Wealthiest Nation in the World? Really?

Right. The United States. "Wealthiest nation in the world."  Sure we are.  Let's look closer.

First of all, there's that pesky issue of this biggest, most killing international pandemic in the last more than 100 years.

Coronavirus: Why America Has More Deaths Than Any Other

And sure, this COVID pandemic is an event, a "one off", if you will, that will go away. Here's statistics that are more complete, more over time and the entire nation and world.

US ranks last in worker benefits among developed countries: data

In comparisons to other developed nations, the U.S. lags in providing fundamental employee benefits.

For starters, we're the only Western, industrialized nation that a) doesn't have universal health care and that b) ties health care to profit and profits.

Real rocket scientists, we are.

Some of the facts from the article:

• Famed for their successful public health care systems, northern and Scandinavian countries like Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Norway ranked the highest in the top 10 countries with the best health care benefits.
• In the U.S., health care is privatized and does not offer universal health care, and Zenefits notes that private hospitals also propagate treatment inequalities between individuals who can afford higher quality treatment and those who cannot.
• Retirement benefits are another weak spot for the U.S.; older reports indicate that the U.S. comes in 16th place among the countries with the best retirement plans.
• This inequality in U.S. retirement planning extends to racial injustice as well. Some 24 percent of white family households are covered with an employee-sponsored retirement plan, compared to 16 percent of households of color.
• Throughout the globe, the U.S. also came in 32nd place for highest life expectancy, averaging 78.5 years.
• The U.S. is also notoriously stingy with its paid time off. Be it for sick leave, parental leave, or general work-life balance, the U.S. shows zero mandated paid holidays whereas similar countries within the European Union average between 20-30 paid holidays for discretionary use. Maternity leave is protected under U.S. labor laws, though, with 12 weeks of unpaid leave being the baseline for companies.
• Other countries, such as Finland, Germany, Japan, and Canada give their employees more time, ranging from 161 weeks to 52 weeks.

Note, too, above, what nations have higher standards of living, folks.

Yes.  Socialist. Democratic Socialist governments and countries. Go figure.

So congratulations, America, Americans. At least, with all this, above, we also have this, below, eh?

U.S. Has Worst Wealth Inequality of Any Rich Nation

Say... Do you suppose, just suppose the two could be related?

Ya' think?

Additional link:

COVID-19 pandemic death rates by country

On This Day, December 26, 1972

Yes, on this day, December 26, 1972 we, Missouri and the nation, lost a great man. 

Missouri state history---On this day, December 26, 1972, President Harry S Truman dies at age 88 in Independence,.

The 33rd president of the US dies of multiple-organ failure after several weeks in the hospital. His wife, Bess, will opt for a small private burial in their hometown of Independence, Missouri, instead of a state funeral in DC, thinking it a more fitting goodbye for the down-to-earth Truman.

We miss you, sir. We've missed you since you passed. We miss your wisdom, your guidance and your efforts for the more common man and woman--working people of the nation.

Thank you for all you did for us.

Links:

Harry S. Truman - Wikipedia

Harry Truman - Facts, Presidency & WWII - HISTORY

Quote of the Day -- Thanksgiving, Republican Party Edition

A staggering one in EIGHT Americans reported they sometimes or often didn’t have enough food to eat in the past week. That’s nearly 26 million Americans who are going hungry the week of Thanksgiving. And a full quarter of out-of-work Americans with children at home reported not having enough food to eat. The numbers are worse for Black households than for white ones: 22 percent of Black households reported going hungry in the past week, over 2.5 times the rate for white households. Food banks are overwhelmed trying to meet the new surge in demand: “We'll be hard pressed to keep up. We’re just bracing for the worst,” said the CEO of Feeding Texas.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell adjourned the Senate last week and let them skip town early for Thanksgiving. He and his do nothing Senate Republicans get to go home to their families and sit down to a table bursting with food, while 26 million of their fellow Americans starve. As long as their rich friends are happy now that the stock market is soaring, they couldn’t be bothered to serve their constituents. It’s one of the grossest abdications of duty I’ve ever seen. There are no words to truly describe Mitch McConnell’s moral bankruptcy.

