There are thousands of people like Carter Williams out there, people who change people’s lives for the better, but most of us never have heard of. We know and pay attention to the deaths of a John Lewis or RBG, as we should, but folks like Williams pass on and get little attention, unless one…
Punking the Polls
Polls do not predict things. They measure the answers to specific questions. about certain topics, usually how someone feels about someone or something (candidate, policy, breakfast cereal) and what their intentions are (vote, not vote, buy, not buy). A pollster quantifies the answers are quantified. There is no soothsaying in what is quantified. Polls are…
Beating Back the Bully
This week saw a revival of concern about Trump “refusing to leave office” if he loses the election. The concern is based on a series of articles, starting with a piece in the Atlantic by Barton Gellman, and Trump’s own refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In the past, I’ve attacked the…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg…Going Forward
On Friday, around 5 p.m. Pacific time, my phone started buzzing. Every text said the same thing, “RBG died.” I turned to my friend Julian and told him. “Are you sure?” he asked. I went to my Washington Post app and the news covered the screen. I held the screen for Julian to see, “Yup.”…
Florence Howe 1929-2020
You might not know the name Florence Howe. I wouldn’t had I not spent two decades as a bookseller. I know of Florence Howe because she was a publisher of books, and a very important one. Born in Brooklyn to a mom who was a bookkeeper and a taxi cab-driving dad, as a young adult,…
Liar, Liar, The World’s On Fire
A stupid but telling Trump lie emerged over the weekend. Looking at tight polls in Florida, Donald Trump claimed that he won the “Bay of Pigs award.” Of course, there is no Bay of Pigs award, a “revelation” that surprises exactly zero readers of the Comment. The reality is: In 2016, Trump got the endorsement…
Wins & Losses: Factual Evidence of Trump’s Failure
In August, Trump ordered that the door-to-door census count stop a month earlier than scheduled, interference intended to create an under-count that would benefit the GOP in future elections. On Saturday, a federal judge said, “Wait a second, chump” and told the Census to keep going. Earlier in the summer, Betsy Devos ordered public schools…
Majority Report: We Want Change & Now
In California, August 31 is the last day of the legislative calendar, the last day that the state Senate and Assembly can pass bills. If the deadline falls on or just after a weekend, the legislature crams, working Saturday and Sunday late, often past midnight. The days and nights are a frenzy of negotiation and…
Teaching You The Fear: The Bogeyman of Political Violence
Disclaimer: This Comment gets a bit theoretical. Be patient and plow through. I think it will be helpful. One of the difficulties of discussing politics and violence is that we have a tendency to make it a black and white issue. We ask, “Is political violence good or bad?” Whatever the answer, it spawns disagreement…
Play Ball…or Don’t!
If someone asks me what is going to happen with the election, or pretty much anything else, my stock answer is “I don’t know.” I answer “I don’t know,” because I am old enough to realize that there is a hell of a lot I don’t know, especially what the future holds. But I also…