Does Election Day Mean Anything With So Many People Voting Early?

When I hear polls about the presidential race tightening up, the cynic in me thinks it's a ruse by the media to keep people watching the news.  Or by the parties to get they're people to turn out to vote.  But given that lots of folks have already voted, what exactly do the polls mean any more?  I expect political scientists, statisticians, and politicians will be studying that question a lot.

We left town before early voting was available.  So now that we're back, I went in today.  The line was to the far door when I got there.   This is the only place to vote in Anchorage for now.  There were probably 40 or so folks ahead of me.





Then it turns the corner where another 10 to 15 people (depending on squeezed together they are) are waiting.






















When you get around the corner, there were five people checking id's and pulling up a page for me to sign, that had my address and district and ballot number.  I took that over to get a ballot and then went into the booth to vote.

A poll worker came through the line telling us it would be about ten minutes and checking for people with issues.  One guy had moved within Alaska.  There was a woman who had moved to Alaska, and no, she hadn't checked off the 'register to vote' box when she got her Alaska drivers license and with less than a week left to election day, she'd missed the 30 day before the election cut off.  She got a questioned ballot, but it didn't sound like it should count.

In the end it took 23 minutes from start to finish.  The surprise on the ballot was how many judges were up for retention.  In Alaska, judges are appointed through one of the cleanest systems in the country - though Republicans who have a vested interest in their preferred outcomes rather than a fair process based on the law [of course, that's my interpretation not theirs], are trying to get that system changed.  I've written more about the Judicial Council which nominates and grades judges based on surveys of jurors, attorneys, court staff, court watchers, and other interested parties here.

I guess, sure, election day still means something, but I wonder how long we'll be using that term.  Not sure, though, what will replace it.  Voting Period?  Election Weeks?  Voting Crunch Time?

'They' Is Officially Singular; Midnight Diner; Airbnb's Anti-Discrimination Agreement

Here are three in one - just brief mentions of things that caught my eye.



1.  "They" is word of the year  -

Singular "they," the gender-neutral pronoun, has been named the Word of the Year by a crowd of over 200 linguists at the American Dialect Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. on Friday evening.

 "Friday evening" was last January.  This isn't new news, but I only just found it.  It's been a slow evolution for me, but it does make sense.  Now using 'they' as a singular pronoun (to avoid gender issues) is grammatically acceptable.


2.  Midnight Diner:  Tokyo Stories - Netflix television.  Season 1 Episode 1 is charming.   I don't want to say more.  If you want a light but wonderful visit to a Tokyo noodle shop, this is it.  If the link doesn't work, just google it or search for it in Netflix.


3.  Airbnb sent out an email telling members that they will have to sign a non-discrimination agreement if they want to continue to use AirBnB as client or a host.  Here's a link to the new policy.  Below is from the email.

The Airbnb Community Commitment

Hi,

Earlier this year, we launched a comprehensive effort to fight bias and discrimination in the Airbnb community. As a result of this effort, we’re asking everyone to agree to a Community Commitment beginning November 1, 2016. Agreeing to this commitment will affect your use of Airbnb, so we wanted to give you a heads up about it.

What is the Community Commitment?

You commit to treat everyone—regardless of race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age—with respect, and without judgment or bias.

How do I accept the commitment?

On or after November 1, we’ll show you the commitment when you log in to or open the Airbnb website, mobile or tablet app and we’ll automatically ask you to accept.

What if I decline the commitment?

If you decline the commitment, you won’t be able to host or book using Airbnb, and you have the option to cancel your account. Once your account is canceled, future booked trips will be canceled. You will still be able to browse Airbnb but you won’t be able to book any reservations or host any guests.

What if I have feedback about the commitment?

We welcome your feedback about the Community Commitment and all of our nondiscrimination efforts. Feel free to read more about the commitment. You can also reach out to us at allbelong@airbnb.com.

