The Books of Bokonon

I haven't put up a Jon Stewart video in a few weeks. Perhaps I was not much in the mood. But I am now. This Monday evening, he unpacked a new year with two terrorist attacks that fit nobody's preconceived narrative, and a January 6th that went much differently than the January 6th of 2021. Amazing what happens when the losing candidate handles it with panache, rather than throws a temper tantrum. Jon Stewart laughs, but as we all know, he does so with a certain amount of moral outrage. There was a line from V for Vendetta - I don't remember it exactly - where the character Gordon Dietrich is asked if everything is a joke to him. He answers "only the things that matter." I feel that. Let's watch the video:  

Hilarity ensued. The scene where a gentleman who asked Trump about the January 6th insurrection was priceless. Like Desi Lydic, I know that look. I got that same look from my dad when I tried something stupid. My now adult kids say that is the look I give them whenever I am just not buying what they tell me. Turns out nonverbal behavior can tell us a lot. We also are reminded of a valuable life lesson: in politics, we use the term "lion's den" figuratively and not literally. That might be important.

There is a channel I follow on Telegram called Military & Strategic, and is typically signed by a blogger who refers to himself or herself as The Analyst. The primary topic is the on-going Russo-Ukraine war, but US politics gets mentioned from time to time, which is very pertinent to the Ukrainian cause. Here is one of The Analyst's most recent posts , which deals with the prospects for the Harris/Walz campaign's success in November: GROWING CONFIDENCE IN A DEMOCRATIC VICTORY We all know how important the coming election is in the US. We are quite literally faced with a fork in the road - one side takes us down a dark and dangerous path towards a semi-fascist autocracy and the other is the real America that despite its many flaws is a decent and honest democrat at its core. It’s a truly shocking difference in possible futures. However I am ever more certain that Kamala Harris will win the presidency. I am growing more certain that the Democrats will regain the House, and ju...

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was just so busy I barely had a moment to breathe. It happens. But hey, it's an excuse to post the same content on Friday the 13th. This was an unlucky week for Donald Trump, and I am still enjoying the commentary from late night talks show hosts regarding the Harris-Trump debate (which will likely be the only debate between the two candidates). Here's Seth Meyers on prime time offering an extended A Closer Look segment focused on the debate: And I would be remiss if I did not post Jon Stewart's immediate post-debate segment Tuesday night. I was watching it live and was dying laughing the entire time:  We are still in an era where the late night comedians are offering better commentary on our politics than the so-called "serious" commentators on CNN and the like. It's refreshing to be provided with a stark contrast between Kamala Harris' competent debate performance and whatever the hell it was that Trump was doing. Le...

I'll admit I had never heard of Dr. Allan Lichtman prior to 2016, when he correctly predicted that Donald Trump would become the next US President. My reaction was along the lines of "who is this guy" and "you've got to be kidding me". But I learned who he was and realized that he knows his stuff. Lichtman uses a set of thirteen keys (answered as true or false) developed by him and a colleague in 1981. This model ignores polling data, which is the stuff that most take for gospel. Instead, the model is guided by historical precedent. As someone who relied on polling aggregators at the time (e.g., 538), I can see how his approach to prediction seems unsophisticated to the data wonks.  Here's the thing: he's used those keys to make the right prediction for nearly all US Presidential elections since 1984. That kind of track record establishes his credibility. We ignore his predictions at our peril. A lot of hay has been made out of the Democratic Party l...

 Maybe:   The contrast is stark. As we saw during the Democratic Convention last week, quite a few of the speakers were Republican Party members who endorsed Harris. It's clearly not because they see eye with Harris on the issues. Quite the opposite. But they do share a love of our nation in common with their Democratic counterparts and are willing to be part of what in different contexts would be called a popular front. We've seen since then other former staffers (not only Trump's) from previous GOP presidential campaigns and Presidencies endorse Harris. They've turned their backs on Trump, and with good reason. He was unfit for office in 2016 and he is even more unfit today. For many, the events of January 6th that resulted in a coup attempt turned out to be the last straw. Others might be looking carefully at the policies promoted in Project 2025, which is very much tied to Trump, and realized that those policies were simply weird: un-American and more befitting more...

About a month ago, President Joe Biden announced that he would not be seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term, even though he had more than enough delegates to accept the nomination. He was the candidate I had voted for during my state's primary this year just as I had done in 2020. Biden had been the man for the moment. His Presidential term was solid, and I would argue exceeded expectations. I might circle back to that another time. He had no serious opponents during this year's primary season and he had made it clear that he still believed he was the man for this moment. Unfortunately, the polls kept consistently telling a different story. And his performance at that first (and as it turned out, last) debate against Trump was nothing short of disastrous for both candidates. This was an election that very few were enthusiastic about. I was saddened at the news that Joe Biden had decided to step aside in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, but also r...