Month: January 2020

It is worthwhile to access the January 26th column in the NY Times by media correspondent, Michael Grynbaum @grynbaum. TruNews is a news outlet by 21st century standards, which seems intent on taking down the long professed standards and scholarship necessary to provide worthy news and editorial coverage. TruNews and it’s founder Rick Wiles (a pastor!), recently described Mr. Trumps impeachment as a “Jew Coup” planned by a “Jewish Cabal”. Wiles is full of conspiracy theories and likes to proclaim an imminent apocalypse.

This obnoxious piece of the media landscape received press credentials from the White House and ended up in Davos as a bona fide news outlet. First amendment rights? Certainly I don’t have the right not to be insulted by such speech, but making this swill purveyor more credible through the White House staff granting legitimacy? Spare me!

In an online video by Wiles, he goes on to say in respect to the impeachment, “That’s the way the Jews work. They are deceivers. they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda. ” Pure and simple, this guy is an anti-semite and while practicing his disgusting opinions, he also smears Christianity downward to a dark place, far from the main stream of religious and political thought…at last I hope that’s still true!

Rep. Ted Deutch, Florida, tweeted, “I can’t believe the day I attend an event at Yad Vashem marking 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, anti-Semites were given WH credentials to broadcast from European soil”

Anti-semitism continues to ramp up and we all need to respond to individuals and the new media portraying such opinions for what it really is: Hatred to those they fear.

Bryant, his 13 year old daughter Giana and seven other passengers perished in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. The Bryant’s were in transit to a youth basketball tournament, Kobe a coach for the team Giana was a member of.

Let’s get one issue out of the way. A decade or so back in time, Bryant was involved in a possible rape of a hotel employee. The case was dismissed but a civil suit reached a financial settlement to the hotel employee. Bryant showed contrition in statements to the press. He moved onward, seemingly to a good place both in the NBA and as an avid supporter of women’s sports.

The world seemed to take a sudden timeout at the untimely announcement. Games needed to play, literally minutes after the occurrence. Energy was sucked out of the arenas in North America as news spread of the crash. Kobe was a magnificent basketball player, a perfectionist of the art of roundball, and the proverbial hard ass to both himself and all others who failed to dedicate more than 100% of themselves to all phases of the game. Some of us like that sort of think. Maybe we think of our own shortcomings; finding solace in the world of sports and now the associated social media that is unescapable. We the former players and aging fans prescribe to the player, the teacher, the entrepreneur, those who exceed their potential. For sure, we take the bait of an escape of the common and mundanity of life. Sometimes we need it.

Yesterday, LaBron surpassed Kobe in all time scoring, placing him third place on the all time list. A retired Kobe was magnanimous. Kobe was spreading his wings into movie production and other worthy projects including his sports academy in Thousand Oakes.

What they said:

“You think about his family and his friends and the struggles they are going through. You just want to go home and kiss your kids and your wife. The rest is irrelevant right now” Marc Gasol, Toronto Raptors

“He was a very international player, spoke several languages (Spanish and Italian), played all over the world. I think he was very relatable” David Robinson, former NBA great, San Antonio Spurs.

The name of the book is “Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop” and comes our way by the author Lee Drutman, a political scientist and a senior fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America. Before the 1990’s the two parties equaled four in their bifurcation with liberals and conservatives on the Democrat side and conservatives and moderates within the Republicans. (To a high degree this is still the makeup of the Montana House, which contributes to two productive session in 2017 and 2019.) The two parties at the national level have culled their ranks resulting in a true two party democracy with zero-sum partisanship. The result have left the American people pessimistic of national politics accented by 68% of respondents favoring a multi-party (3rd party) solution.

Drutman presents a comparison of the electoral process in peer western nations. He goes into depth in such an alternative (Australia and Maine and many places in-between), of ranked choice voting where the second and third choices on a ballot with a list of candidates are used to reach a final candidate that garners a plurality. He also creates additional parties to more accurately reflect the political preferences of Americans; from Christian traditionalist to progressives and those stops in-between. Lacking the previous divisions in the parties, Drutman suggests that two parties cannot adequately be inclusive to take on social and economic policy differences composing political preferences in our nation.

Drutman who admits to being a Democrat is passionate about the need for rationale change in election process. How will change occur? Drutman posits that change of such significance may only be possible as a result of hyper- extreme acrimony and violence . Let’s hope not though we have plenty of the former. Watch the hearings if you dare). There is a bill in congress slowly building that calls for a rank choice for congressional races. Let’s add the use of Big Blue, the chess playing IBM to implement redistricting at a 50 state level and the removal of a party labels from Secretary of States who direct elections as self-identified partisans.

This bill offers a template for change to restore trust, and participation in the election process. It is expertly researched and written for the layperson interested in best-practice election systems.