18 (pt 1)

Today our focus is on the guest lecturer in chief, the president of the United States and his interview with Chris Wallace, which aired this morning on Fox News Sunday.

There was SO much going on in this one, it's hard to do it justice but I'll give it my darnedest.

On the state of the White House:

And I will tell you I'm extremely upbeat, the White House is running like a well-oiled machine, it's doing really well, I have great people. I will make some changes but not very many.  I'm very happy with my cabinet, other than, you know, a couple of exceptions and even then I'm not unhappy. And I will tell you that it's so wrong, the reporting about me is so wrong. I'm loving what I'm doing. I did well in France, I did have a problem where I wasn't able to go to a cemetery because the Secret Service would not let me do it... 

About the appearance that the First Lady fired one of his advisers:

Well, I didn't know the adviser well, really, and I know they had a lot of problems. My wife did a great job in Africa an she was not treated properly by the press. She really worked so hard. They came to me. They wanted to go a little bit public because that's the way they felt and I thought it was fine.

The advisor, the Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, will move to another position in the Administration and Trump noted, without irony, that she was not very diplomatic.

But, frankly, she is not -- she'll never be put in the United Nations, let me put it that way. 

On General John Kelly remaining as Chief of Staff through 2020:

We -- I wouldn't -- look, we get along well. There are certain things I love what he does. And there are certain things that I don't like that he does - that aren't his strength. It's not that he doesn't do -- you know, he works so hard. He's doing an excellent job in so many ways. There are a couple of things where it's just not his strength. It's not his fault it's not his strength. 

Like being hungry at a meetings, I'm sure.

But I haven't even thought about John in terms of this. But John, at some point, it going to want to move on. John will move on. 

Perhaps as Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III did.

About Robert Mueller and his gang of Democratic thugs, there was much discussion, including the written questions he's answering, without his team's help.

No, no no not my team. I'm preparing written answers. My - I -- I'm the one that does the answering.

I've completed them. And it wasn't a big deal - by the way it wasn't a big deal. The answers -- the questions were asked and answered. It wasn't a big deal. You know, they make it like I had meetings for many, many hours - -I got the questions, I responded, we read them out, I read them once, I read them a second time, we made some changes. That's it. They were very simple.

On whether it was his final position, that there won't be a sit-down interview with Mueller or anything on obstruction of justice:

I would say probably. Probably. I mean, I can change my mind, but probably. I think we've -- I think we've wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is probably, we're finished.

Asked about the odds of that:

I don't do odds. We would -- I gave very -- (Wallace commented that Trump ran a casino - ed. note) You're right, and very successfully actually. We gave very, very complete answers to a lot of questions that I shouldn't have even been asked and I think that should solve the problem. I hope it solves the problem. If it doesn't, you know, I'll be told and we'll make a decision at that time. But probably this is the end.

Hmm... "very successfully actually" is likely in the mind of the beholder, as is pretty much everything else the president says.

We'll pick this up in a bit; see you around campus.

(Probably. I mean, I can change my mind, but probably I'll see you around campus.)

Knock Knock. Who's There? Sore Winners

Sore winners who?

Sore winners who apparently take offense to people who don't toe the line.

For most of us here in NY, the election season is over. The ads are gone (and good riddance to them); the debates are over; even most of the campaign signs have been picked up and set aside perhaps for another campaign, or maybe for a bonfire.

Many folks are probably celebrating the victory of New York's Sonofa Gov, Andrew Cuomo, who won re-election by a comfortable margin over his Republican challenger, Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro.

But Cuomo's victory was not enough for some, including Dani Lever, his campaign's Communications Director. She apparently is not happy with media outlets like my local paper, The Post-Standard and its web outlet, Syracuse.com, which failed to hop on board the Third Term Express.

The Editorial Board did not to endorse Cuomo this time, for a number of reasons. Take a look:

Cuomo is polished and forceful, a builder and a doer. He's in the conversation as a presidential contender. But under his leadership, New York's progress has been uneven.

A million New Yorkers have left the state since 2010. Upstate's economic recovery from the 2009 recession has lagged behind the nation's, and Central New York's recovery has lagged behind even more. Some of those billions the state spent on economic development went to poorly planned, corrupt or underperforming projects. While property taxes haven't gone up dramatically from year to year, they certainly haven't gone down, and New York's taxation ranking against other states has barely budged. Cuomo's fight for ethics reform has been half-hearted, at best, obstructionist, at worst. He's blind to corruption right under his nose.

If Cuomo really wanted it, New York already would have comprehensive ethics reform and real property tax relief. He won't take that on. So elect someone who will. 

And (emphasis added), 

We endorsed Cuomo in 2010 to clean up Albany, and again in 2014 despite his failure to do so. Not again. Not this time. Change in Albany starts at the top.

While Cuomo has been good for New York, many New Yorkers in Upstate aren't feeling it. New York can do better. Molinaro deserves a chance to try.

You're reading that correctly: the paper endorsed the Republican gubernatorial candidate, noting among other things.

Voters have four alternatives: Republican Marc Molinaro, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, independent candidate Stephanie Miner and Libertarian Larry Sharpe. We endorse Molinaro to refocus state government's attention from the national stage - the Trump resistance, Puerto Rico hurricane relief -- to the places we live, work and go to school.  

Enter the response from one of the sore loses affiliated with Cuomo's campaign:

To the Editor: 

Your Editorial Board was a steadfast supporter of Mayor Stephanie Miner throughout her term and supported Marc Molinaro against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The election results for the city of Syracuse, the heart of your circulation area, had Cuomo winning with close to 67 percent, Marc Molinaro at 21.9 percent, Howie Hawkins at 5.3 percent and Stephanie Miner at 3.8 percent. There is clearly a significant disconnect between the positions of the editorial board and those of your readers, and considering these different realities, perhaps the Board needs to gain a better perspective. We believe performance matters in government and citizens value results and progress.