--Robert Reich

Thanks, Senator McConnell

Thanks, Republicans.

Links:

Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

RBG--Thank You and Hoping You Are Already Resting in Peace

 Thank you, Justice Ginsberg, for all.

Tzadik - Wikipedia

Tzadik (Hebrew: צַדִּיק‎ [tsaˈdik], "righteous [one]", also zadik, ṣaddîq or sadiq; pl. tzadikim [tsadiˈkim] צדיקים‎ ṣadiqim) is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The root of the word ṣadiq, is ṣ-d-q (צדק‎ tsedek), which means "justice" or "righteousness". When applied to a righteous woman, the term is inflected as tzadeikes/tzaddeket.

Tzadik is also the root of the word tzedakah ('charity', literally 'righteousness').

What Is a Tzaddik? - Being human all the way

Happy Birthday to Kansas City's Own Count Basie!

Yes sir and ma'am! Happy birthday, Count Basie! If only posthumously...

From Wikipedia:

William James "Count" Basie (/ˈbeɪsi/; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984)[1] was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.

So you know... How did he get that nickname?

Early career

Around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, Duke Ellington's early band.[11] Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including Willie "the Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson.

Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer Katie Crippen) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the Keith, the Columbia Burlesque, and the Theater Owners Bookers Association (T.O.B.A.) vaudeville circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to blues singer Gonzelle White as well as Crippen.[12][13] His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong.[14] Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.[15]

Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "cutting contests." The place catered to "uptown celebrities," and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements."[16] He met Fats Waller, who was playing organ at the Lincoln Theater accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City).[1] As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties," introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.[17]

In 1928, Basie was in Tulsa and heard Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils, one of the first big bands, which featured Jimmy Rushing on vocals.[18] A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see Jazz royalty).[19]

Here's the important part:

Kansas City years

The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to the level of Duke Ellington's or Fletcher Henderson's.[20] Where the Blue Devils were "snappier" and more "bluesy," the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "Kansas City stomp" style.[21] In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham, who notated the music.[22] Their "Moten Swing", which Basie claimed credit for,[23] was widely acclaimed and was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform.[24] During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted.[25] The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.

When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group "Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. "When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band.[26] A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten's death in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. When Moten died, the band tried to stay together but couldn't make a go of it. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).

The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count." Little did Basie know this touch of royalty would give him proper status and position him with the likes of Duke Ellington and Earl Hines.

Basie's new band which included many Moten alumni, with the important addition of tenor player Lester Young. They played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "One O'Clock Jump."[27] According to Basie, "we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.[28]

From New York and the East Coast to Kansas City then Chicago.

Links:

Count Basie

One O'Clock Jump - Count Basie - YouTube

A Proud, Very Proud Day for Harry Truman and All Missourians

It was on this day, July 28, 1946, Missouri's own President Harry S Truman desegregated the military.

Executive Order 9981

Executive Order 9981 is an executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. The executive order led to the end of segregation in the services during the Korean War (1950-1953).

Thank you, sir. So much. We miss your wisdom and leadership.

So very much.

Links:

Harry Truman and the desegregation of the military

President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military

Necessary In 1968, Still Poignant Today

I just coincidentally, fortunately ran across this video yesterday. It's a talk by and from James Baldwin, American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. in 1968 concerning the race riots of that day.  Still so very poignant--and necessary--today, of course, sadly, even maddeningly.



Let's do better, America.

On This Day, May 29, 1851

On this date, May 29, 1851, Sojourner Truth gave her fantastic, incredible, even important and sadly  still relevant "Ain't I A Woman?" speech.

Links:

Sojourner Truth - Quotes, Facts & Speech - HISTORY

Sojourner Truth - Wikipedia

Quotes of the Day -- Timely, Presidential Version

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”

“He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.”

--Dashiell Hammett, born this day, May 27, 1894

Links:

Dashiell Hammett - Wikipedia

Dashiell Hammett - IMDb

Happy Birthday, Yogi!

