Right-wrong track polls tell only part of story

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One of my social media friends thinks I spend too much time blogging about Donald J. Trump.

I heard him. So I think I’ll shift gears for a moment or two.

Those polls that measure whether Americans think we’re heading on the right or wrong track puzzle me. Take a look at the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls on that subject.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

What these averages don’t necessarily say up front is whether Americans want the nation’s directly to veer sharply to the right or sharply to the left.

I generally pay little attention to these polls.

The RCP average says there’s a 30-plus percentage variance, meaning that about one-third more Americans think the country is heading on the “wrong track.”

No one has ever polled me on the subject. If one were to ask me, I’d say we’re doing just fine. I heard the U.S. Labor Department jobs report this morning and learned we added 161,000 non-farm jobs in October; the jobless rate declined to 4.9 percent; wages went up.

Is that a wrong track indicator regarding the economy?

I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issues? Well, we haven’t been hit by a major terror attack since 9/11. We keep killing terrorists around the world. Our alliances seem solid.

Federal budget policy? The deficit has been cut by one-third during the past eight years. Is it still too great? Yes. It’s heading in the “right direction.”

I’m digressing.

Right track-wrong track polls tell only part of the story.

Cubs’ celebration goes the right way

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Have you noticed what you haven’t heard about in the wake of the Chicago Cubs’ historic victory in the World Series?

It’s the apparent lack of violence as Cubs fans have celebrated their team’s big win over the Cleveland Indians.

We’ve heard of many instances over many years about fans’ enthusiasm erupting into violence as they “celebrate” their teams’ big victories. Cubs fans waited 108 years for this one, although surely no one today was around when the North Side team actually won the Fall Classic way back when.

They still have a parade to stage through the city. I’ll wish them well as they continue their partying and carrying on.

And the lack of violence? It seems genuinely poetic that it would be Chicago — the City With Broad Shoulders, the Windy City and the city with the terrible reputation for crime — would react in such a positive manner to this huge athletic victory.

I’m happy for them. I also am happy for the rest of the nation that can enjoy a bit of vicarious thrill as Chicago jumps for joy.

Trump’s ‘record’ demands his defeat

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Donald J. Trump’s reported rally in the closing days of this desultory presidential campaign is relying on the ignorance of those who seem to have forgotten what he’s said throughout his astonishing quest for the nation’s highest office.

He has lied … repeatedly. He has praised dictators. He has declared himself to be above the law. Trump has ignored due process as it relates to his political opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has mocked disabled Americans, a notable prisoner of war, women, immigrants, a Gold Star family.

Check this out from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-trump-can-win/2016/11/02/1512d15c-a07c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html

From the Post: “Most politicians are caught in falsehoods from time to time. Mr. Trump revels in them, and when caught simply repeats the lie, more loudly. Similarly, he trades in conspiracy theories that he must know to be false, the more lurid the better: that President Obama was born in Kenya, that Vincent Foster and Antonin Scalia were murdered, that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.”

In recent days, FBI Director James Comey has said he has uncovered more e-mails involving Clinton. He has presented zero hard evidence of anything untoward. Trump has convicted Clinton of corruption and of committing crimes.

The Trumpkins have bought into it … all of it.

As the Post notes, Americans who have been so critical of President Obama for an alleged lack of love of country have become infatuated with the notion that Trump vows to “make America great again.” More from the Post:

“It is mystifying that so many Republicans, after criticizing Mr. Obama for eight years for showing insufficient pride in the United States, would attach themselves to someone who has such contempt for the country, its institutions and its values. U.S. generals have been ‘reduced to rubble,’ the U.S. Army cannot fight, U.S. cities are ‘hell,”’U.S. wealth has been ‘stripped‘ away by global interests, the electoral system is ‘one big, ugly lie.’ To each of these disasters, Mr. Trump offers phony solutions (Mexico will pay to build a wall) or none at all. He has neither the interest nor the capacity to suggest actual policies.”

I hope Americans haven’t forgotten completely how this clown has behaved, the insults he has hurled in every direction and at everyone who opposes him. Is this the kind of individual we want representing the greatest nation on Earth?

Cyber bullying must stop … no kidding!

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Melania Trump said what?

She wants to make cyber bullying the top priority of her potential first ladyship?

