All posts by kanelis2012

Sports news

Rarified air in grid polling

Allow me this brief admission, which is that a long-suffering fan of the University of Oregon football program is finding it hard to breathe while the Ducks are perched at the tippy-top of a list of elite programs.

Yes, the Ducks have been good for some time now. They were ranked No. 1 briefly during the 2012 season. Then they ran into the Stanford Cardinal, which knocked the Ducks off their lofty perch.

I didn’t attend the U of O. I attended Portland State University. However, as a red-blooded American patriot who loves college football, I am enjoying the dickens out of watching the Ducks take care of business on the field.

A couple of points need to be made about Oregon’s rise to the top of the heap. One is that the Ducks now compete in the Big Ten, which for us Pacific Coast natives is akin to cheering for the enemy on the battlefield. In the old days, the Pac 12 competed for the right to play in the Rose Bowl, in which the other team was the Big Ten champion.

It’s all a mixed-up jumble now, with the Rose Bowl game tossed into the mix of bowl games designed to determine the national football champion.

The other thing is this “transfer portal” that seems to dominate college athletics. Student-athletes now are able transfer to schools just to compete in football or other top-drawer sports. The Ducks ‘ lineup now features a kid named Dillon Gabriel, who transferred to Oregon from Oklahoma.  Last year, the stud was QB Bo Nix, a transfer from Auburn. This transfer business makes it hard for fans like me to latch onto players who only are there for a season or two. They have zero loyalty to the school.

Marcus Mariota played QB for the Ducks and won the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the nation. He entered school as a freshman and stayed until he earned his degree … and then used up his football eligibility.

However, all this is just chatter. The college football know-it-alls think the Ducks are the top college team in the country and have them ranked No. 1. Those of us who remember all those lean years in Eugene will accept this new “elite” status happily … and with pride that the gridiron glory brings to the state of my birth.

media news

Trump can declare a form of victory

4 Comments

Win or lose when they count the presidential election ballots on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump can declare an important victory in one of the side battles waged in this campaign.

I believe the Republican nominee has managed to bully major newspapers into forgoing a presidential endorsement in this most consequential election.

The Washington Post will be quiet on who it prefers to see elected. So will the New York Times. So will Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain. Major metropolitan daily news across the land have made the same decision.

Why is that? I believe that the GOP nominee’s insistence that the media are the “enemy of the people ” has managed to sink in. Publishers and senior editors have sought to explain themselves. No explanation is necessary.

They have been cowed into fearing how readers might react were they to recommend the election of Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This election, though, cries out for some media leadership, particularly when we have a major-party presidential nominee who is so demonstrably unfit to serve in the office he seeks.

I take no joy in recognizing what I believe is a tactical victory for Trump. I’ll just have to swallow hard.

national news

Who’s up? Who’s down? Who can tell?

3 Comments

Those damn political polls continue to confound me, as they tell conflicting stories all at the same time.

Vice President Kamala Harris is (a) on the verge of a blowout victory next week, (b) is locked in a dead heat with Donald Trump, or (c) might be facing a landslide loss to the former TV reality host turned POTUS.

I have quit trying to insert my own view into what I believe will happen. I am left with only offering what I hope will happen on Election Day.

My hope is that Harris is harvesting most of what is left of the undecided cache of voters who despite knowing all we need to know about the boorishness of Donald Trump remains on the fence.

He recently held that rally in Madison Square Garden that proved to be a hotbed of hate; he said former Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be executed by firing squad for opposing his election as president; he continues to defame Harris’s intelligence and the smarts of the senior military officers who have declared Trump to be a fascist.

I am going to go with what my heart wants to believe, that Harris is on the cusp of making history as the nation’s first female/first woman of color to be elected president of the United States.

I won’t venture into the guessing game of predicting the margin. Trump’s character has been revealed for all the world to see. My hope is that the world detests what it sees.

