"Primary"

Tonight I watched a documentary entitled “Primary.”  The subject was the battle between John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960 for Wisconsin’s convention delegates.  Kennedy’s religion was an issue, as was agricultural policy.  Kennedy seemed to inspire more enthusiasm, but Humphrey connected much better with farmers and won the rural areas.  Ultimately Kennedy took Wisconsin, although the battle would continue in other states.

In 1960 few states held presidential primaries.  Party leaders (bosses?) usually picked the candidates.  Some states held non-binding “beauty contest” primaries to test public opinion.

The documentary showed a different type of campaigning.  When people came to rallies they dressed up.  Some women wore gloves, hats, even pearls.  Kids were allowed out of school to see the rallies.  Rally audiences sang campaign songs.  Kennedy and Humphrey talked about policy issues and hardly mentioned each other.  When they did, they did it in a civil and reasonable way.  The candidates and their followers were polite.  

I shared some of the 1960 experience.  My political science teacher at Ursinus College, who was also the faculty advisor to the Young Democrats, chartered a bus for us to attend a Kennedy rally in a high school football field in Norristown, PA.  We stood in the rain for nearly an hour waiting for Kennedy to appear.  It was inspiring.

"Bombshell"

I just watched a documentary entitled “Bombshell” about the life of the film actress Hedy Lamarr.  Lamarr was not only a talented actress, but she invented a system to use radio frequencies to guide torpedos in the early days of World War II.  While the U.S. Navy rejected her invention, it later was used in all kinds of modern technologies, although Lamarr received no financial reward and not even any recognition until the 1990s.  

What the War Department did use Lamarr for was to sell war bonds and make bad movies to entertain the troops.

This was a depressing documentary, not only because women were so ill-treated in Hollywood and in society during the 40s and 50s, but today as well.  Look at orthodox religions.  The attitude of Trump.  The U.S. military.  The tech industry.  Medical care.  Reproductive rights.  It never ends.

“Any girl can be glamorous.  All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”  Hedy Lamarr

Making your life easier

I occasionally like to pass along what I’ve learned over the years to make your life easier.  Here is tonight’s life lesson:

When you are waiting at a restaurant and all the tables are filled, but the hostess wants to keep you from leaving, she says, “it will be 15 minutes.”  (It might be much longer.)  On the other hand, if she wants you to leave, she will say, “it will be about an hour and a half.”  

Now you know.

the vicuña coat

When Dwight Eisenhower was president, his chief-of-staff Sherman Adams accepted a gift of a vicuña fur coat for his wife from a clothing manufacturer.  The guy who gave the coat to Adams was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.  This was in 1958; I was a sophomore in high school and wasn’t sure what a vicuña was.  That was decades before Wikipedia.  (It looks like a llama with a really skinny neck.)

This was a major scandal.  Adams resigned in disgrace. 

Think of that.  For a coat.  Not for insurrection.  Not for trying to fix an election.  Not for accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Not for raping a woman.  Not for lying under oath.  Not for threatening government workers.  For accepting a fur coat.

Short Flight to St. Petersburg

Trump keeps complaining about the American system of justice.  He whines about his treatment and his booking.  Heck, if Biden were like Putin,Trump would have already been booked on a short flight to St. Petersburg/Tampa. 

"Rich Men North of Richmond"

My friend Bill sent me a YouTube video made by Oliver Anthony, a singer I referenced in a post a few days back.  He also sent me a link to Mr. Anthony singing the song, who says he really regrets how his song was weaponized.  He noted that reference was made to the song (“Rich Men North of Richmond”) in the Republican debate.  He then says that the kind of people who were on the stage that night were the very people he was talking about in the song.  Here’s the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv9uMXiY29s

Indictment of American voters

I completely agree with a recent commentator who observed that the indictment of Trump was really an indictment of American voters.  So little understanding of democracy.  So little concern about corruption and lying.  Such willingness to abandon civility.  Such willingness to join a cult and follow a man who cares not about our country or its people.  One of the two major political parties in the United States is still in thrall to this con man, liar, and would-be dictator.  I don’t understand how we went so wrong.