Dani Lever, Former Communications Director, Cuomo 2018

I'm not sure how much time Lever has spent here in my neck of the woods, but I wonder if she's aware of how things work around here?  

• There are over 287,261 registered voters in Onondaga County, but only 108,079, or around 37%, are Democrats.
• Syracuse residents opted for an Independent mayor last year, rejecting both the major parties and going our own way.
• Onondaga County has always had a Republican County Executive, and the Legislature has always had a Republican majority. 

Cuomo may have won 67% of the vote within the city limits, but he only won Onondaga County by about 8,500 votes, and he lost all of the surrounding counties save one, Tompkins County - demonstrating that the endorsement of Molinaro was pretty much in line with what the voters in the paper's subscription area felt.

Perhaps Lever (and her boss) are the ones in need of a better perspective?

TGIF 11/16/18

How was your week?

Better than the president's maybe?  He failed to go to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, with no explanation offered. Until today, that is, when an explanation materialized: he was busy doing the country's work, making lots of phone calls and other stuff, and besides, he just visited a cemetery in another country (after not visiting one as scheduled), and doesn't that count?

And then there was the Mueller tweet storm, and how Trump's "easily" finished his written questions, without the help of his lawyers, we're told, even as Rudy Giuliani,one of those lawyers, is expressing concern that there could be 'traps' in the questions. With no timetable from Mueller, it's hard to know when we'll find out if in fact traps were laid and bait taken, or whatever the appropriate metaphor would be.

And finally, there was the order by one of his own judges that people's enemy #1, CNN's Jim Acosta, must have his White House access restored temporarily pending further discussions (or dismissal of the whole thing).  Trump said it was no big deal, while at the same time suggesting that he'll implement rules and regulations for press conferences. Oh, the irony of the anti-regulation president needing to have protective regulations to talk with the press..

You probably had a better week than Britain's PM Theresa May, too. Her Brexit deal gives everyone something to hate, caused bombshell resignations and was reported as chaotic uncertainty. Not bad for someone trying to do something that's almost impossible.

Who actually had a good week?  Brian Kemp, the vote-suppressing former Georgia Secretary of State who will be the state's next governor, now that Stacy Abrams has determined she cannot win.

But to watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in the state baldly pin his hopes for election on suppression of the people's democratic right to vote has been truly appalling.

This is not a speech of concession. Because concessions means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.

So did the First Lady; she who rules the East Wing got a key West Wing person fired.

And so did Elvis Presley, who along with Babe Ruth, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, Minnesota Vikings star Alan Page and others, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president Trump.  The president noted Presley's military service, movie career, award nominations and wins, and "record breaking" crowds.

TGIF, everyone.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Facebook

Back in July, when we were talking about Facebook and fake accounts and deleting pages and all that jazz, I asked this question:

Is it worse that we have fake accounts on social media promoting 'malign' influence' and divisiveness or that the American president does exactly the same thing on a daily basis?

In my mind, it's still valid. And we have some additional data to back it up. Check out this headline:

That's right: the folks at the Toronto Star have laboriously studied the words the president has tweeted, uttered and muttered, and has determined that, as of July,  5.1% of the time he talks, he lies. Seriously.

Here are some of the key points the study found:

That's a lot of dishonesty: Of all the words Trump said and tweeted as president as of July 1, 5.1% were part of a false claim. Expressed differently: Trump uttered a false word every 19.4 words.

Trump's dishonesty density is increasing: The issue isn't just that he's talking more these days. It's that what he's saying is less truthful.

Word count aside, his raw number of false claims has spiked: Trump made 2.9 false claims per day in 2017. He's made 5.1 false claims per day in 2018.

He is talking 20% more than he used to: Thought it's not the whole issue, some of the 2018 increase in false claims is indeed happening because Trump is speaking more.

It's a fun read, for sure; they include their methodology, sources and cool charts that show Trump ramping up the lying as time goes by.

Still, the Star's lie count is lower than some others. For example, the Washington Post's Fact Checker count is over 6,000 - through October 30, 2018.

I have no idea what the number would be now, given that we have the whole explosion of lies surrounding the mid-terms.

And Veterans Day, and the weather in Paris.

And his attacks on French President Macron. 

And his attacks on Robert Mueller.  

And of course his ridiculous lies about not knowing Mark Whitaker, the man he just appointed as the acting AG after Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was forced to resign. 

And his attack on California as an entire town was destroyed by fire. 

And -- well, you get the drift, right?

So, I ask again, what's worse? Facebook not protecting people from themselves, and folks at the company acting badly towards each other as the news about fake news broke, or the lying, rude, belligerent, childish person who was elected president of the US?  

If we are going to demand that tech companies do everything in their power to keep us from being exposed to fake news and influence and lies, we simply cannot allow the president to continue having unfettered access to the airwaves. 

Can we?

Wondering on Wednesday (v154)

Mandel Ngan / AFP- Getty Images

Let's dive right in to the wonderful, shall we?

For starters, here's the picture of the members-elect of the House, none of whom were giving a Nazi salute, and it made me wonder what their photographer said to them that the photographer at Baraboo High School didn't say to the guys attending the prom, who do in fact appear to be giving said salute? 

It was reported the yesterday that the First Lady was unhappy with a particular employee of the West Wing. Actually, what was reported was a statement from the First Lady's office stating that the employee in question "no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House" and after a mistaken report that the employee, Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, had been walked out of the White House, today the official statement came that Ricardel would in fact be leaving to take another position in the administration.