Yes sir and ma'am! Wishing a very happy birthday, however posthumously, to the one and only Yogi Berra!

New York Yankees player, manager and coach Yogi Berra was born on this day in 1925 in our own St. Louis, Mo., and died at age 90 in 2015 in New Jersey, 69 years to the day after his MLB debut. The son of Italian immigrants, Pietro and Paulina Berra, he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and began working to help his family.

Christened Lawrence Peter Berra, he received the nickname "Yogi" from a friend who thought he resembled a yogi from India when he sat, arms and legs crossed, while waiting to bat.

Berra-isms, some of which he never uttered, live on. Or as he put it, “I never said some of the things I said.”

They’re too good to check, so here are 10 reminders from Berra to start the day (USA Today).

"Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical."

"The future ain’t what it used to be."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you."

"You can observe a lot by just watching."

"It ain’t over till it’s over."

""We have deep depth."

"It’s like déjà vu all over again."

"A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore."

"All pitchers are liars or crybabies."

Most all of the above from "The Hill" today.

Link to yet more of those fantastic Yogi Berra-isms:

Yogi Berra quotes: The 50 greatest sayings from Yankees legend

Entertainment Overnight -- Timely Version

In tribute to Little Richard who just passed yesterday. His version of Kansas City.



Rest in peace, sir. And thanks for all the great, ground-breaking music.

Link:

Little Richard - Wikipedia

Charlie Parker, On This Day

On this day, April 30, 1941, Kansas City's own Charlie Parker solos for the first time on Decca Records.

      Charlie Parker solos on Decca recordings

As a member of Jay McShann's orchestra, Charlie Parker has his first commercial recording session in Dallas, TX for Decca Records. Playing the alto sax, he solos on 'Swingmatism' and 'Hootie Blues.' He also earns his famous nickname 'Bird' around this time.

Links:

Charlie Parker

Jay McShann

Charlie Parker - Songwriter, Saxophonist - Biography

Charlie Parker

http://charlieparkermusic.com

Incredible Article On President Trump and This Pandemic, No. 2

The second incredible on this President, the pandemic and our nation just this moment is from The Atlantic magazine by George Packer, one of their staff writers.

We Are Living in a Failed State

A bit of the article:

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.

Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?

...The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the president’s conservative allies—were somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they weren’t actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face...

The author goes on about President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

...To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation’s health. It turns out that “nimble” companies can’t prepare for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation...

Again, I can't recommend both articles enough.

Read these two full articles, folks. They're quite an education.

God help us all.

Incredible Article On This President and Pandemic, No. 1

I ran across two articles that I think are so good, they're downright important.

The first is from CNN and written by Gary Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster, former world chess champion, writer, and political activist.

Trump is weakening America's immune system

A small bit of the article:

Trump has spent his time in office weakening the nation's systemic immune system -- or institutions that hold him in check -- and setting the US up for a disaster when those institutions are needed more than ever. All autocrats and would-be autocrats have the narcissistic superpower of thinking only of themselves. While normal people are worried about the cost in human lives or the economic impact of a crisis, an autocrat races to exploit it to his personal advantage.

This ability to focus only on power, to consider actions that shock everyone else, is how would-be autocrats become actual autocrats. Russians, myself included, underestimated the extremes Vladimir Putin would go to retain power. By the time we began ringing the alarm bells, the levers to stop him had been removed from the political machine. The Russian opposition and the international community had wasted precious time fretting over Putin's power grabs, surprised at every turn by his ruthlessness. We said, "Surely he would never...," and "Doesn't he realize how bad it looks?" But people like Putin don't care about traditions or what others have never done before. They don't care how it looks. They only care if it works -- for them. They don't ask why; they only ask why not.

This is how emergency powers become permanent and unsavory alliances of convenience become the new status quo. A crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic is a deadly example of how this process works and it has plenty of predecessors, including the war on terror. There is a rising number of democratically elected leaders in the world transforming themselves into authoritarians -- just look at Hungary's Viktor Orban.

