It’s one month away. We are anticipating it. We are fearing it. We are hoping the madness will end. It appears it’s going to be close. And we know one candidate is a very sore loser. The presidential election will be one of the most consequential in our lifetime, maybe in our history. It certainly has been one of the most bizarre. An incumbent president stumbles so badly in a debate, he’s forced to withdraw from the race after insisting he wouldn’t. His vice president becomes the Democratic nominee just months before the election. She will be the first female president in our history if elected. And, oh, she’s a woman of color. Her opponent is a convicted felon and faces serious charges in three possible additional cases, and has been the target of two assassination attempts. One that came within an inch of probably killing him. Welcome to American politics 2024.
Enjoy the Flight
Flying. We all do it. We take vacations. We fly for business. It’s one of the most unpleasant experiences we put up with to get where we’re going. The only other experience I can compare it to is going to the hospital for surgery. Which is something no one looks forward to. For both surgery and flying you have to arrive hours before you receive the service you’re actually paying for. You have to go through what can be an embarrassing personal experience. At the airport, you have to go through security which can require removing shoes, belts, everything in your pockets. Your carry on bag is x-rayed by a TSA agent looking for creams or lotions or threatening objects that you could use to hijack the plane, and you have to remember to leave your ammunition at home. You can be picked for a random check. The agent sticks a metal probe into you bag and starts digging through your stuff. It can make you very uncomfortable.
Six Word Story
The story goes that Ernest Hemingway was challenged with a bet to write a story in six words. Not a good bet. Hemingway supposedly wrote, “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” Hemingway went on to write six word sequels. But upon closer examination of history, there are serious doubts about where the story really came from. A story in the Spokane Press on May 16, 1910 recounts a story that originally appeared in 1906 about the death of a baby. Hemingway would have been seven years old at the time. The grieving mother wrote an ad selling her child’s clothing. It read, “Baby’s hand made trousseau and baby’s bed for sale. Never been used.” Through twists of history the story was attributed to Hemingway thirty years after his death.
Women in Charge
In a New York Times opinion piece, former CBS News anchor woman Katie Couric is lamenting the departure of current anchor Norah O’Donnell from the anchor chair after the November election. CBS News has announced she will be replaced by two men, John Dickerson a long time CBS News correspondent and analyst who has worked for 60 Minutes and WCBS-TV anchor Maurice DuBois. Dickerson is white. DuBois is black. Three top executives on the program will be men with Bill Owens, the Executive Producer of 60 Minutes, having overall responsibility for the newscast. CBS says it’s planning to make the newscast different. It will cover stories with a 60 Minutes feel with regular correspondents. It will use WCBS-TV meteorologist Lonnie Quinn to do weather stories. It sounds to me like it will look more like a local TV newscast.
Sixty Years Later
In the summer of 1964, I was getting ready for my first year of high school. It’s a significant event in every kid’s life. New school. New building to navigate. New friends to make. Nervous about being accepted. Teachers who are going to be tougher than those you left behind in elementary school. I walked to elementary school. I had to take a city bus to high school. I was entering maybe the toughest phase of life, teenage years. Now, our oldest granddaughter is getting ready for high school next month. Her first fourteen years now seem to have gone by in flash. We tried to be as big a part of her life as possible, even though she spent eight years living in Texas. Visits back and forth and FaceTime were a big help. Now she lives close by, but I fear she will be moving away.
Dereliction and Humiliation
I’m staying in, I’m staying in, I’m staying in, I’m out. The crisis the Democratic Party and Joe Biden created going into this critical election was a mistake of historical propositions. It’s never happened before and was entirely preventable. When Lyndon Johnson dropped his possible re-election bid in March 1968, he could see the crush of the Vietnam war was too much to overcome and it wasn’t one month before the Democratic convention. Simple math told Biden and party leaders he would be eighty-two years old at the start of his second term and eighty-six if he survived it. Biden could have gone out a hero after the 2022 elections when Democrats did much better than expected. Biden did accomplish a great deal in undoing Trump’s mess and getting significant legislation passed. He could have come out and said it was time to pass the torch to a younger generation of candidates and may the best candidate win.
Gunfire in Butler
As shocking as the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is, the violent images of his political discourse raised over the years have burst into flames. We will soon find out what the motives were of the twenty-year old with the high power rifle. He most likely should never have been able to get his hands on that gun. But this is the America we live in. Guns inspire some of us and terrify most of us. We’ve allowed them to become ingrained in our culture. No one should ever justify violence, political or otherwise. But Trump has used violent images over the years to arouse his followers and built a personality cult that many ordinary citizens and the leaders of the Republican Party have embraced like moths to a flame.
Two Men, One Future
The debate has shaken America. People were stunned from the moment Joe Biden opened mouth and his voice was raspy and halting. We all know he struggled through and looked like a confused old man. He was perfect prey for one of the all time political bullies. Biden couldn’t come back fast and clearly enough. The lies and delusions that Trump spewed out were as troubling as Biden’s performance. Trump told a bizarre story of doctors putting a nine month fetus “aside” during an abortion. He said fifty-one experts thought Roe v. Wade should be overturned. On immigration, he said immigrants are coming in illegally and taking jobs from black people which black leaders, of course, took as racist. Biden or the moderators didn’t challenge him on any of these ridiculous claims as he painted this dark picture of America. It reminded me of the “America Carnage” inaugural speech in 2016.
Fear of Change
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry just signed a bill to require a poster sized display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state. He proudly says, “I can’t wait to be sued.” And he will be. The ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have promised to sue over this obvious unconstitutional law that violates the separation of church and state. Landry’s reasoning, “If you want to respect the rule of law you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses”. He does have a history of making things up. In a June 2012 radio interview he claimed the Obama administration told the TSA to allow Muslims to pass through security. TSA said this was not true. Landry and state legislature are operating out of fear.
Court of Fools
June is Supreme Court season, and we should be very worried. All the big case decisions come at the end of June when the term ends and the justices get three month off and we have to live with what they’ve done. So far, we’ve gotten the ridiculous bump stock decision. You’ll recall the concert massacre in Las Vegas in 2018 when a gunman, using a bump stock on his rifle, fired hundreds of rounds down from a hotel window on an outdoor concert killing sixty people and wounding hundreds more. Even Trump thought this was madness and issued a ban on bump stocks. A gun dealer in Austin, Texas, not a surprise, went to court after the ATF confiscated two bump stocks from his store. Machines gun were outlawed in 1934. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas the court ruled that bump stocks are not included in the machine gun ban and could only be banned if congress passed a specific law banning them. Tell that to the people who were at that Vegas concert.
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