Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Wednesday's video: Election Day the day after

The week in review with Bill Katz, the editor of Urgent Agenda

 


A Man for all seasons

 

 

Remember the Olympics and that boxing match between the young woman from Italy and someone who looked like a man from where ever he was from? The young woman walked away in tears.

It turns out that he was really a he. Let’s get the details:

A shocking new development has emerged in the case of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after a French journalist reportedly gained access to a damning medical report revealing Khelif has “testicles.” The news comes months after Khelif seized a gold medal in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics.

The report was drafted in June of 2023 via a collaboration between the Kremlin-BicĂȘtre hospital in Paris, France, and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine hospital in Algiers, Algeria. Drafted by expert endocrinologists Soumaya Fedala and Jacques Young, the report reveals that Khelif is impacted by 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a disorder of sexual development that is only found in biological males.

Okay. Let me confess that I don’t know anything about alpha reductase deficiency. That sounds like the reason that I only took basic biology in school. I got my requirement out of the way and signed up for a history or political science class.

All I know about men and women is that they are different and it’s very easy to tell the difference. Furthermore, boys are bigger and stronger and girls are smaller. Just go to a high school football game and check out the quarterback and the head cheerleader. I don’t need any biology expert to tell which one is a guy or gal.

Of course, the scandal here is that such a match was allowed in the first place. This is what happens when woke runs the show and a young woman is threatened by it.

Here is the scandal. Someone in the Olympics decided that the narrative was better than having a real woman win a medal. That is a disgrace and maybe there is someone in the media who wants to take it further. Of course, I am assuming that there is someone in the media who wants to write about something that isn’t Trump this or Trump that.

At the very least, a future President Trump should challenge the people running the Olympics and demand a correction.


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1532: Cabeza de Vaca landed in Texas

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Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca did not set out to find Texas but he landed around Galveston on this day in 1532.
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We remember Glenn Frey (1948-2016)

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We remember Glenn Frey who was born in Michigan on this day in 1948.    

Back in the 1970's, The Eagles were one of the most successful recording acts in the world.   Later, Frey was a solo artist but I loved his work with The Eagles a lot more.

We got some bad news in January 2016: Glenn Frey, one of the founders and principals of The Eagles, passed away.  He was 67.

One of my favorite songs was "A new kid in town", a # 1 song the LP "Hotel California".

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1860: Abraham Lincoln became president


On election day 1860, a very divided country went to the polls.   

Lincoln got only 40% of the popular vote but defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.      

The election did not settle any of the differences.  By inauguration date on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded, and the Confederate States of America had been formally established, with Jefferson Davis as its elected president. 

One month later, the Civil War began when Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina. 

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Nixon 1968 and 7 of 10

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A post from 2018:
We await for the voters to decide the 2018 midterm elections.   In the meantime, let’s remember the election of 1968, or the first GOP victory in a long line of presidential victories. 
I was a sophomore in high school and very interested in the election.  Our family had arrived in the U.S. in September 1964, and I don’t remember too much about that election.  I do recall that my father said that it was a landslide for President Lyndon B. Johnson.  I think that my father would have voted for Senator Barry Goldwater but we were not citizens at the time.
In 1968, our family was with Richard Nixon.  My father always spoke highly of  Nixon and explained that it’d be better for the U.S. to replace the Democrats.   My parents used to say that the Democrats were soft on national security.  It was an opinion largely shaped by the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
As you may recall, Richard Nixon lost the election of 1960 by 114,000 votes out of 76 million cast that day.   In 1962, he failed to become governor of California and gave his famous “last press conference”.   After that, Nixon “retired” from politics and spent the next five years helping GOP candidates and hoping for another shot.  In his memoirs, RN, he wrote that he felt better about his chances after seeing the good results of the 1966 midterms.    
In 1968, Nixon jumped in again and battled Governor Ronald Reagan of California and Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York. He easily won the nomination on the first ballot in Miami.    
It turned out to be a very strange campaign.  The Democrats self-destructed in Chicago.  The George Wallace factor divided the Democrats in the South.  Vietnam was the issue of the day, but “law and order” was in the conversation.  We remember that Reverend Martin Luther King and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were killed that year.
On election night, Nixon got 43.4% and VP Humphrey was right behind with 42.73% of the 74 million votes cast.  Governor Wallace got 13.5% and carried 5 Southern states. As I recall, it was not until the next morning that the election was called.
In the end, Nixon got the Electoral Votes and became the 37th president.  
The 1968 election started a very interesting trend.  The GOP won in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004.   It was 7 of the next 10, a remarkable streak.
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Tuesday, November 05, 2024

Tuesday's video: It's election Day so vote

Trump or Harris ask Mexicans

Trump or Harris ask Mexicans: Last Friday, a Mexican journalist popped the big question: Who is going to win the U.S. election and what does mean for us? I answered, making a couple of points: First, no one is talking about Latin America up here. Yes, Mexico is on the..
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Happy # 83 Art Garfunkel............