These abuses can happen in democracies far more robust than Russia's, or even Hungary's. In the US, Republicans are coming out against voting by mail in the 2020 presidential election because they see voter turnout as a threat. This is a battle that has gone on in state legislatures and courts for years, usually via baseless allegations of fraud. But an autocratic mentality would instead look at the direct method of shutting down or sabotaging the US Postal Service.
Why not? An autocrat's only calculation is how it would impact his election chances, not who gets harmed in the process.

And if you're hoping members of the GOP will push back against Trump's tyrannical illusions, look only at their spinelessness as he claimed "total authority" last Monday, before saying state governors were responsible for reopening the economy.

Trump covets authority without responsibility, the creed of every strongman. To use the golfing language he understands, such contradictions are par for Trump's course, as when he now claims that he always knew about the pandemic when in fact he spent weeks saying no one could have seen it coming. Well, which is it? Did Trump know and do almost nothing, or was he oblivious despite the experts' many warnings?

Who would know better tendencies of autocrats than someone from Russia?

I can't recommend the entire article enough, to all adult Americans.

This afternoon--important article number 2.

Link:

Garry Kasparov

So Many Things Too Many Americans Don't Know of Iran, the Middle East and Recent History

I found the following post today on Facebook on the page of author, reporter and former correspondent for NPR until 2014.

As I said, so many things too many of us Americans don't know in our world. I thought this enlightening, if not even important.

                                                    

Last night, for a few girlfriends, I made baba ghanoush for the first time in a long time. Blistering the eggplants’ skins to black, hulling out the pomegranate seeds, I thought of the first time I was served it -- in a beautiful salon, the snow falling outside, the carpets unfurled and the talk, mesmerizing. I was in North Tehran, at the home of two scholars, Goli and Karim Imami. It was 1995, 16 years after the Iranian revolution, and NPR hadn’t had anyone in the country in years. In the short two weeks I’d have there, I met scores of people -- and even, fell in love with an amazing man over tea and jasmine and jazz.

I would make several more trips to Iran in the 90’s and 2000, one of which, for the Washington Post magazine, would even lead to meeting my husband a few years later. Iran is a spectacularly beautiful country -- you can ski right outside Tehran, or visit the Caspian Sea. 

Once, doing a story for Vanity Fair, I got stuck overnight on a train with Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of President Rafsanjani, who was the country’s leader then. We went skiing, too. I made many, many friends -- and my Iranian boyfriend, Ramin, moved with me for a year to Canada, where he became a citizen, (his brothers were already there) before he returned to Tehran and his business. He was a brilliant physicist and poet. 

We’ve lost touch, but so many other friends remain -- Mamak, the art collector, scholar and curator, Houman, the graphic artist who had his own marketing and design firm (he’d spend eight years in America before returning to aging parents), Azar Nafisi, the author who emigrated and wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran and I remember, too, all the women who were pushing for change. Maziar Bahari, the documentary filmmaker who was imprisoned in 2009 and lives in London today.

Iran has had internal struggles since the dawn of 20th century, sometimes erecting democratic measures, as in its 1906 constitution (demolished in 1979), and other times, more often, seen those instincts suppressed by monarchies or theocracies -- but it is the Americans overthrew its democratically-elected prime minister Mosaddegh in 1953, in favor of the US-dependent Shah and his brutally repressive regime. The 1979 revolution was wildly popular before it was essentially hijacked by its theocracy, which has enacted its own brutality on the Iranian people, murdering thousands of people. And one way or another, they have held onto power ever since, despite mass demonstrations and international pressure.

But at least Iran, in 2015, under the nuclear agreement JCPOA, signaled it would give diplomacy a try, and abide by the international nuclear agreement that Donald Trump couldn’t wait to tear up, a racist’s rebuke to an African-American president, whose hated legacy he’d do anything to destroy.
Now, the forces of progressivism have been dealt a tremendous blow in the killing of Soleimani. 

Even Iranians who would have hated his malicious lethality believe in Iran’s sovereignty-- and there is plenty of hatred within Iran for its own leadership. There were huge demonstrations last fall. 

Listening to my former colleague Mary Louise Kelley conduct her excellent interview with Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, I thought back to a time when I’d interviewed him in New York, and how bitter and angry he sounded last night. 