The Airbnb Team

Not Guilty By Reason Of Too Much Alt-Right Media Coverage

From today's LA Times:

“Mark Feigin is a good, decent man. He has no criminal record and he is not a danger to anyone. He has worked as a Chinese translator , as a screenwriter and as a real estate developer,” the statement said. “If anything, Mr. Feigin was a victim of the toxic national discourse of this political season.”
   Feigin has been exposed to a lot of “alt-right” media coverage that vilifies Muslims, his attorneys said. The so-called alternative right is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a movement of groups and individuals — largely to be found on social media and the Internet — who espouse extreme right-wing ideology and white identity politics. The movement has gained a higher profile for its embrace of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

He was arrested for making threatening calls to an Islamic Center, threats to kill people there.

This is a guy who was influenced by those folks who talk about taking personal responsibility and who say that their talk doesn't influence people to actually take action.  Sarah Palin's denied any responsibility for Rep. Giffords being shot after posting a picture of Giffords' (and others') district with crosshairs over it.

"Palin noted that criminals are responsible for their own actions,"

So who is Mark Feign?

This seems to be the same guy.  Same name.  Picture looks very similar to the one in the CBS news link below.  Age seems about right.  And it says he speaks fluent Mandarin (and Polish.) Real estate.

Screenshot from realtor.com*

Oh, did I forget to mention that police found guns and ammunition in his home?  CBS News Channel 2 has a post with video (which I don't seem to be able to embed or link to, but which you can find at the link.)  The two pictures below are screenshots of from the video of the guns and ammo they found in his house.

Screenshot from CBS News

Screenshot from CBS News

Tony Ortega On Scientology at Underground Bunker paints a long and disturbing picture of Mark Feigin, apparently also known as Milosz, along with copies of tweets and other online tracks.  You can  compare what's there to Feigin's lawyer's statement above that he's a good and decent man and no danger to anyone.

I'd be willing to bet, given the Milosz moniker and his language fluencies, that he's an immigrant, likely from Poland.  And the Ortega post says he's a Trump supporter.  Anyone hear Trump calling for this guy to be deported?  (I'm guessing he's in the country legally and probably has US citizenship by now.)  [Yes, these are educated guesses on my part without proof.  I'm NOT calling for his deportation, I'm just pointing out a bit of likely irony in the situation.]

Note to readers:  I was struck by the defense claim of "victim of the toxic national discourse of this political season."  I think it's important to note when right wing suspects use that sort of contextual defense, since they totally reject such defenses for people of color.  That's all I really wanted to post about.

But as I tried to find a little more information it got more and more disturbing.  He's out on bail.  I'm assuming that the police confiscated the guns and ammo they found.




*I'm putting up the screenshot since I'm not sure how long the original will be available online.  His Facebook page is down.

Needed A Break From Cleaning - The Beach Did The Trick

We left my mom's house in pretty good shape last time, but there's still quite a bit of stuff to sort through, give away, throw out, etc.  But eventually I just had to get out of the house.  It had rained a bit during the day, but we decided to walk at the beach before it got dark.  The sound of the surf washed away all the negative thoughts from the house cleaning.

 





We walked along the water as it got darker and the lights on the Santa Monica pier got brighter and brighter.

We got to the steps from the beach and got the sand off our feet as best as we could.  As I waited for the roller coaster to come by for a picture, the janitor came by and emptied the garbage can.

You can see the roller coaster on the inside of the loop.  They also have a trapeze school on the pier and people were practicing doing flips and getting caught by the second person who was swinging upside down.  But it was too dark to get a good picture.

There were lots of people on the pier, musicians with loud speakers, and at the end of the pier there were night fishers.


It was nice to have a break.  Today was more cleaning.  I finally tackled the stuff suspended up on a platform in the rafters.  We got a lot cleaned out.

Bad Reporting, Or Is It Bad Editing?

Here's the short new snippet of news I read in the ADN online today.  It's the whole piece they printed.