I wondered about a couple of things here -- first of all, whoa! That's a pretty bold thing for the FLOTUS to do. And then, I thought about her interview with Tom Llamas on ABC,the part about having told POTUS that there were people working for him she didn't trust, and they there were still people working there that he shouldn't trust. So I wonder, can we expect more personnel statements from her as we move into the traditional post-midterm period of churn? Shall we we have an office pool on who's going to be next to go? And finally, is this Melania doing her best to #BeBest?

Votes are still being counted around the country, trying to determine who will go to Washington to represent their constituents in January.  We're familiar with the shenanigans going on in Florida and Georgia and even here in the NY-22, but one race I hadn't been paying that much attention to was for the Utah seat currently held by Mia Love. Love is behind her opponent, Ben McAdams, by around 900 votes or so after the latest count.  In addition to her fame as the first female black Republican ever elected to Congress, she's also known for the special recognition she got from the president the day after the midterms.

Speaking about Republicans who failed to properly embrace him, Trump said

On the other hand, yo had some that decided to "let's stay away." "Let's stay away." They did very poorly, I'm not sure that I should be happy  or sad, but I feel just fine about it.

Carlos Curbelo; Mike Coffman -- too bad, Mike: Mia Love. I saw Mia Love. She'd call me all the time to help her with a hostage situation. Being held hostage in Venezuela. But Mia Love gave me no long, and she lost. Too bad. Mia. 

If the ballot counting ends up going in her favor, I wonder what Trump will say then?  Anyone else willing to bet he'll take the credit?

Finally, there's a whole lot of wondering going on about the Amazon 2HQ2 announcement, not the least of which is why a trillion dollar company needs to get a couple of billion bucks in economic development deals and job credits and incentives from NY and Virginia taxpayers for the privilege of having them locate their new digs in Long Island City and Crystal City, respectively.

I think, from the outside looking in, one could be forgiven for wondering if we've lost our ever-loving minds.

Grains of Salt (v38): A Personal Touch

Question: If you received a letter from your local government, and the envelope included a personal note, would it inspire you to open the letter?

And if, instead of the garden-variety form letter, you had a personal note from the mayor, would you maybe pay your past-due taxes?

Seems that's exactly what happened right here in Syracuse when Mayor Ben Walsh and others staffers sent handwritten notes to folks with outstanding taxes -- which brought in $1.47M over a four month period, according to this article.

The idea to send the notes came from the folks at the X Lab, a think tank at SU's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The guys from the X Lab worked with the city on how to reduce foreclosures and increase tax collections, and came up with the idea trying a personal note after doing some research into how people respond to different types of communication.

Here's how it worked: around 1900 people got the standard government issue form letter, but another 3800 or so got a handwritten letter, some of which also included a note on the envelope. The purpose of the letters was the same: notify the property owner of the delinquency and try to get them to pay up.  The personal letters went further, explaining that if they didn't pay up they'd lose their homes, but the city didn't want that to happen. The letters also explained some of the city services that the taxes support.

The results were pretty impressive: people who received the note on the envelope paid 88% more than the control group, the ones who just got the form letter. Even the folks who got the letter without the note on the envelope paid 50% more than the control group.

Walsh, a Maxwell grad himself, noted

This partnership with X Lab helps both the City and our residents. It's the kind of positive outcomes that occur when you aren't afraid to innovate and try something new. By using evidence and data to improve government services, processes and initiatives, we are helping to balance the budget while at the same time improving the health and well being of our citizens. 

Delinquent taxes are a long-standing problem in the city, with some $30M outstanding on over 2700 seizable properties,where the owners are more than two years behind - before this project started. And, there's another $9.6M outstanding on this year's taxes.

Also long-standing problems? Housing instability and poverty. Which is why it's great that we're seeing innovative approaches to these problems, and that we're seeing collaboration between local governments, SU and other educational institutions, and organizations like the Allyn Foundation, which provided grants for X Lab collaborations.

And honestly, this is exactly why Ben Walsh was elected mayor - to find innovative ways to improve life in the city, to find and work with any willing partners to try and solve these long-standing problems, and to get us back on track financially. 

Kudos to everyone involved.

My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective: The NY Midterms

Lots of people are feeling emotional about the outcome of the midterms; where races have been decided, the emotions run the gamut from active joy to abject disgust, and pretty much a little of everything in between.

That's true here in New York, where we're sending our Sonofa Gov, Andrew Cuomo, back to Albany for another term. And while polls shows the gap was only 13% right before Election Day, in the end it wasn't even close - Cuomo won by 1.26M votes, taking 59% of the 5.4M votes cast, to challenger Marc Molinaro's under 37%.

Lots of folks are suggesting that the reason why Cuomo won was "because of New York City." If you just looked at the election map, you can make that case. Cuomo won all of the NYC counties, plus some of the cities elsewhere in the state.

But here's the thing: there are 26 counties (out of 62) in New York where November's active voter registration favors the Dems - yet Cuomo won only 15 of them, The other 11 blue counties ended up in Molinaro's column on the ledger. 

Now, I know - as everyone running for office in NY knows - that voter registration is heavily skewed towards the Dems. Just in the NYC counties, registered Dems outnumber registered Republicans by some 2.6M; statewide, the margin is over 3.1M. Winning a statewide race as a Republican is certainly an ant/rubber tree kind of thing. 

But it has been done before. George Pataki, who had been in the State Assembly and the State Senate, beat three-term governor Mario Cuomo by about 173,000 votes. Cuomo won only one county outside NYC in that race. 