Uncategorized

Heading down the stretch

2 Comments

The rhetoric I am hearing these days tells me that the 2024 presidential election just might end in the manner I and millions of other Americans hope will occur.

There’s chatter about polling errors that could be revealed that place Vice President Kamala Harris in the driver’s seat en route to the Oval Office. Puerto Ricans are expressing rage over the comments about the island being populated by “garbage.” Donald Trump then clambered aboard a trash truck to, um, demonstrate something; it reminded me and others of the1988 campaign moment when Michael Dukakis boarded the tank and produced the Mother of Fatal Photo Ops.

Trump is flailing. Harris is sailing.

Will this be a runaway? Probably not. Pollsters are continuing to prepare us for a photo finish. I am continuing to have my doubts that the race will be as close as the pundits are telling us. I won’t predict a runaway, given my terrible record as a political predictor.

However, it is beginning to a bit better for the good guys.

national news

Electoral College … explained

5 Comments

A social media “friend” asked me to explain the Electoral College, so that is what I will try to do.

You ready? Here goes.

The Electoral College comprises 538 votes, the number of people elected to the US House and Senate. The electors aren’t the actual senators and reps, but they are chosen to cast votes for president.

Each state has electors equal to the number of senators and reps who represent that state in Congress. Texas has 40 electoral votes, which equals the state’s 38 House members and two senators.

We go to the polls on Election Day and whoever wins that state’s electoral votes is entitled to garnering the state’s electoral votes. Except that the electors aren’t bound to follow the will of the voters. Occasionally, we see electors casting their presidential vote for someone other than the candidate who fielded the most votes on Election Day.

Ideally, what is supposed to happen is that the candidate with the most votes wins the most Electoral College votes, which are tabulated and ratified every Jan. 6, two weeks before the president is inaugurated. So … the infamous assault on the Capitol in 2021 occurred during a “normal” transition of power.

Joe Biden won the 2020 election with 306 electoral votes compared to the 232 compiled by Donald Trump. The winner needs to earn 270 electoral votes to win the election.

I won’t venture too far into the weeds to explain why the founders set it up this way, other than to presume they intended to spread the power among all the states. It’s interesting, therefore, to realize that the “battleground states” where Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump are fighting for votes are not among largest states. Texas, New York, California and Florida are not considered battlegrounds; that title belongs to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina … and you can throw in Arizona and Nevada as well.

Hope that explains it. Now I’ll have to shake my noggin to clear out the fog I just developed trying to make a bit of sense of it all.

national news, political news

Shut up, Mr. President

2 Comments

I have a simple, straightforward and admittedly painful demand to make of President Biden.

Shut … up, Mr. President. The 2024 election no longer is your fight, as you handed the Democratic Party banner over to VP Kamala Harris.

Biden decided to weigh in with a comment on the MAGA moron who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage floating in the ocean.” The idiot made that remark while speaking to a rally at Madison Square Garden.

However, President Biden just couldn’t keep his trap shut. He said the “only garbage I see are Trump supporters.” Do you recall Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” comment describing Trumpkins pulling for the GOP nominee in the 2016 contest?

Biden’s gratuitous cheap shot reminded me immediately of another “deplorables” moment. Biden seemingly forgot one of the cardinal rules of politics: When the other side makes a hideous error, just let ’em stew in their own juices … and allow the political gods take care of matters.

Mr. President, you aren’t in this fight. Sit down and shut the hell up!

national news, political news

October surprise explodes!

7 Comments

You know, it’s not every day when we get t witness an “October surprise” explode in the face of a political candidate seeking an entirely different reaction.

Republican nominee for POTUS, Donald Trump, sought to stage a rally in Madison Square Garden. His intent, I am left to presume, was to gin up support for his cause.

It did not work!

The rally instead has mobilized a key voting bloc to oppose Trump’s election bid. It was a horrifying display of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, sexism … you name it.