"Kirk apologizes to Duckworth for remark about Asian heritage   CHICAGO — Sen. Mark Kirk apologized to Rep. Tammy Duckworth on Friday for a comment he made about her family’s ancestry and military background during a debate in the Illinois Senate race on Thursday night.
   “Sincere apologies to an American hero, Tammy Duckworth, and gratitude for her family’s service,” Kirk posted on his official campaign Twitter account.
   The apology came less than 24 hours after the first-term Republican created a social media firestorm over his remark to the two-term Democratic congresswoman, who is challenging him for his Senate seat.
   At one point during the 90-minute debate at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Duck-worth talked about her family’s long history of involvement in the U.S. military, describing herself as a “daughter of the American Revolution” who has “bled for this nation.”
   When it was Kirk’s turn to offer a rebuttal, he offered a single sentence: 'I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.'”

So, what did you think?  That Kirk was a racist, sexist pig who damn well should have apologized?  Or maybe you thought his George Washington comment was kind of funny and that political corrections has gone too far?

Going back to the article.  What exactly is a "daughter of the American Revolution?"  Did she mean it  figuratively written with a small 'd'?   Or literally and it should have had a large 'D'?  Did Kirk think, like the writer, that she meant it with a small 'd' and did he think as an Asian-American she didn't really understand the cultural meaning of "Daughter of the American Revolution?"  It wouldn't be the first time a male publicly dismissed a woman's claims about herself.  Did he think that women with Asian features couldn't possibly be in the DAR?

All Americans have absorbed a certain amount of unconscious sexism and racism.  It just comes with the environment - with tv and movies, and with the images and comments we hear beginning with "Is it a boy or a girl?"  It affects what we do and think every day.  I'm infected like everyone else, but at least I'm aware of it.  That doesn't mean it still doesn't catch me off guard on a regular basis.

At the end of the article I caught the humor in his comment and I briefly entertained the idea that maybe forcing him to apologize for this was a bit much.  That's how internalized racism and sexism and other isms work.  They shape our assumptions and conclusions before we're even consciously aware of what we're thinking.   But then we have to catch ourselves, test our assumptions, and get more information.  Something wasn't right here.  So I found the video tape of this exchange.  It's short.  Here it is:




The part the ADN left out is at the end.  After she says "I'm a Daughter of the American Revolution . . ." After he then makes his crack. When the moderator throws it back to Duckworth.

Duckworth: [Laughs.]  "There've been members of my family serving in uniform on my father's side going back to the Revolution. I belong to the William J. Penny chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution."

That last sentence totally changes everything.  She really is a capital D "Daughter of the Revolution."  She does know what that means.  She isn't some culturally naive American in name only.  She's a US Congresswoman for crying out loud.  But the ADN left all that out.  And as I went back over the original story, I realize the small 'd' for 'daughters of the American Revolution" contributes to the idea that she was not actually claiming to be a member of the DAR but was speaking figuratively.  How is it that the writer did that?  Was it a typo?  Or did the original writer take it the way Kirk did?

The average reader probably doesn't know she has an American father.  A reader, whose unconscious is filled with the race stereotypes we all have,  could easily think, from the ADN account, that Kirk's remark was actually funny.  Kirk certainly did.   Given they're running against each other, he ought to know more about her than the average ADN reader.  He didn't believe she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution or he wouldn't have made his sarcastic remark.   It's not inconceivable that many readers thought the way he did and concluded that his apology was forced by rampant political correctness.

To the extent that happened, it confirms to many people their notions of political correctness making a simple humorous comment into a crime.

I'd say the ADN contributed to any such misconceptions by leaving out the last quote and also with the small 'd' 'daughter of the American Revolution' in the story.  I know this story wasn't written by an ADN reporter, it came over from the national news wires.  But people taking those stories at the ADN have a responsibility to be careful about what they take and how they edit those stories so they don't leave out crucial information.