Which suggests to this middle-aged white lady that the issue is not only the geography and the registration numbers: it's the Republicans themselves. Remember, these are the Republicans who had to have help from a group of independent Dems to keep control of the State Senate the past few years. And this year, mind you, they lost the Senate, so now all of NY is in the hands of the Dems, with no checks and balances. (Thanks for that, by the way). 

What was wrong with their message that the Rs couldn't put up a respectable fight against our ethically-challenged governor? Why were they not able to get people's attention on New York State, while the Sonofa Gov was busy running for President? Why were they not able to capitalize on spending fatigue, unfunded mandate fatigue, unbudgeted Authority fatigue? Unfair school funding fatigue? Economic development gimmick fatigue? People leaving the state fatigue?

Why doesn't a Republican ever knock on my door? I know, I'm in the city of Syracuse, and the city skews blue - so there's no need to even bother asking for my vote?  Why not try some concerted outreach to moderate Dems?  Cuomo won Onondaga County by less than 8,500 votes - barely 5%, whereas registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 25,000.

There's room here, red people -- there's room.  I vote for the candidate I think can do the job, without regard to party label. I've voted for Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, Working Families, Conservatives -- so don't write me off without even trying.

I'm not an expert on the Dems - and I've been a registered one my entire adult life. I'm certainly not an expert on the Republicans.  But I did want to share this opinion from some folks who pretend to be experts - the NY Post editorial board.  Take a look at these excerpts:

Tuesday brought the state Republican Party to a new low, and the city GOP to the edge of extinction.

The biggest change has been a long time coming: Republican control of the state Senate has been at risk for decades now, preserved by extreme gerrymandering and the votes of renegade Democrats.

And while the chamber's GOP members fought off the occasional tax hike and other progressive priorities, its members have mainly focused on what bacon they could deliver for their districts or favors for special interests.

And these guys like the Republicans...

Above all, they failed to fundamentally alter New York's high-tax, high-regulation approach to... everything, which has gradually eroded the upstate economy to dust - leading to the depopulation of the state's most rock-rib-Republican areas.

They go on to note, after bashing Long Island GOP efforts, that this will be the first year since 1854 that there won't be a Republican Congressman from NYC. And they're not kind to the state GOP, either - it's pretty much across the board disgust with the entire red empire.

So where do the Rs go from here? Well, it's not all bad.

The only good news is that there's nowhere to go but up: to learn and grow enough that Republicans just might possibly be ready to lead when Democrats, now in total control, fail badly enough that voters have to turn somewhere. 

If the GOP remnants look to the future, they just might be able to have one.

Maybe - although the editorial makes it sound like these guys couldn't find the future if it was right in front of them...

Look, it's undeniable that there are way more registered Democrats in NY than there are Republicans. On the other hand, there are way more major-party registrations outside NYC (4.79M) than there are in NYC (3.6M).

The Republicans need to get their boots on the ground; light a fire under the county party operatives or get rid of them (they're horrible, by the way) and spend the next two years honing a message that's meaningful to voters.

The map is the map - the message is up to them.

Sunday School 11/11/18

Just one classroom this morning, CNN'S State of the Union with Jake Tapper, who declared us to be in a state of 'honoring our veterans.'

On the show today, among other guests, was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who made it clear he thought the Democrats won the midterms, even though they didn't take the Senate. It was "a great victory for Democrats" he said. And, he added,

For Donald Trump to claim, because he won a Senate race in North Dakota or Indiana or Missouri, states he won by 19, 19 and 36 percent, that shows how weak - I would be very worried if I were Donald Trump and the Republicans about the 2020 elections, if all they can claim is they won in North Dakota.

And, in response to a question about Trump's messaging, and the Kavanaugh hearings, and border security, and Schumer actually said

Well, the bottom line is, the Kavanaugh dispute, I think, helped us more than it hurt us. It's one of the reasons we won the house so decisively. It's one of the reasons we won governorships in so many other states, because suburban voters who are traditionally Republican came to our side. And if the coalition can add suburban voters to it and continue to focus on issues like health care which matter to working-class Americans throughout the country, we're going to win. I think the president lost more votes because of the Kavanaugh issue than he gained throughout the country.

Next, the conversation turned to Florida, and ballot-counting, particularly in Broward County. Schumer's position is that the Rs, including the president, are afraid if all votes are counted the Dems will win.. And while allegations of fraud are flying around, nothing has been proven. He also called for Rick Scott to recuse himself from anything having to do with counting or recounting, since he himself is a party in the events unfolding. Heck, even Brian Kemp recused himself in Georgia.

On protecting Mueller, Schumer said Dems will try get some legislation passed that keeps Whitaker out of it, if he doesn't recuse himself first. Tapper pointed out that Mitch McConnell is on record as saying no legislation is needed, and wondered if the Dems would go so far as to shut down the government.

Look I believe - there will be enough of our Republican colleagues who will join us. There's no reason we shouldn't add this to avoid a constitutional crisis. And so that is our position. If it doesn't happen, we will see what happens down the road. 

They also talked about the legitimacy of the Whitaker appointment; Schumer thinks the lack of advice and consent from the Senate means that he can't serve. Tapper remained skeptical, but Schumer was sure the courts were on his side. He also said protecting Mueller was more important than impeaching Trump.

On healthcare, Schumer says he hasn't signed on with Medicare for All because there are lots of ideas on how to improve healthcare, and that they'll unite on one of them as things move forward. He refused to pick one over another. He also told Tapper the Dems have lots of strong candidates heading into 2020.