Oh, the irony. The lack of spousal awareness. This is amazing!

Trump’s major solo speech today highlighted what she wants to do in case her husband Donald gets elected president next week.

Cyber bullying is her target. It’s got to end, she said.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/melania-trump-says-she%e2%80%99ll-fight-cyber-bullying-as-first-lady/ar-AAjREmA?li=BBnbcA1

OK, she can start at home. With her husband.

Donald Trump has used his Twitter account to call broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly a “bimbo.” He has used it also to allege the existence of “sex tapes” involving former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, about whom he has said many other unflattering things … also on social media.

She said this, among other things: “Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough, especially to children and teenagers,” Trump said Thursday afternoon in Pennsylvania.

Melania Trump, quite naturally, made no mention of her husband’s cyber-bullying history.

Trust me on this: The irony cannot possibly be lost on many of us who understand just how much her husband has contributed to the coarsening of political discourse.

Obscene tweet a ‘breaking point’? If only …

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s obscene tweet about Hillary Rodham Clinton is the “breaking point” for at least one Texas voter.

Is it for others who have been entrenched in the Donald J. Trump camp since the zillionaire business mogul announced his Republican presidential candidacy?

Do not take it to the bank.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/02/agriculture-commissioner-sid-millers-c-word-tweet-hillary-clinton-breaking-point

A tweet that went out under Miller’s name referred to Clinton as the “c-word.” It’s too vulgar to repeat. As Jacquielyne Floyd of the Dallas Morning News writes in her blog, Miller came up with a package of lame excuses: a staffer did it; someone hacked his account.

Miller said he didn’t do such a thing. The tweet was pulled down right away, which I guess is saying something about the commissioner.

Then again, this guy has been making a spectacle of himself ever since he took over the TDA office from fellow Republican Todd Staples in 2015. I wish Staples was still on the job, frankly.

Miller has emerged as Trump’s chief Texas cheerleader.

Floyd writes: “My weary, overworked outrage meter is idling in low gear, like persistent background static on the radio. I can only summon a tired wonder that Miller, whose newest contretemps is perhaps the most egregious but far from being the first rodeo of disgrace and embarrassment he has attended, is the kind of damage Texas keeps inflicting on itself.”

Texas, though, seems bent on inflicting these wounds. We have sent a number of folks to Congress who keep spouting off without engaging what passes for their brains.

Now we have an agriculture commissioner — who ought to be focused primarily on promoting Texas farm and ranch products and helping them improve their harvest yields and getting the most money they can from the livestock they send to market.

The voter — Kathleen Lyle of Rowlett — who was offended beyond measure by the tweet, wrote a letter to Miller. According to Floyd: “Lyle demanded an apology for every woman and every schoolchild in the state of Texas: “‘You are obligated to behave decently in public once elected,’ she told him.”

Floyd continued: “It was a letter that summed up not only one woman’s frustration over one elected official’s outrageous violation, but spoke for countless Americans who are appalled by the ugliness, the unhinged vulgarity, the puerile bullying shoutdown to which the political conversation has devolved.”

The tweet that went out under Sid Miller’s name is just the latest example of all the above.

If only more of us would feel as outraged as Kathleen Lyle.

World Series dominates the news … thank goodness!

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I awoke this morning, turned on the TV, surfed the major networks’ morning talk shows and discovered the following: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series!

The election? That desultory exercise in democracy? The miserable contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump? It took a back seat to the really big news of the previous night.

What a wonderful relief from the home stretch of this campaign!

To be candid, I didn’t have a dog in the World Series fight. I didn’t particularly care which team won. I get that Cubs fans waited 108 years since their team’s last World Series win. The Cleveland Indians have their own futility streak; the Indians haven’t won since 1948.

The joy in Chicago is overwhelming. Good for them!

And good for the rest of us who have been given a slight — and all too brief — respite from the hideous campaign for the presidency.

Battleground state getting bloody

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — I’m getting a taste of what we’ve been missing in Texas.

Since we don’t live in a “battleground state,” my wife and I have been spared the barrage of TV commercials from Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Moreover, since we don’t have any serious statewide races to decide this election cycle, we’ve also been spared some of the amazing down-ballot campaign rhetoric voters are hearing in this battleground.

Darryl Glenn is a Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Colorado. He is seeking to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Michael Bennett.