Voting Booth Selfies - There Is A Good Reason To Ban Them

When I first heard about bans on voting booth selfies, I thought this was ridiculous, and probably impossible to enforce.  After all, I've taken pictures in the voting booth myself for this blog.   The one on the right I took after voting and slipping my ballot into the secrecy sleeve at the August primary election.

But last night at dinner the conversation turned to the American tradition of taking voters to the polls and then paying them to vote for a particular candidate.  According to this Washington Post article published in 2012, it still happens and the price is often alcohol and cash.

But before cell phone cameras people buying votes had to rely on the honesty of the voter, and considering the voter was willing to sell his vote, that wasn't necessarily a sure thing.

But with everyone carrying cellphones with cameras now, a vote buyer could condition the payment on a selfie of the voter with his filled out ballot in the voting booth.  Selfies make buying votes a much more certain enterprise.

But There's Better Reasons Not To Ban Them

That said, I still don't see this as being enforceable.  Are we going to have TSA monitor elections and everyone has to empty their pockets before they vote?  Even having election officials ask people to empty their pockets and leave their purses and other bags outside the voting booth is untenable. I hope that doesn't happen and it certainly shouldn't even be considered until there is hard evidence that vote selling/buying is at a level where it is affecting the outcome of elections.

And this ignores the positive message that gets sent when people see their friends' voting selfies online.  Perhaps selfies that show how someone voted that are found online can get a fine if buying votes for selfies becomes a thing.  But maybe better drug and alcohol rehabilitation and poverty programs would be a better way to spend anti-voting-selfie funds.

Now that I've written this post, I'm going to read this Mother Jones article I found titled The Case Against Voting Booth Selfies.   OK, I've read it now.  It's basically the argument I just made about verifying bought votes and it's shorter than this post.

As I'm writing this I'm thinking about my discussion with the village head man near the town where I taught English in Thailand and influencing the elections there.  Maybe I'll do that as a part 2 to this post.

Bloomberg Reports On Trump Campaign's Plan For Hostile Takeover Of Republican Party

This Bloomberg article describes, without saying it in so many words, Trump's plans for a hostile takeover of the Republican Party with the enthusiastic cooperation of its most unruly shareholders - the Tea Party, the white supremacists, the armed militia folks -  and it apparently doesn't need FEC approval.

This is not the typical short term perspective we get daily.  No he-said-she-said. No invectives.  Rather it looks at Trump's long-term strategy and one of the key players making it work - their main IT guy Brad Parscale.  It's got some facts about who's doing what behind the scenes.  Nothing the Trump camp doesn't want you knowing, but things we usually don't get.

Here's the gist of the article:

• The Trump team knows the odds of winning are low, but with unexpected primary wins and Brexit as inspiration, they're working an unorthodox strategy.  They're pinning their hopes on a  mix of Trump appeal, belief that  many Trump voters won't tell the truth to pollsters, and a stealth Facebook campaign to suppress the Clinton vote among young liberals, young women, and blacks.
• Winning the election would be nice, but it seems the focus is on post-election.
• They're building the Trump-owned data base they'll have after the election with which he can lead his power base in different possible directions, possibly business related, but probably  a takeover of the Republican Party and maybe a second run in 2020.
• The star of this article is Brad Parscale who is running Trump's data center out of San Antonio.
• Two other key players in the article are Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, depicted here as Parscale's insider protector, and Steve Bannon, who's come over from Breitbart.  

The real meat of the article doesn't start until paragraph 8.

Here are some quotes I thought significant. 

1. The election and why the focus is on the post election.

 “It’s built a model, the “Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory,” to weight and rank the states that the data team believes are most critical to amassing the 270 electoral votes Trump needs to win the White House. On Oct. 18 they rank as follows: Florida (“If we don’t win, we’re cooked,” says an official), Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.”

The Trump bluster about winning is there, but their surveys show the same things that other surveys are showing.  (A side note:  since these key states are all on Eastern Time, we should know the results pretty early.  Unless it's really close and early and mail in ballots are held to be counted later.)