Social media skeptic

A few weeks ago a song was released about life in a small town.  Evidently the song is some kind of tribute to nostalgia for life in the past, and evidently it is seen as a slam at liberals.  Evidently it is also being pushed by various rightist influencers on social media.  I know this because I read about it.  I have never heard the song.  I probably never will.  Nor do I know the name of the singer.  I never argued about the song on Facebook, because I’m not on Facebook.  I never heard the song on Spotify.  (I think that is where you hear songs.)  It will never come though my cell phone because I don’t have one.  I won’t listen to it on my earbuds in the gym because I don’t have earbuds.

Now there is a new song entitled “Rich Men North of Richmond.”  Again it is pushed by right-wing media and has moved into the number one position.  It made the front page of the New York Times.  I have never heard it; probably never will.  See above.

Sometimes I just bask in my ignorance.  I get what I need to know in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic Monthly, Lancaster Farming, and the Pennsylvania Game News.  I know I sound smug.  I am smug.  Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and their ilk can do you know what.

Nuclear strategy

The whole theory of nuclear strategy is based on the idea that humans are rational.  “Mutually assured destruction,” or MAD, means that if an enemy launches a nuclear attack, that enemy will be destroyed even if the target country is destroyed as well.  In other words, a nuclear attack is suicidal.

A missile defense system probably won’t work, since even if only one percent of the warheads made it through a defensive shield, given the TNT equivalent of nukes today, the price would still be horrendous and could result in the death of humans in the nuclear winter that would follow.  

You can see problems.  What happens if there is an accident, like 1983, when a command center near Moscow received data that the U.S. had launched a nuclear attack?  In that case the Russian in charge of the center (his name was Co. Stanislav Petrov) decided it was probably a false alarm and didn’t report it.  Suppose he had?

Or what happens if the U.S. President is a madman.  When Trump was elected, Nancy Pelosi wanted congress to pass legislation that more than one person would be necessary to launch a nuclear attack.  Right now Biden, by himself, could do that.  And if Trump is elected to a second term, he could also do that.  The legislation was never adopted.  

The movie “Oppenheimer” has made many of us rethink the whole issue of nuclear strategy and what could go wrong.  It seems to me this issue of who decides is important and deserves some serious consideration.

I learned about Col. Petrov in an article by Sarah Scoles, “Rethinking the Unthinkable,” New York Times, (Aug. 22, 2023), p. D1, D5.

My gay pride flag

I thought prejudice against gays was a thing of the past.  Most of us either are gay, know people who are gay, have friends and relatives who are gay, are married to gay spouses, or know gay people who are married.  Oh, I knew there were some “Christian” evangelicals who retain their bigotry, but I never thought someone would get shot and killed over a gay pride flag.  What is wrong with people?

I suppose I should have known better.  Evidently enough beer drinkers are so insecure about their sexuality that they boycotted Bud Light after the company had a gay themed ad campaign.  And I read that Target lost revenue and had its employees threatened when it did the same thing.  WTF?

Tomorrow I will purchase a gay pride flag to display in front of the house.  We have to do these things.  We must. 

Life expectancy in the U.S.

The National Center of Health Statistics and the United Nations released data for life expectancy on countries and states in the U.S.  The country with the highest life expectancy is Japan–well over 84 years.  Australia is almost tied with Japan.  Then comes South Korea at 84 years.  Spain, Italy, Canada, and France are all between 82 and 84.  Taiwan, Germany, and Britain, with the socialized medicine Republicans are always mocking, all came in between 80 and 82.  Hawaii is in that category as well.

Between 78 and 80 are a number of American states, including Idaho, which surprised me until I remembered that Idaho has a large percentage of Mormons who neither drink nor smoke and leave clean lives.  

Pennsylvania is among the 22 states that have average life expectancies between 76 and 78, although I am sure that the industrialized medical care provided by the new Lehigh Valley Hospital and the St. Luke’s Hospital recently built within five miles of each other will boost the PA average to untold heights.

States between 74 and 72, along with Iran, Vietnam, Brazil, Peru, and Bangladesh, include Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia.  The lowest state, with an average life expectancy below 72 years, is [drum roll here] Mississippi.

Last day of the Democratic booth at the Ukrainian Festival

Ukrainians are well aware that the Republican Party, at least the Trumpist wing, is wobbly on support for Ukraine.  The poster we had of Trump praising Putin and Tucker Carlson backing Russia contrasted with the poster of Biden’s pledge of support drew many positive comments.  It helped that Alyson and Paul, two of our volunteers, were of Ukrainian descent.  We also raised funds for medical relief for Ukraine.  We did well. 

