August 25, 2018

I don't have respect for most politicians these days. Our current President is scandal-prone, uncouth, and a walking disaster. And yet he won because his opponent was even worse- contemptuous of the law, promoting a political philosophy at odds with most Americans, and dismissive of her detractors to the point of calling them deplorables. And the current governor of my former state got away with saying 4 years ago that pro-life Catholics and gun rights supporters have no business living there. Where I live now, a crony corporate socialist almost in the mold of Bill De(mon)Blasio is leading the conservative outgoing state treasurer to be the next governor.

There is one fewer Senator tonight. Not too long after deciding to stop treatment for brain cancer, he passed this evening in Arizona. John McCain straddled the line between conservatism and moderation, and was called a "Maverick" as a result. In a sense, he was the last grownup left in Congress.

I got to meet John McCain in late 1999 at a political rally in Staten Island that I was covering for Brooklyn College's Journalism program. He was a bit blunt as far as his political speeches went, but after the rally, he was very nice to the press and to the people who came to the VFW to hear him speak.

McCain was very cordial to his political opponents. The Democrats liked working with him until he won the Republican nomination for President in 2008. Then they threw everything and the kitchen sink at him to make sure that Obama got elected. He regained their favor over the last 2 years as he became a target of now-President Trump.

Over the last 26 years, politics has gotten more extreme and less unifying. Socialism used to be a dirty word in American politics, now it has taken hold of a large segment of the Democratic Party. What was considered mainstream when I was a child is now considered right-wing, oppressive, and something to be overturned. Progressivism used to mean supporting progress, now it's a code name for the radical left. Congress seems to be split between a few people with common sense, a few Trump sycophants, and a growing number of "progressives" who want to bring down Trump, conservatism, and the whole capitalist system.

With McCain gone, there are few politicians left who could reach across the aisle and be respected by both parties. And the parties are drifting further and further apart with nativist Trumpism on the Republican side and radical left wing socialist antifa racist redistribution on the Democrat side. Trump and his opponents have made it an us versus them battleground. With McCain gone, there is no prominent voice left to attempt to bridge the widening political gulf.

September 6, 2008

What a week.. Sarah Palin, who was unknown 9 days ago, is now the most popular politician in America. McCain/Palin is even to Obama/Biden in most polls as of Wednesday.

According to today's Daily News, McCain's acceptance speech outdrew Obama's by about 500000 viewers.

But in more disturbing news for the East Coast, Hannah is coming. Most of the NYC area is under a Tropical Storm Warning until tomorrow. If Hannah continues on its current path, it would be the first Tropical system to hit NYC since Floyd in 1999. The eye of that storm made landfall over Rockaway, Queens. It damaged the roof of the rooming house in Stapleton that I called home at the time. And few residents of Bound Brook, NJ (which was much further from the eye of Floyd than Queens or Staten Island) will forget that storm, since the whole town was flooded for days because of all the rains.

My hood of New Brighton is supposed to get somewhere between 2-7 inches of rain out of this storm. But the eye of Hannah is supposed to be along the Long Island Atlantic coast. It's a good thing that this storm is coming after the beaches closed for the season, because those beaches may not be there by Monday.

August 29, 2008

The DNC finished their convention last night 60 miles north of my hometown in Denver. Obama took the nomination. Plagiarist Joe Biden is Obama's running mate. And hopefully, the Clintons will never again run for high office after being forced by the DNC to kiss Obama's and Biden's posteriors.

Next week, the GOP has its convention in St. Paul, MN. Not content to let Obama bounce up 6 points in the latest polls, McCain rolled out his running mate. It is Sarah Palin, the current governor of Alaska. This is a huge shock to those who were expecting either Mitt Romney or Tim Palenty to be McCain's running mate.

The election now holds a bunch of firsts: first Presidential candidate from Hawaii (Obama was born there); first Presidential candidate born in a US territory (the Panama Canal Zone was still part of the US when McCain was born there in 1936); first major party Presidential candidate of African descent (Obama); and now the first pro-life female vice presidential nominee and the first nominee of either party to be from Idaho and Alaska (Sarah Palin). And also, this is the first Presidential election in which both candidates are sitting Senators.