My basic philosophy right now is, let 1,000 flowers bloom. Let's get a lot of people out there. The political process, it's a little like sports. It's almost mystical. You never know who's going to emerge on top. And so having candidates out there of various views, all united in the need to change the course of how the presidency is conducted and how we help the middle class, people aspiring to be in the middle class in a much better way the the Republicans have, I think Democrats at the end of the day will be united, will be united on a candidate who can best defeat Trump.

Tapper also talked to Jerry Nadler, who is poised to become the next chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Tapper asked him to describe the first three things he'd do. We didn't get to all three because there was lots of talk about impeachment.

Nadler did say that the first thing they'd do was protect Mueller. He also said that the first person Judiciary Committee would talk to, either by summon or subpoena if necessary, was Mark Whitaker to question him about whether or not he'd interfere in the Mueller investigation.

On impeachment of the president, Nadler's main point was "not yet" but that didn't mean never, and that the report from the Wall Street Journal about Trump's involvement in the payouts to the porn star and the Playboy bunny could rise to the level of an impeachable offense, but that doesn't mean that impeachment would be the outcome. He also said that he was not planning on impeaching Justice Kavanaugh, no matter what that conservative reported said she overheard him say in a private conversation.

On impeachment and Nadler's statements that it couldn't be a partisan thing, Tapper pointed out that recent polling shows 77% of Dems favor impeachment but only 5% of Republicans do, which is clearly a partisan divide. He wondered if that as a concern to Nadler.

Not really, because, as I said, we're far from that. If we get to the question of impeachment, then one of the tests should be - and I have said this repeatedly - is the evidence so strong of misdeeds so terrible that you really believe at the beginning of the process that, by the end of the process, when all this is laid out publicly, a very large fraction of the people who voted for the president will grudgingly acknowledge to themselves and to others that you had no choice but to impeach the president?

That's the test, Nadler said, and he admitted

we're far from it. Well, I see lots of potentials, but we don't know. That's why we're waiting to see what the Special Counsel finds...  I certainly hope that we will not find the necessity for an impeachment. But you can't rule that out. 

On that note we'll wrap this up.

See you around campus.

TGIF 11/9/18

Most of the midterm elections have been decided, but there are a few key races still unsettled, including some US Senate seats, governors and some House races.

The fact that votes are still being counted is a good thing, compared to the alternative: legitimately cast ballots being cast aside for some self-serving process. That appears to be the hope of some in the GOP, but it's hardly the American way.

They all need to keep counting - the world isn't going to come to an end if we don't know who's going to be the senator from Florida or Arizona, and it's not going to come to an end if we don't know who's going to be the Governor of Georgia.

The best thing, I think everyone agrees, is that the political ads are now a thing of the past. We've been waiting for these days since August. Now, the signs? Yeah, that'll take a little longer. I'm thinking there should be a timeframe for getting those out of the way and recycled, what do you think? By the time the last vote is counted?

The president has left the country, off to France to join others in Armistice Day celebrations, commenting that

It should be a very beautiful period of time, the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I. We have many countries - the leadership of many countries will be there, especially since they heard the United States will be there. And we look forward to that.

Sigh.

You may recall the alternative was that he'd be here, having a tens-of-millions-of-dollars parade, ostensibly to celebrate our veterans, but perhaps more to get a sense of what it would be like if "his people" gave him the same level of respect that Kim Jong Un gets from his people. Sure, it was a sarcastic remark... right?

Trump also said he didn't know Matt Whitaker, the man he just appointed as acting Attorney General (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was ordered to resign, of course) which appears to be a lie, and that the video of CNN's James Acosta allegedly placing his hands on an intern was not doctored, which also appears to be a lie.

It also seems that he may have been more involved in the payoffs to the porn star and the Playboy bunny than he has maintained, which could mean he has committed at least a tiny bit of campaign finance shenanigans. And that's the Wall Street Journal bringing us this news, not CNN or MSNBC.

For his part, Whitaker comes off like a hot mess: comments about the courts, about the Mueller investigation including that there was no collusion; his involvement with a shady company... all great qualifications, right?

 There are bipartisan calls for protecting the investigation, but Mitch "I'm only here to pack the courts" McConnell is not interested in that. It will be interesting to see if that ew spirit of bipartisanship we've had for the past two or three days will still be noticeable by this time next week. My hope is yes, my fear is no.

TGIF.

OrangeVerse XXXVI: Midterms (1)

The president had himself a little press conference Wednesday. It was 90 minutes or so o pure joy, or pure hell, or something purely in between. It's going to take a while to get through it, so bear with me. 

Here's an example; seems like an easy question: What's your message to suburban women voters? 

Well, Ex-cuse Me!

Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.

A fantastic man who was down

on the polls And everybody was

talking about this person that

was so great. 

And I went up there and

I did a rally and

 they have now a 

great governor - you're

going to have a great governor 

in Ohio for hopefully

a long period of time. 

But for four years. And

Mike DeWine is a fantastic person.

Um, the question was, "What's your message to suburban women voters?"  

Why Did I Do It?

And I went up there for two reasons:

because I felt that his

opposition was not a good person - 

and we know a lot about him - 

and I felt that Mike

was a fantastic person.

And he won.

And not only 

did he win

he won easily.

What. Is. Your. Message. To. Suburban. Women. Voters?

I'm Not Opposed to Addition

So add that

to Florida, and add that

to Georgia and add that

to all of the other races

we won - outside even of the

Senate races which were the

biggest of all. Because

these were races

that - and Mike Pence

can tell you, and 

some folks over here can tell you - 

there were races that 

were going to be unopposed.

We were not going to oppose

certain of the people running - 

certain Senators. 

They said they couldn't 

be beaten. They said Heidi

couldn't be beaten. 