2.  It's all about building a data base of Trump supporters with Facebook accounts, credit card numbers,  and email addresses.  

Paragraph 19 seems to offer the crux of the piece:

“Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it’s excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. “I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says Bannon. ‘Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.’”

3.  Who is Brad Parscale, where'd he come from, and what is he doing for Trump?

From paragraphys 22-26:

"Parscale, 40, is an up-from-nothing striver who won a place in the Trump firmament by dint of his willingness to serve the family’s needs—and then, when those needs turned to presidential campaigning, wound up inhabiting a position of remarkable authority. He oversees the campaign’s media budget and supervises a large staff of employees and contractors, a greater number than report for duty each day at Trump Tower headquarters. “My loyalty is to the family,” he says. “Donald Trump says ‘Jump’; I say, ‘How high?’ Then I give him my opinion of where I should jump to, and he says, ‘Go do it.’ ”

He sounds like perfect Trump material.

"Parscale was born in a small town outside Topeka, Kan., a self-described “rural jock” whose size—6-foot-8, 240 pounds—won him a basketball scholarship to the University of Texas at San Antonio. When injuries derailed his playing career, his interest turned to business. “The day I graduated, I skipped the ceremony to go straight to California for the dot-com boom,” he says. It was 1999. He became a sales manager for a video streaming company, taught himself programming, and eventually bought some of the company’s intellectual property, in digital video and 3D animation, and struck out on his own. But after the dot-com crash, his company failed, he got divorced, and by 2002 he was back in San Antonio, broke and unemployed."

4.  After the election plans

From paragraph 21:

"Whatever Trump decides, this group will influence Republican politics going forward. These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as “disenfranchised new Republicans,” are younger, more populist and rural—and also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaign’s goal all along. It’s why, even if Trump loses, his team thinks it’s smarter than political professionals. “We knew how valuable this would be from the outset,” says Parscale. “We own the future of the Republican Party.”

That's reiterated in the final paragraph:

"If the election results cause the party to fracture, Trump will be better positioned than the RNC to reach this mass of voters because he’ll own the list himself—and Priebus, after all he’s endured, will become just the latest to invest with Trump and wind up poorer for the experience."

[Emphasis added in all the quotes above.]


My Take:  The Bully Is Investing Long Term In Disrupting American Democracy

They haven't characterized it that way, but that seems to be Trump's way of doing business.  Attack, Counterattack, and Never Apologize.  This is not about people working together to build, but about destroying others for personal gain.

The plan is a hostile takeover of the Republican Party with the enthusiastic cooperation of its most hostile shareholders - the Tea Party, the white supremacists, the armed militia folks -  and it apparently doesn't need FEC approval.

Will It Succeed?

These guys seem to have a better understanding of Trump voters than they do of Clinton voters.   They're riding on the success of winning the Republican nomination and using what they claim is a new way of thinking about and using the data.  Trump learned early on with his birther campaign, that you could just make up shit and lots of people would believe it.    They certainly have put the Republican Party in a bind and they may well be able to take over what is left of it.  Will that make two right wing parties?  A small group of rational and polite Republicans and a larger group of less educated and more angry Republicans?

And Democrats probably should NOT get too happy about all this.  I suspect Trump won't stop tweeting about 'Crooked Hillary' any time soon, it's the red meat he feeds his followers.  Constant attacks with birther like lies mean nothing gets done and everyone loses confidence in anything except themselves.  This is Lord of the Flies as a political philosophy.

One  hope I see, is for the reasonable Republicans to join the Democrats (who on most issues today are more conservative than Republican Nixon was anyway) and form a party too strong for Trump's minions.  But you know that isn't going to happen.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get so negative. I didn't know this was where I was going to end.

But knowledge is power.

Options

We can all hope these guys are in over their heads and their initial successes will fall flat.  We can drop out of politics and focus on enjoying life while we can.  We can also recognize that there are a lot of very angry white folks and they aren't all old and ready to solve the problem by dying off, and thus we need a positive response.