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We say happy birthday to Art Garfunkel, who was born in Queens, NY on this day in 1941.    His career had two episodes:   Simon & Garfunkel and several solo hits and LP's.      

Garfunkel's version of "I only have eyes for you" was one of the best romantic ballads of 1975-76.

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1977: Happy anniversary to President & Mrs. Bush

 


We say happy anniversary to President and Mrs. Bush.  They were married on this day in 1977.  The couple lives in Dallas today.

Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, 1995-2001, and President of the US, 2001-2009.

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Is it time to revisit the Electoral College?

2016ecmaplarge

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that we delete the Electoral College. I do not like direct popular vote elections because of the potential for vote fraud.   
At the same time, we should change how the candidates win the “EV” at every state.     
At the moment, you win California and you get 55 votes, even if you win the state with the plurality of the vote as Mr. Clinton did in 1992! Or you get all of Texas’ 38 votes even if you get 41% of the vote as Mr. Bush in Texas in 1992!   
So how about changing the calculation? The winner of the state gets  2 EV’s immediately and the congressional districts that he or she carried. It makes more sense because it is closer to how people actually voted.
A few years ago, Aaron Bycoffe and Andrei Scheinkman reported on such idea brewing in GOP circles:
Republicans have a new strategy for 2016: Change the rules of presidential elections in order to swing the Electoral College in the GOP’s favor.
On Wednesday, Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature became one of the first to advance a bill that would allocate electoral votes by congressional district. Last week, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed pushing through similar proposals in other states with Republican legislative majorities.
The strategy would have states alter the way they translate individual votes into electors — thereby giving Republican candidates an advantage. Had the 2012 election been apportioned in every state according to these new Republican plans, Romney would have led Obama by at least 11 electoral votes.
I disagree that it would give the GOP an immediate advantage. Indeed, it would have changed the EV’s in 2012 but not in 2008, 2004, or 2000. In fact, such a method would have made Mr. Bush’s EV victories in 2004 and 2000 much bigger!
It will require a constitutional amendment and good luck with that. Nevertheless, it would reflect much better the wishes of the electorate.
A couple of weeks ago, we had polls projecting 400 EV’s for Mrs. Clinton with less than 50% of the popular vote. Does that really reflect the wishes of the electorate? I don’t think so.    
Maybe someone has a better idea, but the current Electoral College arrangement is not representative of how people vote. The winner take all provision must be changed to a number that reflects congressional districts.

1968: Richard Nixon won the presidency


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On this day in 1968, Richard Nixon got 43.4% and VP Humphrey was right behind with 42.73% of the 74 million votes cast.  Governor Wallace got 13.5% and carried 5 Southern states.     
In the end, Nixon got the Electoral Votes to become the 37th president.    

Nixon wrote a lot about his 3 presidential elections:  defeat in 1960, victory in 1968 and the landslide of 1972.   It is one of the best presidential memoirs that I've read.

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Monday, November 04, 2024

Monday's video: Election Day and a few words

Voted Trump for my grandkids

Voted Trump for my grandkids: Like some of you, I voted early: Trump/Vance and Senator Ted Cruz. I feel confident that they will win. What makes this election cycle so confusing is that this election is too close, especially when you compare the performance of the incumbent…
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Like some of you, I voted early: Trump/Vance and Senator Ted Cruz. I feel confident that they will win.

What makes this election cycle so confusing is that this election is too close, especially when you compare the performance of the incumbent with what Trump accomplished. I’ve never seen such a contrast and yet the polls are telling me that it’s too close to call.

Let me share what Scott Jennings of CNN wrote about his choice to vote for Trump. It speaks for me.

And today, millions of Republicans like me — who nearly upchucked a time or two on this crazy ride — are prepared to vote for him one more time as a bulwark against the cultural and governance excesses of the American left.

Simply put, I’m more worried about the country’s future than any problems I’ve had with Trump in the past.

I’m worried about the impulse to restrict political speech, which some on the left (including Harris) have embraced.

I’m worried about the left’s demonization of America’s origins and the future of Western civilization, as many conservatives feel that the basic tenets of society as we’ve known it are under attack.

I’m worried about the Democratic Party’s bait-and-switch tactics. First, it was: Trust us, Biden is a moderate and he’s totally with it. He turned out to be neither.

And now, it’s: Trust us, Harris no longer holds all the crazy positions that she clearly and passionately campaigned for in 2019. 

Scott is right on. We now have five grandchildren. The oldest one will start pre-K next year and the two youngest ones born this year will graduate from high school some time in 2042.

So what kind of country will they inherit? I feel responsible and would rather put the country on Trump’s hands than the other side obsessed with race, gender, and something called “green energy.”

Trump is the one and I think that my grandkids will thank me for it.

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