We didn’t get the Red Wave. But we got the Big Crack. The turnout for this mid-term election was huge, and political landscape shifted. Yes, the Republicans did make some gains. The House is still undecided, but will likely go for the GOP with a much smaller margin then they hoped. The senate is hanging out there with Arizona and Nevada races too close to call just yet. If they split between the parties, the runoff in Georgia between Democrat Warnock and Republican Walker will determine who controls the senate. We have to wait until December sixth.  Donald Trump was the big loser. He endorsed crazy MAGA candidates in the primaries who even fellow Republicans thought would be losers in the general election. There was a big miscalculation in all important Pennsylvania.

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It will be a long off day for Phillies fans. They will be hoping the Phillies can now beat the odds and come back from being down 3 games to 2 and pull off what they all thought was an impossible dream of winning the World Series. The good news it’s a day we won’t have to listen to the never ending sound of John Smoltz’s voice. He has brought the art of color analysis to the breaking point. Not hearing him go on and on about the movement, direction, and thinking behind of every pitch by both the pitcher and the batter will be a close second to celebrating a Phillies championship. There is not a second of silence. Once the play by play guy, Joe Davis, and how is Joe Davis calling the World Series, stops talking, Smoltz starts talking about the last pitch and what he thinks the next pitch should be. The drone of his pitching philosophy is like the the sound of your neighbor’s lawn mower as your trying to watch the game.

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While Phillies fans are understandably out of their minds over the Phillies going to the World Series, I’m a little out of my mind over the Yankees not going to the World Series. I know there is a universal dislike, putting it mildly, in Philadelphia for anything connected to New York. Although, I think we may come in second to Philadelphia’s feelings about Dallas. The Phillies were the underdog getting into the playoffs and once they got their chance, they were magical. Rhys Hoskins hitting clutch home runs. Gene Segura slapping that single to right and, of course, Bryce Harper hitting the home run that will  go down with the Philly Special as one of the all time moments in Philadelphia sports history. I was simultaneously watching the Yankees in their playoff run, or should I say, their playoff trip and fall.

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We’re one month away from the mid-term elections. Candidates have been spending millions of dollars saturating the our television and radio with back to back attack ads for weeks. The choices have never been been this stark or dark. I was shocked to see a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer over weekend on why some voters in Pennsylvania are still undecided. There is no gray area in the big statewide races here for the US Senate and governor. In the senate race, there is TV doctor, millionaire Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz endorsed by Donald Trump whose position on abortion has gone from pro-choice to anti-abortion just like Trump’s. Oz didn’t live in Pennsylvania until recently so he could run and has never held political office.  The Democratic candidate is Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. He is also the former mayor of the small western Pennsylvania city of Braddock. He wears a trade make hoodie and is accused of being soft on crime. A classic conservative versus liberal match up, and there are many other issues on which they hold polar opposite positions. How can you be undecided?

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Attorney General Merrick Garland is one of the most important and most scrutinized people in the country. He is under pressure unlike any Attorney General in history. He will make the decision on whether to indict former President Trump on charges ranging from interfering with and trying to overturn the election of 2020 to the violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice for taking classified, secret and top secret documents to his estate at Mar-a-Lago. This has never happened before in American history. It comes at a time when the country is seething with hate and mistrust between the political parties that are getting ready to start serious campaigning for the midterm elections. These elections will determine who controls congress and many expect will be followed by Trump announcing he will run again in 2024.

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It was the hug that captivated us. Made us tear up and we should all learn from it. It happened on a Little League baseball field in the heat of the Southwest Regional final playoff for a trip to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. Kaiden Shelton was pitching for the Texas team against a team from Oklahoma. With a two strike count on Oklahoma’s Isaiah Jarvis, the most frightening moment in baseball happened. The pitch was high and hit Isaiah on the ear flap of his helmet. He went down clutching his head as his helmet flew off. There was the horrified  gasp in the crowd and then the moment of silence as everyone prayed Isaiah would get up. The umpire bent down and the coaches ran out. After a few seconds, Isaiah sat up. The coaches helped him to his feet. He seemed to be fine and trotted down to first base as the crowd cheered in relief.

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They’ve taken away a woman’s power over her own body. They’ve allowed just about anyone to carry a concealed weapon in public making us all less safe. They’ve restricted the EPA’s ability to go after carbon emissions and fight climate change. Now, they may be going after the heart of the democracy, our vote. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in the fall that could continue to lead us down the very dark path that we began walking over the last few weeks. It’s a North Carolina case, Moore v Harper, that could change how elections are run and who has the power over your vote. It’s being brought by the Republican controlled state legislature. If the court finds in their favor, state legislatures would have independent power over federal elections, which state courts could not review.

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Today is the last day of the current session of the US Supreme Court. It’s a day we will long remember and live to regret. Four of the many rulings handed down will touch everyone of us. Of course, the most infamous was the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion and the corruption of our right to privacy. While many saw this coming from this conservative court, this astonishing decision targeting a woman’s very basic right to privacy was a gut punch to most Americans and a day of rejoicing for many others. It will further divide the country that has people on either side of the political divide screaming at each other. This has resulted in chaos across the country as blue states try to pass laws and state constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights and red states are passing laws to turn women and doctors into criminals.

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It’s not often you witness a one in a million coincidence. My wife and I were working on the lawn at our Jersey shore house when a young man was riding by on a bike about ten feet from the curb. There are three sycamore trees along the sidewalk in front of the house. As the bike rider was passing under a branch which hung out over the street, it cracked. The branch jutted out from the trunk about twelve to fourteen feet above the ground. It was about ten feet long and six to eight inches around. The branch came down hitting the rider across the face knocking him and his bike to the ground. His backpack came off and his phone went flying. I ran into the street. Helped him up and got him to sit on the curb. Grabbed his bike and his cell phone before it was run over. That’s how we met Akon.

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When the January 6th Committee started laying out its case against Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and stage a coup, there is one thing that is at the center of this dangerous time in our history, truth. It’s something Trump couldn’t handle and he convinced millions of Americans his twisted view of reality were the real facts. In her devastating opening statement at the hearing Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney said it in clear terms, “…you will see that Donald Trump and his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election. But, despite this, President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information-to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him. This was not true.” We all know Trump had his own term for truth he didn’t like “Fake News”. But, history tells us of a warning we never heard.

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