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Month: August 2015
Yes, I have better things to do, but I think it’s important that I let you all know how this Republican presidential nomination thing ends so we can move on from Donald Trump and into more consequential matters.
According to the latest CNN/ORC poll (scroll down to page 7), Trump is leading the pack ‘o candidates with 24% support of the poll’s respondents. The usual suspects follow, although we do have a new rising star in Carly Fiorina who went from 1% support in the July poll to 5% in August’s.
OK.
What this simply means is that one quarter of respondents support Trump. Add up the others’ scores and you have most respondents supporting someone other than Trump. Plus, Trump’s negative ratings outpace his positives by about 30 percentage points. What this also means is that the Republican Party is still in the grips of an extremist bunch who say things like “I support Trump because he tells the truth.”
No, he does not.
He says things that are provocative and media-friendly, and he says them loudly. He has no plan for the country and says that his strength is that he goes into negotiations with flexibility and tries to get the best deal possible. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but the Republican Party has not operated that way for the past 6 years, so I’ll need some clarification as to whether the Tea Party is willing to back Donald knowing that he’ll actually try to bargain with the Democrats. Or the so-called moderates in the GOP.
What Donald Trump has done is to alienate the one group that the GOP absolutely needs to win a national election, Hispanics, and has disrespected the other group that the GOP needs more support from, and that’s women. And the longer Trump stays in the race and has a megaphone, the more he will do damage to the party. Which is good for Democrats. And the latest issue, that of changing the Fourteenth Amendment to disallow the children of undocumented immigrants to have birthright citizenship, is a losing one for the right. So naturally, half the field supports the change.
What’s happening now in the Republican process will have a major effect on the race, and if you want to know what will happen, then please pay attention. The vast majority of the GOP field will make it to the Iowa Caucuses, and each one will get their moment in the media spotlight. Then they’ll say or do something Republicany and fall by the wayside. Trump will not win Iowa. After that, the lowest performing five candidates will drop out. After New Hampshire, another five will go, including NJ Governor Chris Christie, because he won’t win them and he won’t have enough money to conduct a campaign across enough of the remaining states.
By this point, only the most well-funded candidates will still be in the race: Jeb, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and perhaps, Trump. They will then duke it out over the next month or so, and by the end of April at the latest, the GOP will have its candidate, and my guess is that it will be Kasich. He will then choose Marco Rubio to be his running mate at the convention.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton will win the nomination and choose a Hispanic-American as her running mate.
After that, we’ll see, but you read it here first.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
After experiencing a near death accident in which one of his friends was killed, Tracy Morgan is continuing the road back with an appearance on Saturday Night Live on October 17th.
Morgan’s limo was struck by a Walmart truck on the New Jersey Turnpike on June 7, 2014, killing comedian James McNair and critically injuring Morgan and three others. In early June, Morgan appeared on TV for the first time since the accident, telling the Today Show that he doesn’t remember the actual crash.
“When I got home, it really hit me,” he said. “Every day I would just watch the accident on YouTube. One day I saw [McNair’s] funeral on YouTube, and I lost it for about a week.”
Morgan, who suffered extensive physical and neurological injuries from the crash, sued Walmart and received an undisclosed settlement in May. The truck’s driver—who hadn’t slept in 28 hours at the time of the accident—faces charges of death by auto.
They love the guy! No matter how low he goes – implying that war-hero John McCain is a coward, demoralizing women with sexist remarks including his most recent attacks on Fox’s Megyn Kelly – Donald Trump still finds a place to call home among Republicans.
In the national survey of more than 1,000 registered voters conducted August 11-13, Trump stands at 25%, one point less than his standing in the same poll before the debate, but more than double each of his competitors. Even with the margin of error at plus or minus three points, Trump’s lead is commanding.
His closest rival in the poll is Ben Carson at 12% (up five points post-debate), followed by Ted Cruz at 10% (up four points). In fourth place is Jeb Bush with 9%, dropping six points from his second place standing before the debate, the largest decrease of any candidate.
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Education Roars Back
It’s August and the Back to School sales are ramping up in earnest, at least here in the nor’east. The sales started in July for the more southerly US climes, but that’s because they’re already back in the classrooms. In any event, it’s time once again to be thinking about education, and the issue is now near the top in this presidential election.