A 30-second TV spot from Bennett asks voters if they know who Glenn is. The spot highlights a recording of Glenn saying that he is “running against Democrats.” And, he adds, he is campaigning “against evil.”

Democrats personify “evil,” says the Republican.

Oh, brother.

Twenty-two years ago, a Republican House of Representatives firebrand named Newt Gingrich led a partisan revolution that resulted in the GOP takeover of both houses of Congress.

He instructed his Contract With America brigade to paint “Democrats as the enemy of normal Americans.” The enemy. Not a mere political adversary. The enemy, man.

Now the enemy has morphed — in the mind of another Republican — into evil.

See what we’ve been missing at home? Have you missed it? Neither have I.

Ag commissioner roiled in controversy once more

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is mighty careless with his social media outlets.

Someone — maybe it was Miller, maybe it wasn’t — sent out a tweet this week that refers to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a highly offensive term. It’s a term used to describe women — and I won’t repeat it here.

The tweet was taken down shortly after it was posted.

The accusation went immediately to the agriculture commissioner, who has emerged as one of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s strongest boosters in Texas.

Miller said he didn’t do it. He blamed it on a staffer.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/02/the-brief/

OK, then. So what if it wasn’t Miller? Then the staffer needs to lose his job; I’ll assume it was a male, given the nature of the hideous reference made to Clinton.

How do we know with absolute certainty that a TDA staffer did the deed? I haven’t a clue, other than for the boss — that would be Miller, the elected official — to tell the public the name of the culprit.

They all work for you and for me. I’d like to know who sent out that terrible message and if he thought he was doing it in my name — as a member of the Texas public that pays this clown’s salary.

If Commissioner Miller cannot — or will not — tell us who did this … well, what are we supposed to believe regarding the actual culprit?

Chaotic campaign becomes even more chaotic

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You want chaos on the election trail? Pandemonium in the board room? Shock in our living rooms?

Welcome to Presidential Election 2016, which is heading for what looks like the wildest finish in history. Why, this might even top the 2000 election, where Al Gore won more popular votes than George W. Bush, but lost the presidency because Bush got one more Electoral College vote than he needed.

I’m not going to predict that this campaign will end with that scenario. The grenade that FBI Director James Comey tossed into the middle of this fight has the potential of upsetting everything we thought about the bizarre nature of this bizarre campaign.

He said he’s found more e-mails that might have something to do with Hillary Clinton’s on-going e-mail controversy. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t even know if she sent them.

Donald Trump calls it the “mother lode.”

I keep hearing two things: (1) The polls are tightening and (2) few voters’ minds have been changed because of what Comey has said.

Are we really and truly going to elect someone — Trump — who has admitted to behaving boorishly? Are we going to elect an individual with a string of failed businesses, lawsuits, allegations of sexual assault leveled against him?

We’re going to do this because the FBI director has inserted himself and his agency into the middle of a presidential campaign while saying virtually nothing of substance about what he might — or might not — have on one of the candidates?

Am I happy with the choices we face? No. I wish the major parties had nominated different candidates for president. We’re stuck, though, with these. We’re left with a choice. Of the two major-party nominees, the choice is clear — to me.

If only we could rid ourselves of the chaos.

KKK newspaper ‘endorses’ Trump: enough said

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Hillary Rodham Clinton has loaded up on newspaper endorsements.

Donald J. Trump has gotten, well, just a few of them.

Then he received a most telling send-off from — I trust y’all are sitting down for this one — the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.

This one takes my breath away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/01/the-kkks-official-newspaper-has-endorsed-donald-trump-for-president/

Check this out from the Washington Post:

“While Trump wants to make America great again, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What made America great in the first place?’ ” the article continues. “The short answer to that is simple. America was great not because of what our forefathers did — but because of who our forefathers were.

“America was founded as a White Christian Republic. And as a White Christian Republic it became great.”

I guess the publisher of the Crusader needs to read the U.S. Constitution, which he obviously hasn’t read. The “forefathers” created a secular nation … but I digress.

The Crusader speaks for the Klan, arguably the nation’s most infamous hate group.

The guy who runs the Crusader said the paper isn’t “endorsing” Trump. OK, but the paper sure likes what the Republican presidential nominee is peddling.

I’m out.

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