These are not mutually exclusive options.  Even if the Trumpers fall flat, there will still be a lot of angry folks. We need to stop treating them the way whites have treated people of color and women.  We need to stop acting like they're dumb and stop marginalizing them.  Everyone wants to be loved.  That seems to be Trump's driving force.  He needs people telling him how good he is.   He needs it so bad he tells us how good he is.  And his followers need love and respect too.

Let's give them love rather than condescension and animosity.  That's a Christian thing to do, right?  It's also a Jewish thing and a Buddhist thing.  And for those who aren't religious, it's a Beattle's thing.  

We all know Trump supporters.  Most Americans have relatives who support Trump.  Don't argue with them.  It won't work.  Instead, treat them with loving, patient interest.  This has to be sincere, not patronizing in any way.  You have to see them as human beings with pain.  Ask them with curiosity, and without malice or condescension,  why they think Trumpism will relieve their pain.  Here are some possible gambits.

• "How do you know that?"
• "Can you explain to me how that is going to work?"
• "Can you show me the numbers, I can't seem to make that add up?"
• "How is that better than __________?"
• "How will this improve your life?"  "Mine?" 
• "Why do you think you and I went off on such different paths?"
• "Look, I'm not saying you're wrong, but it just doesn't add up for me and you're a Trump supporter so I thought you could explain it."
• "I understand you're angry, but not why, or how Trump will make your life better. I'm just asking you to explain it."
• "Why do you think that program will succeed when others haven't?"
• "Is there a way that you can think of that would help us agree on what is true and what isn't? For example, how do you verify the facts?"

You get the picture.  Don't give them your facts.  Make them produce their own.  Make them spell out the details of the policies.  Don't challenge their emotions, in fact, be sympathetic.  Just ask them to explain their logic and to give support for the facts.  Remember that they are human beings who are hurting, just like you and me.

Trump Attacked For Publicly Saying What He's Thinking; Clinton Attacked For Not Saying Things Publicly

Cue the orchestra for the chorus of "Damned if you do and damned if you don't."


ON THE TRUMP SIDE

Trump's been making Republicans uneasy because he says things that they think he should NOT say publicly.  And polls say this open talk is hurting him.

The message I get from this is:  It's ok to be a racist and misogynist as long as you don't get caught. As long as you don't say these things publicly.  How many other politicians say and do the same things, but off mic?   As long as we don't know about it, no problem.

On the other hand, many of his supporters applaud his free-wheeling tongue, saying it's a sign of transparency and it's a refreshing change from the careful spin of most politicians.    It doesn't matter that what he says is hateful and disgusting.

Now, for some (many?) of his base, probably he's saying out loud the hateful things they're thinking and saying in their closed circles.   They're delighted he's saying them in public.  It validates their thinking.

But some Republicans are cringing as if their fancy shoes can't avoid the dog doo.

And while his supporters admire his openness, they can't seem to mimic it themselves.  Take this example of twisted spin from World Net Daily:

"Mr. Donald Trump is raising the bar of America’s conscience. Apology is often the first step in correcting a wrong. Having moved for [sic]  a position of saying “I don’t need forgiveness,” Mr. Trump is now taking a second look at past behaviors; things that he’s said and done that he regrets. While he is not asking for forgiveness for being human, he is admitting that he’s made mistakes and humbly making apologies."

What's wrong with this?  Trump's raising the bar of America's conscience?  Yeah, sure.  Things he regrets?  Only if they make him look bad, not because they are bad.  What he said was a sincere apology?  How many of his advisors had to pin him down and punch him until he agreed?   There is nothing Donald Trump has publicly done in the last year or so that can be remotely described as "humbly.'  NOTHING.

And Trump's supporters are not being as open and honest as Trump is.

