Just a placeholder for a few days. I’m working on the novel, honest, and tend to forget that I have social media to attend. Be nice if someone would tend it for me, but it is what it is. So, for time being, something photographical.
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Month: November 2014
Stop Shooting At Each Other, Please
I’m 60.
What this means for the purposes of this post is that I lived through the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. I watched the reactions of the nation on the news, listened to the discussions that went on constantly for weeks and months (and in many ways are still going on), and I saw my neighborhood change in anticipation of a kind of Armageddon. I remember the summer of 1968 seeing many of my neighbors sitting on front porches and steps holding shotguns and rifles, some with pistols strapped onto their waists, waiting for the wave of rioters to come charging down the street. …
Local vs National?
A curious thing came out of the midterms. The fact that a lot of GOP candidates won their races (many by a nose hair) and yet in those same districts more or less progressive referenda also won. Legalization of marijuana and the legitimization of gay marriage being the two most prominent. This is curious when you consider that for the last umpteen years now the GOP has made its bones by being obsessively loudmouthed social naysayers. People seem to have been voting for them because they are opposed to all the things identified as signaling the End Times of Civilization, most of which can be lumped loosely under the rubric of “Permissiveness.” …
Another Aftermath
Midterms are over. Many people are freaking over the results.
Here is a list of sixth year losses for sitting presidents from the last century.
1918 – Woodrow Wilson (D): Lost 22 seats in the House, lost 5 seats in the Senate.
1938 – Franklin Roosevelt (D): Lost 72 seats in the House, lost 7 seats in the Senate.
1950 – Harry Truman (D): Lost 28 seats in the House, lost 5 seats in the Senate.
1958 – Dwight Eisenhower (R): Lost 48 seats in the House, lost 13 seats in the Senate.
1974 – Richard Nixon (R) (although Gerald Ford was President when the elections took place that year): Lost 48 seats in the House, lost 4 seats in the Senate.…
Vote
Tomorrow is a midterm election day.
I can hear it already. Yawn. What is it with progressives and anyone left of Attila the Hun? Don’t you remember what happened at the last midterm? We had record low voter turnout across the country and in a wide range of close elections—close elections—the Tea Party put enough people in congress to allow for four years of the worst congressional performance in memory.
Let me repeat that. Close elections. We had an average turnout of 23 to 27 % of eligible voters and by any metric Tea Party candidates took seats riding in on around 13 to 15 % of eligible votes. …