"Please don't do it."

Please don't do it. 

Wondering on Wednesday (v153)

I wondering, right off the bat, how anyone could have been unmoved by the president's press conference today, in which he mocked Republicans who didn't win their races, took credit for 'resigning' Jeff Flake, attacked the press, refused to answer questions he was asked, answered questions he wasn't asked, pretended that he was concerned about the environment, suggested that he would work in a bipartisan fashion with Nancy Pelosi, threatened to retaliate against any investigations initiated by the House, lied about why he still is not releasing his tax returns, and more. Transcript is here; video is here.

And I'm wondering how many people watched Nancy Pelosi's presser? For her part, she suggested they'd not investigate the president unless there was a reason, offered to work with the Rs, and so on - - what you would expect her to say. She also said she was the best person to be House Speaker.  And it seems she'll keep her leadership role. In addition to Pelosi, who's 78, Steny Hoyer, who's 79, and Jim Clyburn, also 78, want to remain in the top leadership roles. To which I can only sigh.

Pelosi can probably only sigh as well, as there's no question she was kicked out of the news cycle by the forced resignation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. That saddens me, the Sessions ouster. He managed to hold on for so long. At least he wasn't dragged out of town to be fired, a la Reince Priebus. I wonder if the first thing he's going to do is go to Disneyland?

I'm also wondering about Chris Collins out in Western NY (or, as Brian Williams allegedly said, the northern tier of upstate NY).  You remember Collins, right? Multiple ethics investigations: a federal indictment for insider trading: tried to get off the ballot, couldn't, and yes - he won.  Well, I should say, he's projected to be the winner. He's up by around 2800 votes, so we'll have to see if there'll be a fight from his opponent. If he wins, does he show up to work with his former colleagues? Or does he fake a pulled muscle or something, I wonder?

And then there's the dead brothel owner who was elected to the State Assembly in Nevada. Dennis Hof, who was a Trump-ish candidate, won with around 68% of the vote. You can wonder away on this one all you want.

Here in New York, our Sonofa Gov won re-election handily; polls in the final days of the campaign showed Andrew Cuomo had only a 13% lead over Marc Molinaro, but in the end he won by over 20%. Three other candidates were also in the race, and in total got under 240K votes - but each had enough to keep their party on the ballot for the next four years.  I wonder what it will take for NYers to boldly go towards a different party, the Libertarians or Greens, or even the new one that just popped up on our radar this year, the Serve America Movement?

Not surprisingly, folks have looked at the electoral map for NY, which shows Cuomo won the cities - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and NYC - plus Tompkins County (home of Ithaca, one of the most liberal cities in the country), Ulster County, and Long Island. Some are calling for  a new system, so that Cuomo wouldn't be the winner because he didn't win a majority of the counties...  For some, the fact that Cuomo has more than 1.3 million votes than Molinaro apparently is not enough - he has to win the geographical victory as well? I have to wonder about that logic.

How to wrap this all up?  Well, let's go with this: it's expected that by the time is all said and done, over 113 million people will have voted in the midterms. That's 49% of all eligibles. The obvious thing we can wonder is, will these folks stay engaged for the duration?  Will we continue to see women including women veterans and women of color, elected, or is this a one-and-done?  Will Dems leverage their victories from Tuesday into something that's sustainable?

We'll be wondering that at least through the 2020 election cycle, which starts now.

Election Day 2018

The Election Eve Post - 2018 Edition

It's that time again - the night before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That means it's Election Eve, and time for me to do my darnedest to encourage you to vote.

This year has been the longest mid-term campaign season I can remember. The political ads started in August for my Congressional district, as well as the surrounding ones, which means during a half-hour of local news, we've been getting probably six minutes of lies and misstatements and misdirection from both sides of the political spectrum. And that doesn't count the Terrorism Update Desk and other right-leaning content from our Sinclair stations. I've let John Katko, my Congressman, know my thoughts on this; he won't listen, I'm sure, bit I feel better.

In my opinion, ads for the Republican incumbents have been much worse than for their Democratic challengers, which is a sad statement on their records, if you ask me. The president, vice president, White House press secretary, first daughter, first son and girlfriend, second son, and even NRA president Ollie North have been in our parts since the summer campaigning for the Congresswoman in the neighboring district. And she's a peach, Claudia Tenney is,having suggested more than once that her opponent would bring the Mafia around if he lost. 

The president, for his part, has dragged out every conceivable fear-inducing trope he can think of. Brown-skinned gangs? Check. Job-stealing brown people? Check. Drug-dealing brown people? Check. Free-loading brown people? Check. He did manage to talk about the economy and jobs, but mostly in relation to mobs - that is, #JobsnotMobs - and violence, because if the Dems get elected, mind you, there will be violence. A vote for a Republican - any Republican - is a vote for him he tells us. Good to know. 

Here in New York, we're facing a potentially horrible year for a once-popular governor; robocalls for people who lost major party primaries but still have lesser ballot lines, and one of our local districts may mean we end up with a unified government - Dems controlling the Assembly, Governor's Office and the State Senate - assuming the stars align and all. There's some scary stuff in there. 

What's it all mean? I'm voting, as I always do. And as I say every year, this is the most important thing any of us can do as citizens -- to have our say in choosing the people who are supposed to represent us. 

All elections are important; this one feels more so. Please, do your part. 

As I do every year, I offer the following motivation, in case you need it, with one addition, which you see in the picture of President Obama.