What she's really saying there, and it gets clearer in the rest of it (you can see it here if you must) is, "I don't really care what he says or does about anything, as long as he appoints anti-abortion judges."  That's one of the problems with extremism.  You don't have to be an extremist to dance with the devil now and then.  The US became an ally of the Soviet Union during WW II, so sometimes we have to take those kinds of positions.  But the Soviets played a huge role in the defeat of Hitler.  They delivered.  Why would anyone believe anything Trump promises?  He's only going to follow through if he gets a cut.


ON THE CLINTON SIDE

Clinton's taken a lot of heat for things she and her staffers said that they had every reason to believe were said in private conversations.  Until Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) server  and Wikileaks shared them with the world.

We say a lot of things in private, at work and with friends.  In fact policy debate among staffers is one of the in Freedom of Information Act exemptions (#5), so that agency staffers can speak candidly, play the devil's advocate, and test out policies that they don't really expect to pursue.  They're the kind of things a number of Republican presidents have claimed Executive Privilege to prevent being disclosed. And the DNC isn't even a government agency that would come under the Freedom of Information Act.

But Clinton's been attacked for things that she or the DNC staff never actually said in public.  Now, one could argue that Trump sex assault tape was similar, and once it's public it's fair game.  And there are some things that are inconvenient for Clinton supporters.  But I dare say if we got the same conversations that were held with the RNC, I'm confident there'd be a lot juicier quotes than what we have from the DNC.

As I've said before, I'm not 100% in agreement with Clinton.  I'm troubled by the Clinton Foundation, particularly its actions with relation to Haiti and the appearance, if not the actual fact, of it being used to sell influence.  I'm not happy with her early position on Iraq and her cosiness with Wall Street.  But there are many positions I support fully and she has the experience and the connections to make things happen.  She's had eight years to watch how Republicans obstructed Obama.  I'm betting if she gets a majority in the Senate, we're going to see a lot of legislation passed in the first two years before the 2018 election.  And she's running against Trump.

I think the saying "Damned if you do and damned if you don't" is appropriate here.  Trump gets hit for saying what he's thinking and Clinton gets hit for not saying what's been said by her party in private.  But in balance, what Trump's been saying has been so over the top, that many in the political party he hijacked are abandoning him.  Clinton's email sins are run-of-the-mill back room political strategizing.  But nothing really damning, unless you're a Republican strategist trying to find anything that might stick and to get the negative attention off Trump and onto Clinton.

A New Life Borrowed From The Dead

There's so much I haven't written about the movies and tv shows we've seen on Netflix.  And about the phenomenon of Netflix itself.  I think because there is so much to think about after watching many of these films that I give up.  Particularly because by the time the movie is over, it's late.  We've been to so many different worlds, sat in with so many people whose lives we didn't know existed, or if we did, had no idea of what it was like.

The film Dheepan is one of those films.  It won the Palme D'Or at Cannes last year.  It's a French film which colors in the details of one sort of family of immigrants in Europe.  From a country we don't normally see in the news on refugees.

Good film has such a powerful way of plunging us into other people's lives and connecting us to the pains and, in this film, small joys. Not like the superficial descriptions of refugees we see in the news, the nameless faces in a crowd.

It's on Netflix - at least in the US - for now.  It's powerful.  Dheepan.

Screenshot when they get their new identities

Here are parts of three different reviews.


From Joe Morgenstern's  Wall Street Journal review:

"Whether by chance or the filmmaker’s design, the touchingly modest wardrobe of a young schoolgirl in “Dheepan” includes a T-shirt that says “New World Order.” Her life bespeaks a new world disorder. She’s a refugee from Sri Lanka who has managed to reach France as part of a pretend family—a mother, father and daughter who barely know one another, though that’s not what it says on their false documents, and who don’t know how to begin making a new life for themselves in an alien culture. Every day we see new accounts of refugee tides coursing across continents, and every account challenges our comprehension. Jacques Audiard’s superb drama, which won the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, rises to the challenge with the power of art and not a scintilla of sentimentality."