Ukrainian Festival

The Ukrainian Homestead in Carbon County holds a festival every summer.  The County Democrats are invited to set up a booth at the Festival, although in past years we did not get much support from festival-goers.  Like the Cubans and Vietnamese, many Ukrainians had a Communist country and associated the Democrats with “socialism,” thanks to Republican propaganda.

It was different this year.  We exhibited two posters.  One quoted a speech by Biden praising Ukraine for standing up for democracy and pledging help.  The other poster featured three quotes; one from Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that the U.S. should not spend any more money on Ukraine: one from Tucker Carlson stating that he backed Russia; and one from Trump praising Putin.  

We also had a large Ukrainian flag and blue and gold wrist bands which we sold to raise money for Ukrainian relief.  People stopped by the booth, read the posters, and thanked us.

The Republican booth featured signs for local candidates.  Nothing about support for Ukraine.

We’ll be back at it tomorrow. 

No trans Barbie!

Emily St. James, a movie critic and a trans woman, found the Barbie movie “deeply frustrating and strangely resonant.”  The movie includes a trans actress, Dr. Barbie; I assume that’s the resonant part.  But Emily St. James says the movie leaves little room outside the binary female/male.

Really?  I just can’t enjoy the movie?  We have to drag this in?  I consider myself a sensitive and tolerant person, but sometimes I just get exhausted.  

See Emily St. James, “Barbie and Ken and Nothing in Between, “New York Times, (Aug. 17, 2023), p. C2. 

What can we get for $10 mil?

Last November the voters of Carbon County approved a 10 million dollar bond issue for farmland preservation and clean water.  A committee was appointed by the County Commissioners to spend the money.  I went to the meeting of the Committee tonight and listened to a discussion of how to set priorities.  The members will discuss this further, but from the comments, it appears that the committee will concentrate on areas that are contiguous to already protected forests or farms located in areas that are most likely to be developed.  Another consideration is providing corridors and emphasizing areas that have the most biological diversity.  

I was impressed with the seriousness of the members.  All of them, of course, are unpaid volunteers.

P.S.  As many of you know, there are four counties named Carbon in the U.S.  I don’t want to have to keep saying Pennsylvania each time I write Carbon.  If I mean one in Montana or Wyoming or Utah, I’ll let you know.

Using the courts to shut down a newspaper

The Pilot and Review, a small newspaper in Wausau, Wisconsin, reported on a county board meeting.  At the meeting a local businessman, Cory Tomczyk, called a 13-year-old boy a “fag.”  The paper reported this.

Mr. Tomczyk is now a Republican state senator.  He sued the paper.  He lost.  He appealed.  The paper’s legal bills have already climbed to $150,000.  

Republicans suing small newspapers (or major ones, in the case of Trump) have become quite common.  The effort is not about getting to the truth; it is about shutting the papers down.  Papers like the Pilot and Review, barely scraping by, are particularly vulnerable.  So much for press freedom.

Could Mr. Tomczyk sue me for posting this?  I don’t know, but I think he is a complete butthole.  

See Jeremy W. Peters, “After Report on Anti-Gay Slur, a Local News Site Fights for Life,” New York Times, (Aug. 16, 2023), p. B1, B6.

The kids are all right–at least in Montana

A group of young people in Montana sued the state over its use of fossil fuel.  They said that Montana’s failure to consider climate change when it gave the go-ahead to fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional under Montana law.  A judge agreed with them.

The Montana Attorney General went ballistic and promptly promised to appeal the judge’s decision to the state Supreme Court.  He said the whole legal action was absurd and a publicity stunt.  

Montana gets a third of its energy by burning coal.  It has one of the four counties named Carbon in the United States, all of them environmental disasters.  (I live in the one in PA-the others are in Wyoming and Utah).  I wonder if the Attorney General thinks the fires in Hawaii, the heat wave in Arizona, and the coral die-off in Florida are also “absurd” publicity stunts.  

Way to go, kids.  Thanks.

W. Jason Morgan, who found tectonic plates

The theory of plate tectonics is only 56 years old.  This idea makes so much sense.  It explains earthquakes, volcanos, oceanic trenches, mountain building, and so much more, yet the theory dates to an American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington in April 1967.  The guy who presented the idea died last week; his name was W. Jason Morgan.  

