Hillary Has a Lead

I'm still on the road, now with an allergy attack so severe I can't drive. My wife will rescue me, so that's okay. I have been listening to the news on my computer. President Obama is again telling people that Hillary is better prepared to run for the Presidency than anyone in American History, including James Madison who wrote the Constitution. Ranking her above Madison is ridiculous, but I'm going to vote for Hillary, 

What's really annoying are the MSNBC folks telling us that Hillary is losing. They apparently do this to get some excitement going. At the moment Hillary has a decent lead and looks to me (and to Nate Silver) like a winner.

Saying Yes to Donnie Twump

George Lakoff has suggested we play with Donnie Twump's name, which seems fair. Twump lost a debate tonight, and many people are saying there should be a mocking, believe me, but it shouldn't be about his finger signals. Personally I enjoy the way he holds up one hand with the forefinger and thumb arranged into a nearly complete circle. I think he's showing us how close he is to becoming human. He's almost there. He's half an inch short, roughly the length of his johnson. He holds up his hand and repeatedly signals us. He's telling us how long his johnson is during its finest moments. He believes that's a very considerable length. Okay, the gesture looks short, but that's only because no one has ever said "short" to him.  No feedback. Twump will go to his death without having made a single honest friend. He never gets honest feedback. All he has with him are yes-men and yes-women who hang around hoping Twump will accidentally give them money.  And they let him boast about a micro-johnson.

The Great Tenors of 1969

Today, for the first time, I walked with my wife and younger daughter into a legal cannabis emporium in Seattle. This got me to thinking how, back in the day, Susan and I, about once a week, would smoke some grass or maybe drop acid and then seat about 20 people knee-to-knee in our tiny rented sunroom. We were preparing for The Great Tenor Sing-Off.  Also many people were saying that Paul McCartney was dead, believe me. 

I told the young fellow in the Seattle emporium who waited on us that it had been a long time since I had smoked any dope. He thanked me rather fervently for my early pioneering work—I am not making this up.

In The Great Tenor Sing-Off we, the 20 judges, would listen to records by various tenors and then decide at the end which one was best. I don’t remember all the contestants. One was a country western guy named Yodeling Slim Whitman, I believe. He piled up a lot of votes. Other contestants  who did well included the following:

Bunny Berrigan singing “I Can’t Get Started.”

Chuck Berry singing, “Memphis, Tennessee.”

Peggy Lee singing “Why Don’t You Do Right?”

Credence performing, “Bad Moon Rising.”

Offenbach’s “Barcarolle.”

Janis Joplin singing “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Ian and Sylvia singing “Satisfied Mind.”

A trio from Paraguay performing “Malaguena Salirosa.”

Some judges complained at the time that not all of the contestants were actually tenors, but we decided they were close enough. Here’s the really odd true thing. No matter who joined us in the jury, the winning tenor was always the same guy: bass-baritone Bing Crosby singing “Sweet Leilani.” The only three who came close to him were Helen O’Connell singing “Green Eyes,”  Artie Shaw playing “Begin the Beguine”  and Vaughn Monroe performing “Racing with the Moon.” 

Seattle

I’ve never spent time in Seattle, and the traffic is beyond my level of toleration, but I am impressed with the beauty of the area and with the grocery stores. In Sonoma County there are fine markets like Olivers and Whole Foods, but in Seattle there are markets that, as my wife said, are 100% better. That’s surprising. I’ll give just one example, the chocolate covered graham cracker. In a market in Seattle Susan bought some. The cracker is layered first with a fine coating of rich caramel and then a layer of chocolate about an eighth of an inch thick. The result is as good as See’s candy. (Why is Seattle so far ahead of us in graham crackers?)

Heading North

Thursday I will set out to drive my old Ford van to Seattle and then on to Vancouver Island to visit kith and kin. I believe I can do this—I’m 81, so I can’t be certain.  This will be an adventure. (When I say I’m certain about something, it is the same thing as saying I have no doubt about it. I am certain about many things. For example, I am certain that language exists. To formulate  a doubt about the existence of language, I would have to use language.)

My plan is to stick near the coast on slow roads. I’m pretty sure I can drive a thousand miles. The van has a bed in it, and I can nap when I feel sleepy. I think about my father’s mother, a young girl who arrived in California driving a small covered wagon.  (Most covered wagons were small.)

The Barrel

When I was about six, I erred in calling my step-grandfather “a barrel.” My mother sat me down and explained to me that I had hurt the old fellow’s feelings. I wasn’t sure how to react to this mild punishment. My step-grandfather had a lot of chocolate candy, but he hid it under this bed when I came over. 

What reminded me of this early incident was Hillary Clinton’s reference to half of Don Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Granted, she was talking about a mob of racist, homophobic know-nothings, but Hillary should not have brought up a basket, which she employed metaphorically, caring not who she cut to the quick. And then she deplored the contents of the fictional basket!  This cruelty crossed a line seldom approached in the history of American rhetoric. She indirectly called David Duke of the KKK and others like him “deplorable.” What unforgivable thing will she say next? 