We’re now hearing from Puerto Rico and other Latino leaders declare categorically that they cannot possibly vote for Trump based on the trash tossed out from the MSG podium over the weekend.

What momentum Trump might have thought he had going into the final week of his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris has been halted. Indeed, Harris appears to be reversing the tide … in her favor!

The so-called “joke” about Puerto Rico being an “island of garbage floating in the ocean” was too much for the millions of Americans of Puerto Rican descent.

Oh, and Trump, using his tired dodge about “not knowing anything” about the tirade, is paying a huge political price for the dipshit’s comments made on Trump’s behalf.

None of us should be surprised at what we heard at the MSG encounter. It is the kind of attitude and invective we have heard from Trump since the moment he entered political life in June 2015.

However, for it to be thrust on us at this stage of a political campaign on the candidacy of a man who has no business even running for this noble office.

national news

Island of garbage? Seriously?

1 Comment

I cannot recall the name of the so-called MAGA comedian who spoke over the weekend at that hate rally in Madison Square Garden.

I do recall what he said. He called Puerto an “island of garbage floating in the sea.” Dude was one of several pro-Donald Trump who took the mic at MSG to sing the praises of the cult leader.

I want to remind y’all of something. Residents of Puerto Rico are just as American as I am, as you are … and as the clown who denigrated them. They vote, too.

The island is home to about 4 million residents, roughly half of whom are eligible to vote. I do believe that Trump, the GOP nominee for president, can kiss most of those votes good bye.

We cannot count Puerto Rico as part of the Electoral College. The insult hurled at them on the island, though, well could splash ashore on any of the 50 states where Americans of Puerto Rican descent live.

I’m just sayin’ …

media news, national news, political news

Coverage is maddening, confusing

5 Comments

The horse-race coverage of the 2024 campaign for the U.S. presidency carries many adjectives, none of which that come to mind are positive.

It is confusing, maddening, contradictory, chaotic.

I see headlines on the news services I read each day that tell me “Harris surges with new poll,” and then I see where “Trump is looking at a blowout win.” I am careful, of course, to check the source of these “news” items. Leftie organizations generally will tout Harris successes, while rightie outlets sing the praises of Trump’s efforts.

Even the mainstream outlets send confusing messages hither and yon, confusing the daylights out of folks like me.

All of this, I suppose, is to confirm that the contest is a dead heat. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump well might cross the finish line on Nov. 5 shoulder to shoulder.

Or … there’s a hidden vote out there that is waiting to awaken and put one of these candidates into the Oval Office. One theory believes that the hidden mass of voters comprises suburban women who want to protect their reproductive rights but who have been reluctant to tell pollsters of their desire. Another theory suggests another wave of Americans who aren’t yet ready to elect a woman as POTUS.

I’ll go with the former theory. That’s my hope … but you knew that.

Uncategorized

So long, political tradition

Political tradition has been tossed angrily into the crapper and, yes, this is a “both sides do it” argument.

I am going to discuss briefly one of those tradition. It’s the one in which the loser of the race places the call to the winner to concede and to pledge support for the new president’s massive undertaking.

Ten days from Election Day and we have heard some of the nastiest campaign stump rhetoric I’ve ever heard.

Who’s to blame for discarding this tradition? Why, it’s Donald John Trump, of course!

He called the 2020 election rigged. He didn’t attend President Biden’s inaugural. He has been steamed ever since at losing the Electoral College and the popular vote by 7 million ballots.

The stump-speech volume in 2024 has been even more harsh. Kamala Harris accuses Trump of being a fascist, echoing opinions expressed by many of Trump’s key military and national security advisers.

For his part, Trump calls Harris a dim bulb, “a nasty person,” and “the worst vice president in history.”

Obviously, one of these people is going to win. Will the loser be able to suck it up long enough to call the winner and resume the traditional concession call?

If Harris is the winner, don’t think for a moment that Trump will concede anything. If hell freezes over and Trump wins, I wouldn’t bet on Harris making the call, either.