After some thought, “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”(1) Actually “The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself…the act of voting is in itself the defining moment.”(2) And why is it that “When the political columnists say ‘every thinking man’ they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to ‘every intelligent voter’ they mean everyone who is going to vote for them”?(3) 

We know it’s true that “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who didn’t vote”(4), and that “A citizen of American will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”(5) Do we still not realize, after all these years, that “lower voter participation is a silent threat to our democracy… it under-represents young people, the poor, the disabled, those with little education, minorities and you and me”? 6) 

After all, “the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men” 7) and “to make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not just observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”(8) And complain we do, after every election, when the wrong guy wins. If only people who actually voted complained, it’d likely be a lot less noisy. 

Some folks may not vote because they don’t know how to pick the right person. There are a couple different schools of thought on that. On the one hand, some might think that “politics is the art of the possible” 9) while others may subscribe to the thinking that “politics is not the art of the possible, it consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. And it is true that, the great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter the chance to do something stupid.”(10) 

Said another way, a “Vote (is) the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.” 11) But that’s OK – “personally, I believe that our American system works as long as you participate in it. You must vote and make your voice heard; otherwise you will be left out.” 12) 

It’s generally true that if you “ask a man which way he’s going to vote and he’ll  probably tell you. Ask him, however, why – and vagueness is all.”(13) But voting’s really easy; and “all voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.”(14) And just about everyone likes to play a game every now and then, right? 

The bottom line is, “voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting;”(15) “voting is a civic sacrament;”(16) and “the future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.”(17) If all of that seems like too much pressure, you have an out: “Vote for the man who promises least. He’ll be the least disappointing.”(18) 

Please, vote. It really does matter, this year and every year. If you need information on where to vote, or other assistance, visit Vote411.org or contact your local Board of Elections. 

(Thanks to these folks for their words of wisdom: 1 - Charles DeGaulle; 2 – Jeff Melvoin; 3 – Franklin P Adams; 4 and 13 – Andrew Lack; 5 - Bill Vaughan; 6 - Nancy Neuman; 7 - Lyndon B Johnson; 8 - Louis L’Amour; 9 – Otto Von Bismarck; 10 – Art Spander; 11 – Ambrose Bierce; 12 - Mari-Luci Jaramillo; 14 – Henry David Thoreau; 15 – H.L. Mencken; 16—Theodore Hesburgh; 17 – Dwight D. Eisenhower; 18 – Bernard Baruch)

Sunday School 11/4/18

One classroom and only one, I told myself this morning. It was totally random that I picked MTP with Chuck Todd; I honestly scribbled show names on scraps of paper, wadded them up and picked one.

After all, since this is the Sunday before Election Day, the shows were going to pretty much the same anyway - heck, they're pretty  much the same every Sunday, truth be told.

First up was Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who's the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; he was followed by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, chair of the Republican Governors Association.

Van Hollen was in charge of the DCCC in 2008, when the Dems picked up 21 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate, and in 2010 when they lost 63 seats in the House and another six in the Senate. He was asked to compare the atmosphere between 2010 and today.

There are big differences between the House and Senate seats in this cycle, Chuck because on the one hand you have kind of a wave, a blue wave, although how big it will be, we don't know. But then in the Senate races, we've got a lot of senators who are running in states that Donald Trump won. And for them, they've been very clear from the beginning that their number one job is to stand up for the people of their states. And if that means working with Donald Trump on something that helps their states, they will. If it means opposing him and Republicans, they will also do that, for example, on protecting people with pre-existing health conditions. So it's a very different, sort of, political battlefield in Senate races than House races. 

Interesting answer, there -- not because he didn't answer the question he was asked, really, but more because he actually came out and said that Democrats who are running in purple states are going to do what they're supposed to do, instead of doing what the party leadership says they're supposed to do.

Van Hollen spoke about the narrow path to a Senate majority (holding on to most of their current seats and picking up a few more), but the real issue is voter turnout, he said. Todd then described what he thought would be a good night would be winning one of the races in Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and North Dakota; they'd need two, he said, to even think about a majority. Both of them agreed that going 0-4 would be bad, with Van Hollen saying it wasn't going to happen.

Todd then turned to the Dem's approach, and asked whether it was better to do a Beto O'Rourke in Texas and go so far as to mention impeaching Trump, or to take the Phil Bredesen approach in Tennessee, who's running almost as a label-free centrist. 

Well, Chuck it tells you that the quality of the candidate is really important and their ability to communicate on issues that people in their states care about. And we have candidates in both Texas and Tennessee who are doing exactly that...

It was at this point that Todd asked the question I thought he would have earlier, about Dems running on the promise to be their own person, not a party person,and whether the Dems need new leadership.

Well, those members running, I'm sure, will fulfill their commitments but that doesn't mean that we don't have a strong leadership team in the United States Senate. Look, this is an example of what I as talking about earlier, that what voters want are senators whose number on job is to stick up for their states. And sometimes that means working with their party leadership, sometimes that means working in the opposite direction. But that's very different than, you know, Republican candidates who are simply rubber-stamp Trump supporters...

Haslam was next, asked to define what a good night would be for the Republicans, given there are 36 gubernatorial races up for grabs this year, which is a lot compared to other presidential mid-term years. 10 are shown as toss-ups.

...we feel good about the position we're in but we're not blind to the fact that a president's first midterm when we have this many seats up... that's why at RGA we've worked hard, we've raised a record amount of money this cycle. And we're making certain we're putting all that money to good use here in the last three weeks of the campaign.

Todd honed in on the Midwest as an area where the Rs could be in trouble, that it was possible all of the states touching a Great Lake could have a Democratic governor.  He wondered what it would take to prevent that. Haslam thought that Scott Walker will hang on in Wisconsin, but that Michigan was an uphill battle.

