Polls
T’was in my last blog posting here that I
warned about the unreliability of polling, when I cautioned readers to ‘watch for many election polls to be far
off the mark.’ That they were.
Most of them had
‘the spread’ all wrong, just like the sports mavens who figured that Alabama
would be there in the playoffs among the top four college football teams to
determine which would be the national champion!
Who woulda thought? Even TCU's Horned Frogs maybe?
JL
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Praise Be Floriduh for an
Avalanche of Crap
Hey, Floridians! Isn’t it nice to know that a majority of those
living in the Sunshine State just voted to …
1. support
the banning of books, some classics taught for decades, in our schools,
2. support
the banning of teaching history that might make some students uncomfortable,
3. support
the denial in our schools of the existence of a LGBTQ population,
4. do
nothing more to control gun violence in a state where the Pulse and Parkland
massacres took place,
5. agree
with curtailing a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion,
6. support
a laissez-faire attitude toward public displays of antisemitism,
7. go
along with the firing of a twice-elected state attorney whose only crime was
disagreeing with the governor about prosecuting those who seek an abortion.
8. approve
the forming of a ‘voter protection police force,’ used to arrest alleged
fraudulent voters, most of them Black while ignoring Republican-sponsored
’ghost’ candidates put on the ballot to sow confusion,
9. approve
of the browbeating of the State legislature into gerrymandering two mostly
Black congressional districts out of existence,
10. approve
spending your tax money to trick Venezuelan asylum seekers into flying from
Texas to Martha’s Vineyard promising non-existent jobs there, to embarrass
Democrats and score points with the right-wing and anti-immigration supporters.
11. agree
with the appointment as surgeon-general and as a high-salaried faculty member
at the University of Floriduh’s medical school of a physician whose contrarian
views (anti-vax and anti-masking) differ from those of most respected members
of the medical profession.
Yessiree, and Yes’mam, that’s the way your fellow
Floridians voted. That’s the kind of
folks they are. Don’t you just love
them! But smile when you look them in
the eye or someone just might come knocking at your door late at night.
(For the first time, I find myself in agreement
with the defeated former president about something! He referred to a likely foe to his running
again in 2024, the re-elected Governor of Floriduh, as ‘Ron
DeSanctimonious.’ Yes, Ron is seriously proud of
all those good folks who voted for the avalanche of crap for which he stands, enumerated
above.)
JL
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My Way
Frank Sinatra sang ‘I Did it My Way.’ Well, in the 2022 election campaign, I did my part, ‘my way.’ When I look back at the many cash contributions
that I made to the campaigns of candidates who were willing to fight for
democracy, I was surprised that it added up to almost $400. I also purchased, wrote out, and mailed a
total of two hundred postal cards to selected voters in two States where there
were crucial Senate races, those of Mark Kelly in Arizona and Catherine Cortez
Masto in Nevada.
And I hope preparing two postings a week on my
blog (https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com)
urging support of Democratic candidates, and sending them to at least 50
recipients, and which I believe were forwarded to many others, did some good. I also wrote many letters to newspapers, a few
of which were actually published, reaching tens of thousands of voters. Can you say that you did your part,
whatever it was, ‘Your Way’? I can say with certainty that ‘I Did it My
Way.’
Incidentally, my letter to the SunSentinel
concerning the abominable treatment of
Crist supporters at the debate in Fort Pierce (see my 11/3 blog posting) was
published, but with the comment about the police there wearing black shirts
instead of brownshirts deleted.
JL
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Edge-U-Kay-Shun
In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks wrote that ‘Politics has become a religion for a lot of people. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education no longer just have different ideas about, say, the role of government; they have created rival ways of life. Americans with a college education and Americans without a college education have different relationships to patriotism and faith, dress differently, enjoy different foods and have different ideas about corporal punishment, gender and, of course, race. You can’t isolate the differences between the classes down to one factor or another. It’s everything.’
Read Brooks’ column by CLICKING HERE or visiting https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/opinion/democrats-midterms-college.html
Yes, education is important to the survival of democracy in
America. Brooks suggests college
education as a defining criterion in the column mentioned above.
I believe that much more important is elementary and high school
education, which is being contaminated by some really bad people (I see no
other way of describing them), seizing control of school boards. Take five minutes to read Brooks’ column and
then read the much longer and very challenging article in the New Yorker
magazine on right-wing mothers that will blow you mind! JUST CLICK HERE or find it at
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/the-right-wing-mothers-fuelling-the-school-board-wars
Then try to figure out what to do about attempts to turn Mothers
Day into ‘the Holiday from Hell.’
JL
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And of course, please forward this posting to anyone you think
might benefit from reading it, especially that New Yorker article. The place to send them is:
https://jackspotpourri.blogspot..com
JL
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