Dream of la Unicorn

I dreamed I was in a house with my wife and the kids, and a dangerous unicorn entered. I had to trick him to get him outside, so I talked him into accompanying me to the bank to pick up some money. I drove. On the way we stopped at a light on top of a steep hill, and the car began to slide backwards. That's when I fell out of bed.

A Bad Round Four

This year’s Presidential contest is a bout to determine who is the weakest candidate ever nominated by a major party. I had been thinking that Trump had this title sewed up.  He’s an obvious sociopath, running a racist campaign in an era where the white male vote is no longer dominant. He does have strong appeal to lugs who want an autocrat, an elected male dictator to rule, but they are a minority. They rooted for Sonny Liston. 

The problem is that voters do not like or trust Hillary Clinton. I don’t trust her because of her history as a centrist trimmer, but that’s not why most voters don’t trust her. In this election she's pretending to be a progressive, and that’s good enough for many, particularly for women my age. For them Hillary is a civil rights issue. They want to see a woman champ before they die. And note that Hillary is more truthful than most political figures. By those low standards, she’s not a liar. Hillary’s problem is that she’s always hiding something. She omits things. She dances around. She hid what must have been her rage at her husband’s inability to keep his pants on. She’s been hiding ever since. This week she hid the fact that she has pneumonia. That gives Trump a chance to land a big punch.

Voters don’t trust hiders. Hillary may turn out to be the weakest candidate in American history. But she can still turn this wretched incident around. She can stage a comeback. She can say, “I was sick, but now I’m well.” 

Voters like candidates who get up off the canvas and take it to the opponent. 

It Could Have Been Worse

Many of us have seen the videos of the Standing Rock Sioux demonstration, a non-violent demonstration against an oil pipeline, and we saw a corporation's thugs turn attack dogs loose on unarmed men, women, children and horses. That was not something we wanted to see again. Then President Obama arrived back in the country.  He'd seen (we'd all seen on film) dogs set onto civil rights marchers in Alabama. On his return the President immediately acted to protect the Sioux and their allies from the money-grubbing sociopaths of global warming.

If you have been unsatisfied with the President's performance over the years (as I have been), this incident drives home the point about choosing the lesser evil. The President has deported too many Latino families and assassinated too many people in other countries with drones. These actions violated our basic values and international law. But it could have been much worse. Ask the Sioux.   

Clean Fracking

Saturday I watched a TV news report that said that in Oklahoma the number of earthquakes each year has risen from 3 on average to 600 on average because of fracking. The report was followed by an ad filled with smiling, handsome, young people telling me I should join them and become an “energy voter.” I guess the term “energy voter” is the new billionaires’ euphemism for a fracking supporter.

You can bet that some conservative think tank, funded by a billionaire oil and gas man, hired 100 graduates from Yale to figure out the best possible euphemisms for fracking. Most in our liberal establishment are so weak-minded that they will soon drift in and declare that they, too, are energy voters and love an brisk fracking. In fact, many already have. Liberals  and conservatives will next race to claim the invention of  the term “clean fracking.” 

Liberals and conservatives will continue fracking till the cows come home. They don’t live in Oklahoma. If they do and their houses fall down, insurance will cover the losses. And the ordinary sooners? Their brains have been adjusted by think tanks. They don’t mind earthquakes a bit. It’s the price you pay for freedom.

Two Crusty Actors

I've seen two good movies recently. The first was "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"  The film was based on a true story, set in New Zealand, of an unlikely family that ends up fleeing into the wilderness pursued by bureaucrats. It stars Sam Neill as the armed, crusty old guy. Neill, by the way, is Irish, British and now a citizen of New Zealand, maybe the perfect combination for crustiness. The other movie was "Hell or High Water," a cross between "The Last Picture Show" and "Double Indemnity." It stars Jeff Bridges as the armed, crusty old ranger.  Sam Neill and Jeff Bridges are fun to watch.

Kaepernick Sits

Yesterday I was part of a discussion of Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the playing of the National Anthem. Kaepernick is a black quarterback with ties to Black Lives Matter. At an NFL football game he was making a point about how African Americans get treated by the police.  

There were eight people in this discussion, and for most the issue had already been framed by TV, radio or newspapers. It was a patriotic issue.  Kaepernick was, in their view, insulting Americans and the military by quietly remaining seated during the national anthem.

I decided to attempt to reframe (in what I hoped was the Lakoff manner). That is, I tried to shift the frame from a discussion of patriotism to a discussion of how proud we should be of our support for human rights. I talked about how the freedom of speech was one of the best goals of our culture. I mentioned how much Americans value the right to protest and demonstrate freely. To my surprise, this actually worked, and attitudes toward Kaepernick modified. 

The method: shift from a conservative frame to a progressive frame. Perhaps all of us share both frames, in which case the shifting process might be easier than I expect.