As why should he not? 

Skills of diplomacy have failed-- and this president has hollowed out intelligence in all the various military sectors, left nearly a score of top defense and intelligence positions vacant, all so that he can act arbitrarily and conduct his whims by tweet.2020 dawns with fear -- the fires in Australia, the gaslighting from the White House and its enablers like Pompeo, the missile strikes raining down in an Iraq caught helplessly in between the US and Iran, and the Iranian people insulted and enraged.

We talked so much, when I was in Iran 20 years ago, about "goftegu," dialogue - could there be a dialogue between Iran and democracies. Two men had founded a magazine by that name. And even though at least them would have to flee, (as did many others; Iran is a bad actor to its own people as well) at least, while Barack Obama was president, we had some dialogue. We had diplomacy. Iranians had sympathy for Americans after 2001.

If there is any sympathy there today, I can imagine, it is among the kinds of educated people who’ve struggled under this regime, who know too well what it is like to have a malignant actor with autocratic instincts at the helm. We have a man who would destroy culture, something he does not understand, and who celebrates war crimes. 

I just hope we can survive long enough to get rid of him. 

Until he is gone, the world is so much less safe.

My baba ghanoush was well-received. Restraint, restraint, restraint.

Links:

Jacki Lyden - Wikipedia

Jacki Lyden : NPR

Jacki Lyden - Author | Facebook

Our Mayoral Race-- A Prediction

So yes, we're coming down to voting day next week in the Kansas City, Missouri Mayoral race. As we well know, it's between Jolie Justus and Quinton Lucas.

I think it's widely believed it's anyone's race to call. It looks to be very close, a toss up, if you will.

I saw the two candidates this week in their final debate at the Kansas City Public Library on the Country Club Plaza.

Before this debate, I'd only read and heard about them both and I thought they seemed close on all the local topics.

After seeing the debate, I'm still convinced that's true.

Having said all that, I do think I can make a prediction on this race, crazy or brave, one or both, as that may be.

Having heard and seen the two candidates, I believe this race will come down to who, exactly, people think looks "Mayorly", like it or not, agree or not. And sure, I'll say up front even after my prediction, it could still go either way but I'm still willing to put this out there.

I think Quinton Lucas will be Kansas City, Missouri's next Mayor.

And it will be because a good deal of the voters think he more looks the role, again, like it or not.

Let the best person win.

We can't do any worse than the Funk.

God willing, we never will again.

Link:

Here’s your guide to Kansas City’s election: The candidates, the issues and more

Mark Funkhouser - Wikipedia

Quote of the Day: On Money In Politics

"The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes."

Links:

Millicent Fenwick - Wikipedia

Millicent Vernon Fenwick (Hammond) (1910 - 1992)

Chapter 2: Republicans

Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

Republicans and Their Very Official, Un-American Work of Disenfranchising Fellow Americans

If you aren't familiar with the Republican Party's efforts and work, over many years, to disenfranchise anyone and everyone who doesn't think, and so, vote, as they wish, you need to pay attention.

The fact is, Republicans have been gerrymandering the nation and for at least decades.

The power that gerrymandering has brought to Republicans

What is gerrymandering someone might ask? Defined, it is 

"...In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to create partisan-advantaged districts.

The fact is, what they, Republicans, have been doing and trying to do is to get anyone and everyone who might not be aligned with their voting patterns, from being able to vote. This would include the following groups, proven, historically:

--Young
--Elderly--at least, elderly who aren't already-wealthy
--Poor and/or impoverished
--The physically-challenged
--Minorities including:

• --Blacks and African-Americans
• --Hispanics and Latinos

This took place 2016:

North Carolina's Deliberate Disenfranchisement of Black Voters

Not to be done there, this happened 3 days ago.

Black seniors kicked off bus taking them to vote in Georgia

This story broke only yesterday and it's happening right next door, no less, in neighboring Kansas.

Iconic Dodge City Moves Its Only Polling Place Outside Town

The entire city has 27000 residents. 60% of those residents are Hispanic. So if you're white and Right Wing and Republican, what to do??  Why, move the one polling place, as it says, outside the city limits.

