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A Blue Wave is Coming!

Election 2020

Melania’s RNC Speech. Temper, Temper.

27 August 2020

The Democratic Nominating Committee from August 17-20, 2020 presented one of the most diverse, racially and ideologically, line up of speakers ever seen at a nominating convention.  Many of the speeches resonated with fearful and disappointed voters.  Many inspired me to do more to put Biden in the White House.  President Obama, Michele Obama, Joe Biden, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Kristin Urquiza, whose father died from COVID-19 to start.  Before the convention I’d said many times that I did not care who was running as the democratic nominee or his VP,  I was voting straight Blue regardless.  After the convention, my vote on November 3 became more than a vote against Trump-Pence.  It became a vote for Biden-Harris.

Next up was up was the Republican National Convention, August 24-27,2020.   The line up of RNC speakers should be looked at not just in turns of who is speaking but who is not speaking. Only one Republican facing a difficult re-election fight, no seasoned politicians but everybody but the children in Trump’s family.   At a convention already rife with Hatch Act violations, alt-right conspi-RACISTS and revisionism, Melania Trump took the stage.  

Her speech was hyped to high heaven as the most important speech of her life so expectations were running high.  And then she spoke  (read the full text of her speech here and analysis here and here) and high expectations gave way to appeals to temper our expectations and a slew of main stream media tempered reviews.

In typical Trump fashion, she pointed down and told us it was up.  She could not even manufacture a creditable record of public service since becoming FLOTUS and no one anywhere has conjured before the inauguration.  But this isn’t the subject of my post.  My purpose here is to call out the reception her speech received from some people and some media (Trump supporters and Fox aside).

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We Need More Teeth

19 August 2020

The Jurassic Park franchise is one of the most successful in cinema.  It’s right up there with The Matrix, Star Wars and the earlier Transformer franchises.  A few of the franchises’s movies like Jurassic World are as good, in my opinion as any of the movies in the Marvel franchise in terms of sheer entertainment.

The scene in which Indominus Rex fights T. Rex is an adrenaline high-ball of special effects.  It also contains the most memorable moment of the film.   Gray, Claire’s nephew, tells the adults and his older brother, “We need more”.  When Claire asks “More what?” Gray says, “Teeth, we need more teeth.  In just a few words Gray sums up the problem and the solution.  Watching the fight Gray sees that T Rex is loosing because I Rex has more teeth in a fight that will be decided by how much biting and rending one can do compared to the other.  He knows that T. Rex, their champion, cannot win unless they bring more teeth to the fight.  Enter Blue, velociraptor, who adds more teeth to the fight to defeat I. Rex. T. Rex and Blue tag team I. Rex who is finished off by the Mosasaurus.

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Trump’s Attack on the US Postal Service

16 August 2020

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic House majority leader, ordered the House back to DC for hearings on the Postmaster General’s war on the Post Office.

Here is a chronology of events and key players.

  • DATE Trump attacks the postal service’s contract with Amazon.  Amazon pays USPS for parcel delivery not the other way round.  Trump says the government is losing money on the deal.  The USPS says the arrangement is very beneficial to the government.  Trump’s attack wanted to harm Jeff Bezos who owns the Washington Post, a very vocal main stream media critic of the Trump administration.   Trump’s assault on USPS 3 years later is not revenge because the PG did not void the contract as some suggest.
  • DATE Trump talks about election fraud as concern about Russian and Chinese interference in our election grows.
  • DATE Ivanka Trump owns a company that manufactures voting machines in China.  These machines are used in several states.  Let this sink in.  The daughter and adviser of a President on the ballot for re-election owns the machines that will be used to collect and transmit votes.  YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP.
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The reality of a post-Trump America: A Woman Can’t Win.

21 February 2019

You would think that the most qualified person regardless of gender or race would be a party’s nominee for President.  That’s not true and has never been true but for different reasons and to different degrees now than in the early history of the two major parties.

Gender and race were not an issue before 1865 and 1920 when Blacks and then women respectively gained the right to vote.  Before then only white men were eligible to vote.  And since neither slaves nor women could vote, no slave or woman was eligible for office. Even after women were granted the right to vote, social norms dictated that their vote would not be exercised independent of the male head of the household.  And Jim Crow laws saw to the continued disenfranchisement of Blacks who were technically eligible for office and to vote but who practically speaking were not allowed to do so.

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