Another pair of scientists affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography also published an article in the journal Nature with much the same theory, but one of those authors, Dan McKenzie, said Morgan should have priority in development the theory.

McKenzie noted that in 1965 nobody believed this.  By the end of 1967 everyone believed it.  Science doesn’t usually move that fast, but plate tectonics seems so obvious.

See Clay Risen, “W. Jason Morgan, 87, Scientist Who Found Tectonic Plates, Dies,” New York Times (Aug. 13, 2023), p. 23. 

Forgetting my instructions

At the Democratic booth at the Carbon County Fair a guy went by and said, “Go Trump.”  He kept walking, and, completely forgetting the instructions for booth volunteers THAT I WROTE that said do not argue with Trumpists, I yelled,”Come back here.”  I think I may have also called him a chicken.  

In my defense, it was the last night of the fair, and I was tired of Trump supporters and the guy with a shirt that said “Fuck Biden.”  Nonetheless, it was bad behavior on my part, and I’m probably lucky that the guy, who was big, kept walking.

Lawrence H. Tribe on the Supreme Court

Did you ever read an article and think–everyone must read this?  Lawrence H. Tribe, constitutional law prof at Harvard, is the best authority on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Ok, that’s my personal view, but I’ll stand by it.  I don’t know why some Democratic President hasn’t named him to the Supreme Court 

In the Summer Issue of The New York Review of Books, Tribe reviews five recent books on the Court.  What is so great about the review is Tribe’s take on the Court and his recommendations on how to fix things.  He notes, for example, that most for most of our history the Court has been quite willing to trample on our rights; it is only for a brief period that the Court defended rights, and even then it was relying on laws passed earlier by Congress.

I can’t reprint the article here.  It is five pages long, small print, on large format paper.  I went to the New York Review of Books website, and I think you have to pay to read the whole article.  I urge you to do so.  Take a half hour and do it.  It is the best article I have read on the recent Court’s decisions and what might be done to fix things without destroying the Court. 

Yankee Doodle revisited

In the first few years of the American Revolution the British soldiers made fun of the American soldiers with a song entitled “Yankee Doodle.”  American soldiers liked the tune and soon made it their own song, which must have irritated the British soldiers no end. 

We are doing the same thing.  Trumpists thought they were being so clever by using the term “Let’s go Brandon” as a short-hand term for “Fuck Biden.”  We have a sign at our fair booth that says “Brandon won–by seven million votes.”  It is really irritating Trumpists.  

If you are thinking we should be reaching out rather than irritating people, do you really think that people that think Biden lost would ever come over to our side?  I don’t.  I want to have some fun.

Bret Stephens on the Republican Party

I have for some time been amazed by intelligent friends of mine who are Republican and have remained Republican in the Trump era.  It is easy to change parties, and I don’t understand how a thinking person can stay in that party.  

Bret Stephens is a columnist for the New York Times.  He is considered to be an in-house conservative; he and Gail Collins frequently debate each other on issues.  It is worth quoting Mr. Stephens at length on the Republican Party.  His remarks appeared in the July 25 issue.

If there were truth in advertising, Republicans would have to rename themselves the Opposite Party.  They were the party of law and order.  Now they want to abolish the F.B.I.  They were the party that revered the symbols of the nation.  Now they think the Jan 6 riots were like a “normal tourist visit.”  They were the party of moral character and virtue.  Now they couldn’t care less that their standard-bearer consorted with a porn star.  They were the party of staring down the Evil Empire.  Now they’re Putin’s last best hope.  They were the party of free trade.  Now they’re protectionists.  They were the party that cheered the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision which argued that corporations had free speech.  Now they are being sued by Disney because the company dared express an opinion they dislike.  They were the party that once believed that “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” as George W. Bush put it.  Now some of them want to invade Mexico. 

Working the Democratic Party booth at the Carbon County Fair

Not very many MAGA hats this year.  And nobody yelling nasty comments as they did last year;  This could have been because we were wedged in between a stand selling fried cheese curds and a guy selling a “fantasy” book he had self-published.  Last year our booth was next to a Trump memorabilia stand, and that brought out some Trump cultists. 

I took only one sign order for “Vote Choice” sign, and that was from a woman in Monroe County, but we also talked to Democrats who bemoaned the fact that Trump was still popular and in one case, wished we had a candidate who didn’t look so frail.  Overall, the experience was positive, and I got to see the fireworks show.