Wisconsin and Michigan are important, you remember, because those are two of the states that Trump won by next to nothing when, honestly, Hillary Clinton thought they were in the bag.

I'm going to give the last word to Tom Brokaw, who was on the panel today.

Well, one of the things that troubles me a lot is when I think of the projected results of this election, we'll end up again with a pudding without a theme. We're going to have Democrats, probably, in the House on the upside. I think the Senate will probably stay the same. And we're just going to have to muddle through for the next two years. 

The country is still going to be deeply, deeply divided.  

But remember - we can fix that. 

See you around campus. 

We Shall Overcome, If We Want To

The eleven innocent victims of Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue shooting have been laid to rest, as has the first of the two lesser-known victims of the Kroger shooting in Jeffersontown, Kentucky; the second is being buried today.

For those of you who may have missed the Kentucky shooting, the victims died from multiple gunshot wounds, shot by a man who later allegedly said to someone in the parking lot, "Don't shoot me. Whites don't shoot whites."

We've learned that before the brazen murders at the grocery store, the suspect apparently tried to enter a predominantly black church. One of the reasons he wasn't able to get into the church was because significant security upgrades were made after the murders at Mother Emanuel in Charleston back in 2015. Cameras. Automatic door locks. That kind of thing.

Robin Young, co-host of Here and Now on NPR, has an interview with Billy Williams, a staff members of the First Baptist Church - it's well worth a listen. You can feel the emotion in this account: what if the shooter had come during a service, when the doors are unlocked? What if I had been here and opened the door when he tried to get in? How do we heal, having lost a parishioner in the shooting?  How do we help, now?

It's not your fault if you didn't hear much about this one. We certainly didn't see the president tweeting about these two innocent Americans. They're not on his radar, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying that they're never going to be: they were killed by a white man, not by a brown-skinned immigrant or gang member. They were black folks in their 60s, not white schoolgirls on Long Island or college age young women from California of the Midwest. Maurice Stallard and Vickie Jones simply don't fit his narrative. He knows it, and we all know it.

Certainly the scope of these two shootings is vastly different, even though they have the common denominator of hate as a root cause. The shock of what happened in Pittsburgh - 11 Jewish victims, one a 97 year old Holocaust survivor; a synagogue literally (not just Joe Biden literally) in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, for Pete's sake. We handled the vandalism at cemeteries and bomb threats at Jewish organizations and schools (including multiple incidents at the JCC in my area) pretty well, and moved quickly past those, but this? This knocked us off our feet.

We thought we had expressed enough collective rage and outrage over the shootings and loss of life in Charleston; we expressed more after the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas back in 2017, although that had no racial or religious motive; and now we offer up more rage and outrage on behalf of the victims at Tree of Life.

Flags were ordered lowered to half mast in honor of those lost in Pittsburgh, as happened in honor of those lost in Sutherland Springs. No similar respect was ordered for the Kroger victims. It would have been respectful, but I don't think it's necessary.

We have a problem in America - well, several, if we're honest with ourselves and each other, including a gun problem.  And before you yell at me, I included that link not to make this about guns, but because that post touches on a lot of other things we do to exacerbate the problems that guns in the wrong hands create.

But it's bigger than the weapon - it's the weaponizing of hate, the purposeful weaponizing of hate, that we really need to solve. And that requires admitting we do it; calling out those who purposely fan the flames; refusing to accept their denials; and individually committing to making it stop.

Lowering flags for a couple of days is one thing. Lifting up hearts and filling them with love for those lost, for their families, their churches and synagogues, and for all of us, that we find a way to end the hate, is not limited to a Presidential Order time frame. It will long outlast that act, if we do it right.

And we can do it right, if we want to. We just have to want to.

TGIF 11/2/18

Regular readers may have noticed a dearth of posts lately. For that -  and my hopeless writer's block - I apologize. Actually, I hope I still have some regular readers, to be honest, but I digress.

What's been causing my block, you ask?  This - or maybe 'these' is the better word: the election, the ads, the money, the voter suppression; the president and his rallies and his tweets;the shootings, the pipe bombs, the racism, the hatred; false equivalence without challenge over and over and over; tribalism and labels

There's probably more -- there's always more, right? But those bullets there on the page have tormented me. Not because I don't have thoughts on all of that - I have thoughts in spades. No, the torment is tied to articulating those thoughts. How does one talk about  these things, these divisive and sometimes horrible things, without adding to the divisiveness?

And to what point does one talk about it, anyway?

We're told, over and over, that putting thoughts into words into keystrokes into posts is a somewhat futile effort; if I had a nickel for every time someone said (a) "no one is going to change their minds because of a blog post" or (b) "I'm totally ignoring anything having to do with politics" or (c) "I'm so sick of this I'm not even going to vote!" I could retire much more comfortably in two months and I wouldn't worry so much about that articulation thing.

And truth be told, if I had even a penny for every time I've sat down to write and instead looked at pretty pictures, kitten videos, or moody black and white images on Instagram, I'd be a one-percenter by now, I'm sure. I'd be hauling in my fair share of everything just like the rest of them do.

But those comments, that abc stuff up there, is monumentally frustrating, and my own delaying and distracting tactics infuriate me.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I'm going to post until I'm blue in the face, and I don't care. I'm going to rant and rave, and I don't care.

I'm going to rail against things I think are wrong, even if that means complaining about the president and what he's doing to America, and I don't care.

I'm going to cheer things that I think are right, and celebrate things that make me happy, and applaud things that bring joy, and I don't care whether anyone changes their mind or not.

It's a new month.  This writer's block nonsense is for the birds.

TGIF -- and I'll be back tomorrow.