One of the more popular articles making its way around electronica is this one that essentially summarizes the findings of John Hattie, an educational researcher who’s written a slew of books on best practices. He suggests that achievement standards, focusing on smaller class sizes, and pouring more money into the educational system are not the answers and have little effect on student performance. He also questions school choice as a viable public policy. Of course, politicians on the right and left will pick and choose what they want from his message, with Democrats wanting more money and Republicans wanting more accountability, as if the two were completely opposite.
Educational access, attainment and benefits have been tied to the relative wealth of families and communities for the better part of United States’ history, so it should be no surprise to anyone that we are presently confronted with a system that’s as fractured as our income gap. Schools in wealthy communities tend to perform better than those in less wealthy and poor communities and the willingness of politicians to spend money where it should be spent (key concept) lends itself to schools where teachers can teach and students have every opportunity to learn.
Most of the Republican candidates for president support the free-market, pro-corporate model for schools, and the results have been disappointing at best to demoralizing at worst. Governors Scott Walker (falling in the polls) and Chris Christie (can you fall below zero in you polls?), have done more to demonize public school teachers than the other candidates and promise to do the same to the rest of the country if they are elected. Jeb Bush supports the Common Core standards, which really isn’t going to endear him to any particularly large constituency, but he’s also against public unions. The other candidates want local and state standards, which have not worked in the past and will not help student performance in the future.
The Democrats want more money for universal pre-school and aid to schools in poor and depressed areas of the country. Hillary Clinton has also recently unveiled a higher education policy that focuses on student debt. She would probably never get $350 billion over ten years from a Republican Congress, but her plan would put pressure on the right to relieve millions of students from crushing loans that are sapping their economic prospects. The Republican candidates have joined her in trying to address the debt issue, but right now the best we can say about them is that they’re market-oriented, including Marco Rubio’s plan to have wealthy investors essentially buy an interest in your future earnings in return for their investment in your education. I wonder if he’s also going to provide students with a free saddle so that your investor can sit on your back.
Given the years of blame and economic hardship that teachers have had to endure, it’s no wonder that there’s a shortage. And given the attitude that many national and state leaders have about teachers, it’s no wonder that qualified students are looking at other fields of endeavor. The truth is that we pay a great deal of lip service to wanting a highly qualified, well-trained teaching staff at every school, but the best and brightest are not stupid; they see what’s going on in education and are increasingly turned off to it. And since we don’t have the best and brightest going into government, the solutions will be doubly difficult to come by.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
Mr. Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after a brief illness, the center said in a statement Sunday morning.
He was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
He moved from the militancy of the student group to the top leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, he was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer, college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.
He also served for 20 years in the Georgia Legislature, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.
Mr. Bond’s wit, cool personality and youthful face became familiar to millions of television viewers during the 1960s and 1970s. He attracted adjectives — dashing, handsome, urbane — the way some people attract money.
On the strength of his personality and quick intellect, he moved to the center of the civil rights action in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of the movement, at the height of the struggle for racial equality in the early 1960s.
Moving beyond demonstrations, he became a founder, with Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Montgomery, Ala. Mr. Bond was its president from 1971 to 1979 and remained on its board for the rest of his life.
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American Flag Raised in Cuba
Definitely a historic day given the high animosity between the two countries over the last 54 years. Today, with a visit from Secretary of State, John Kerry, the United States’ flag was raised over the Embassy in Cuba.
“Thank you for joining us at this truly historic moment as we prepare to raise the flag … symbolizing the restoration of diplomatic relations after 54 years,” Kerry said at the ceremony, addressing the crowd in both English and Spanish.
Kerry’s visit marks the symbolic end of one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. But signs of mistrust linger, and beyond the pomp and circumstance lies a long road back from more than half a century of diplomatic animosity.
On Thursday, Cuban state media put out an article in the name of Fidel Castro, writing on the occasion of his 89th birthday, in which he made no reference to the historic resumption of U.S.-Cuba relations but instead waxed on about the damage the American embargo has caused Cuba and the anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on Japan.
The rhetoric from the leader of the Cuban revolution, and the face of anti-U.S. resistance, is not unexpected. But it underscores the long-standing tensions at play as Washington and Havana work to thaw the decadeslong chill in relations.
Ted Nugent, a board member on NRA and defender of right-wing Republican politics, told WIBX’s Keeler in the Morning that he is not a fan of Megyn Kelly, but he sometimes tune to Fox to watch her, and he usually watch her while sitting “naked on the couch.”