It is stunning.

This, too, is going on now, in Georgia.

Georgia’s ‘exact match’ law could disenfranchise 909,540

And it's how they got a man with a horrible reputation even in his own political party and with zero government experience elected to the White House, the highest office in the land even though he got at least 3 million less popular votes than his political opponent. Sure, you get out-voted but hey, load the voting districts your way and voila! The Electoral College makes you President anyway!

And sure, Democrats are legally capable of gerrymandering also but the fact is, Republicans have used it and been using it to load their--our--voting districts for years now, as I've said and shown here.

Partisan gerrymandering has benefited Republicans more

Not done there, not done with just gerrymandering, this political party took it further, much further, too. Not only do they use these voter ID laws to help them in elections, disenfranchising fellow citizens in the process, but they've publicly admitted it, as well.

Some Republicans Acknowledge Leveraging Voter ID Laws for Political Gain

Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win

Republicans Admit Voter ID Laws Are Aimed at Democratic Voters

This, to me, is the worst aspect of these voter ID laws and their requirements, this next point.

How Voter ID Laws Discriminate Against Racial Minorities

It's been also proved there is nearly zero true voter fraud, on anyone's part, too.

Myth of Voter Fraud | Brennan Center for Justice

There is a great "meme" out there on social networks I've seen recently. It asks, how bad is your political party if your way of "success" is to keep Americans from voting?

And the answer is, bad. Really, really bad. And not in a Michael Jackson way, by any stretch.

So what all this means, what we need to do, as a nation, as a people is, first, get the Republicans out of power, out of office, and then, once and for all, make gerrymandering and voter ID laws, both, illegal. We need to truly, truly take back the vote. 

We can do this. 

We must.

Vote November 6!

And VOTE BLUE!!  Vote Democratic!  Then let's work and fight for change.

Links:

Gerrymandering - Wikipedia

This is the best explanation of gerrymandering

The Nightmares That Have Been This Overseas Trip and the Only Three Explanations for Donald Trump

This trip President Trump has made to Europe--England, Scotland and now, on to Helsinki--has been yet one more collection of fiascos, no surprise, for the nation, what with the his insulting the Queen of England and so, the UK people, to start.

Twitter counts ways 

US President Donald Trump 

'insulted' the Queen

Then he insulted their Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Donald Trump Attacks Theresa May 

Over Brexit;

 Brits Slam 'Rudeness

Not done there, he had to insult our NATO allies, as well.

Trump NATO summit starts with insults 

to US allies

Then, of course, once that damage was done, the next day he took it all back.

President Trump denies 

he criticized British prime minister

A couple days ago, at his golf course---of course--in Scotland, he called the EU an enemy.

On eve of Russia summit, 

Trump calls European Union 'a foe'

The EU.

An enemy.

Our largest trading partner, hands down.

List of the largest trading partners 

of the United States

And now, to wrap up this nightmare of an overseas trip, he is to meet with our self-sworn enemy, Russia, and their President Vladimir Putin, for a completely private meeting--translators only. This goes against all national and international protocol and security, both. No President has ever had such a meeting, nor should they, without advisors and witnesses, overseeing said meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, honestly, this President is one of three things. He is either 

1. really, densely stupid, 
2. insane or 
3. treasonous to our nation and doing all this for Russia 

It's one of those three. It's got to be. There are no other explanations. What else is there? What else could it all be?

Seen on Facebook earlier today:

"So, lemme see if I get this.

Two of the most powerful men in the world, rightly or wrongly, are having a one-on-one in secret.

Both are world-class liars.

Putin is a long-time professional KGB (secret police & intel agency rolled into one) operative, thug, cold-blooded murderer, greedy authoritarian head of Russia who may have something (well, DOES have something but we don't know what just yet) on Trump, who is an easily manipulated con man, grifter, ignoramus wannabe authoritarian leader of the U.S..

What could possibly go wrong?"

--Gordon E Moore, friend of a FB friend

Link:

'Evil Has Won'