From A. O. Scott's New York Times review:

"They have, in effect, borrowed a new life from the dead, and the transaction is mostly successful. They are able to leave the refugee camp where they meet and fly to France (though Yalini would prefer to go to England, where she has relatives). After a spell in a crowded dormitory in Paris, during which Dheepan earns money selling trinkets and batteries on the street, the three are granted asylum, thanks to the intervention of a sympathetic interpreter and the benign haplessness of the French state." 

(I'd note I saw lots of Dheepans selling trinkets on the street last August in Paris.)

And from Peter Bradshaw's review in The Guardian:

"There is such exhilarating movie mastery in this powerful new film about Tamil refugees in France from director Jacques Audiard, who gave us A Prophet, Rust and Bone and The Beat That My Heart Skipped. It’s bulging with giant confidence and packed with outbursts of that mysterious epiphanic grandeur, like moments of sunlight breaking through cloud-cover, with which Audiard endows apparently normal sequences and everyday details. There is also something not always found in movies or books or TV drama – that is to say, intelligent and sympathetic interest in other human beings. Every scene, every line, every frame has something of interest. All of it is impeccably crafted and the work of someone for whom making films is as natural as breathing."

Diddly Squat?

From the Alaska Dispatch:

“'There are people out there who don’t know diddly squat about our country,' said Peter Goldberg, the former Alaska Republican Party chair who’s now a member of the Republican National Committee. 'And I’m not comfortable with people that are total  ignorant about our system voting. [sic]'"

What first got my attention was the fact that he used the term 'diddly squat.'

But then I got annoyed by what he said. "I'm not comfortable with people that are total[ly?] ignorant about our [of] system voting."

I understand that sentiment.  It's problematic to have people walk into the voting booth and just vote based on what name sounded better, or which name was first, or longest, or shortest.  Nothing to do with what the person would do when elected.

But worse than knowing nothing, is knowing stuff that is wrong.  And being loud and obnoxious about it.  Like people whose only source of news is, say Fox News.

Some would say I should  be fair and balanced and also give NPR as an example.  But as politically bland as they have become, they do try to get their facts right and to counter their middle of the road perspective with a conservative voice as well.  And rather than get our attention by exhortation, they wrap the news into  formulaic story lines that usually have an uplifting ending.

But I still was thinking about 'diddly squat.'  Who says that any more?

Turns out not many people do.  Or ever did.  I used Google's Ngaam Viewer that looks at word frequencies in books.  The number was so low (.0000003586%) that I added some other words to compare with it.     I tried to think of an obscure term so I added 'leviathan'.  You can see that it's a little more frequently found than 'diddly squat.'  Then I added more common words to give more context.  The more common words make the graph meaningless - turning the rare words to flat lines at the bottom - but at least you can get a pop-up window with the frequency of each term.   I kept adding more common words.  In the chart below, the only word that shows more than a flat line is 'you' which was the most common word on the list by far.

But I wanted word more obscure than diddly squat,  so I googled "uncommon English words."  That gave me a long list.  From the list I picked 'blatherskite,' a word I don't recall ever hearing before and certainly not using.

Screen shot from Google Ngaam Viewer

'Blatherskite' also came out higher than 'diddly squat', though not by much.  Here are the two compared.  If you put the pointer on either line, you'll get a pop-up window with the frequencies for that year.

'Diddly squat' doesn't even show up until 1973!  But remember, this is a search of books - probably just the ones that google has the rights too.  If it showed up before that in newspapers or journals or speech, it wouldn't show up in the Ngaam Viewer.  I don't remember when I first encountered 'diddly squat,' but I would have guessed earlier than 1973.




It's a great term.  And it's one of those words that can be used with or without a negative and still mean the same thing.

Google's definition was "anything" but it listed 'nothing' as a synonym.  Think about that.

Merriam-Webster defines it as:

"the least amount : anything at all"

The Urban Dictionary defines it as:

"nothing"

So you could say, "He doesn't know diddly squat" or "He knows diddly squat" and it would mean the same thing.  I like linguistic quirks like that.