Nugent’s sexist comment is no surprise and comes days after Megyn Kelly asked Trump about sexist comments he has made about women in the past. Trump, the Republican frontrunner for President in 2016, later explained that when Kelly asked the question, “she had blood coming out of her wherever,” a clear reference to menstruation.
“I’m a big fan of Donald Trump because I believe in bold, aggressive, unapologetic truth. Period,” Nugent said. “And I’m not a fan of Megyn Kelly, although I often turn on Fox just to look at her. Sometimes when I’m loading my [gun ammunition] magazines. I like to just look at her. And I usually sit naked on the couch dropping hot brass on my stuff.”
Then he commented on Kelly’s question to Trump about his sexist behavior.
“I’m afraid the gorgeous, stunning, otherwise professional and tuned-in Megyn Kelly absolutely fell of the cliff of political correctness when she proposed that obnoxious, meaningless, nonsensical, biased question for Donald Trump.”
“Megyn Kelly absolutely broke all of our hearts as only a Megyn Kelly could when she went into the status quo world. She isn’t status quo, but she started acting, and sounding, and looking like one, and I don’t believe she is. I think she is playing some games, either that or she’s getting bad advice, either that or she’s just getting stupid. Either way, Donald Trump is the good guy, currently Megyn Kelly ain’t.”
He has commanded the crowds as huge numbers show up at his campaign events and now Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate running for president in 2016, has taken the lead away from Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.
A new poll shows Bernie Sanders with an apparent lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton among likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire, adding to his momentum in the nation’s first presidential primary state.
Sanders, the independent senator from neighboring Vermont, tops Clinton, the former secretary of state, 44 percent to 37 percent, in the new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll.
The survey, taken Aug. 7-10, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percent, meaning Sanders’s lead is not considered statistically significant by pollsters.
Again. And you thought this was settled back in 1964. Nope. We’re still fighting for the right to vote thanks to the Conservative controlled Supreme Court.
President Barack Obama urged Congress to restore a key part of the Voting Rights Act, writing in a letter to the editor in The New York Times Magazine published Wednesday that voting rights for all Americans must be “vigorously defended.”
Obama referenced a piece from The New York Times Magazine published in late July by Jim Rutenberg that detailed the 50 years of efforts to roll back the protections established by 1965’s landmark Voting Rights Act.
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“These efforts are not a sign that we have moved past the shameful history that led to the Voting Rights Act. Too often, they are rooted in that history,” the president wrote. “They remind us that progress does not come easy, but that it must be vigorously defended and built upon for ourselves and future generations.”
Obama made specific mention to 94-year-old Rosanell Eaton, who is a plaintiff in the ongoing North Carolina case against voting restrictions implemented two years ago, arguing that the law was written to discriminate against black voters.
“I am where I am today only because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality. Their efforts made our country a better place. It is now up to us to continue those efforts,” he wrote.
The Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the voting law in a 2013 decision that required states to receive federal approval before they change election laws.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/obama-voting-rights-act-nytimes-121287.html#ixzz3iblSceKA
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The Walking Dead Season 6 Preview – Video
Coming in October!
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His events have become a favorite hangout spot for Black Lives Matter protesters, so Bernie Sanders finally addressed the concerns of the movement, vowing to fight racism if he becomes president in 2016. Speaking in front of a packed Los Angeles arena, Sanders attempted to address the concerns of the group.
“There is no president that will fight harder to end institutional racism,” said Sanders, who was answered with a deafening roar and chants of “Bernie” from a packed Los Angeles Sports Arena, whose usual capacity is about 16,000 people.
The rally began taking on the issue head-on as Symone Sanders — Bernie Sanders’ new national press secretary who is not related to the candidate — opened the program and talked at length about racial injustice.
Symone Sanders is a black criminal justice advocate and a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter movement, and said Sanders was the candidate to fight for its values.
“It is very important that we say the words ‘black lives matter,’ Symone Sanders said. “But it’s also important to have people in political office who are going to turn those words into action. No candidate for president is going to fight harder for criminal justice reform and racial justice issues than Senator Bernie Sanders.”
On Saturday, protesters from Black Lives Matter took over a microphone at a Sanders event in Seattle and forced him to abandon an afternoon speech.