Let's Play Politics without Playing Dumb 2016

Hi, good to see you again.

Once again "It's been a long time, I shouldn'ta left you..."
Life has kept me hyper busy, I was away most of last summer on a film series (I'm blessed) but there is so many thoughts I want to share in response to some wonderful and intelligent friends’ comments on social media, especially Facebook, who seem to have caught what I call "Trump-itis".

You know the condition caused when people are exposed to so much Trump coverage that alarm bells go off in a person's subconscious and results in them spending a lot of time and posting a lot of words discussing Donald Trump’s presidential chances with no eye or ear to the fact-based realities of his chances of being the next President of the United States.

So in short I wrote all this. Trump has little chance of being president of the United States, if a majority of the electorate shows up.

Now I do have a lot to say about a lot of recent NYC and of course especially Brooklyn news, like the planned streetcar line, the method of redevelopment in East New York, the (I'd estimate) 500 new units of housing coming to small area of Crown Heights destined to shift lift further from "affordable", and best of all The Brooklyn Community Foundation, a non-profit that is directly and positively impacting Brooklyn communities.

So posts on all that will come. However I’m going to put that on hold to address more of this Trump fascination.

First, I'd ask you to humor me and do this: swap Bernie Sanders for Barack Hussein Obama, and Donald Trump for John McCain (remember early 2008 John McCain? The very experienced, war hero, centrist who speaks plainly and has the support of all sides!!) and it becomes obvious that a lot of what's happening in media coverage year is playing out like 2008. Personally on the Dem side I know many friends support Hill over Bern, and that's fine because it doesn't matter. We all on the Dem side essentially have the same politics, it's a matter of who we prefer and trust (for a number of reasons) to enact and fight for a majority of those policies.

I believe voting matters, but given the opposition, at this point if the Democrats nominated that creepy robot in the new Boston Dynamics videos everyone will come around and support it. It doesn't matter, after the convention there will be one Dem candidate and we'll all support them.

After the Dem convention someone electric probably joins someone's ticket maybe one of the Latino-American political twin Castro brothers from San Antonio TX, and then they go campaign, with 2 (maybe 3) former Democratic presidents in tow, because the Dems won't make the mistake of 2000 again and not use the sitting president's bully pulpit to galvanize turnout among African Americans especially (which is one reason why the talk of if Bern can get support from the African American electorate is silly)

So no matter who is nominated on the Dem side, no significant number of voters on the Democratic side are going to defect to Trump, Rubio or Cruz. Just like no significant number defected from Hillary to McCain in 2008. I'm sure some people in 2008 refused to vote for Obama, but ultimately twice in the last two elections, with wars and soldiers abroad and a bad economy all making people feel unease, the majority of presidential voters picked the guy who supposedly couldn't overcome the heated anger of the Right wing.

Trump doesn't have the numbers to win. And the entire GOP set of candidates this year are too extreme (Except Kasich who interestingly, Trump's wins is pushing out of contention) to get any major traction with the entire electorate.

And a note about Trump’s “wins”.

Primaries in most states are closed, meaning usually when Trump wins he's winning ONLY among Republicans, he's getting no Democratic votes and no Independent votes because most of those voters are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary. For example in Nevada there are approximately 750,000 self-identifying Latino’ s in the state.

Of that number about 16% are and were able to vote in the Republican primary and Trump won 7% of them with the other Republican candidates splitting the remaining 9%. Trump declared that he had won the Latino vote in Nevada, and if you’re counting that 16% as the entire vote, yes his 55% of that 16% is a win, but it’s not near all the Latinos in the state. The Democrat and Independent self-identifying Latino's in Nevada are over 70% of all Latino. Trump didn’t "win the Latino vote in Nevada" he spun it, said he did, and everyone keeps repeating.Please stop.

Many people are writing, and endlessly reposting these and other numerically inaccurate stories about Trump, and Trump's chances and its a waste of time, energy and a distortion of reality. A better more important more long impacting story is about the remaining vocal fringe of unabashed racist Americans that make up a significant number of his supporters.

It’s a difficult habit to break, reporting sensationalism. The news media gets more money in views, paper sales, and TV ratings by talking up Trump, they think they have to. But it's as useful as when the NYC media pretends to be excited for a new New York Knicks and Nets seasons, knowing damned well they are not going to be anywhere near the championship when the season winds up.

The real issues are making sure more than 40% of the eligible electorate comes out to vote, because the national electorate swings overwhelming democratic. (It doesn't seem like that because of news and congress, but the congressional districts have been rigged by Republican (and sometimes Democratic) governors to corral people into voting districts based on their party affliction.

So I suggest the real issue is getting more people to vote. I suggest we share those articles about denial of voting rights, about voter registrations drives.

Post more articles about what people need to be sure and do so they are prepared to vote. That information better ensures a democratic win. Sharing the news on how much our vote matters is the best news to share this election season.

Despite Us Being American: after Michael Brown Jr. & too many more

Eric Garner's murder saddened me as it has many. As a person of color, as a person who has men that resemble Eric in my family. As a tax payer and American, his murder brought me so much sadness it took two weeks for me to write what I thought was a concise and useful post about it.

Then Micheal Brown Jr. an unarmed 18year old was killed in Ferguson, MO. by a police officer, shot six times, dead. It's been a week of me mostly avoiding that story for a variety of reasons.

Finally I wrote this, and my point if you want a headline, is it's not simply the shooting, the death, the tragedy of how people are viewed that has and continues to disturb me, it's that when these tragedies occur, the aftermath says as much about how people of color are considered in America if not more than the entire situation.

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"Despite Us Being American"

He said "I will fight for your right to protest" and I could feel the tears forming.

I don't know why I chose finally watching Ferguson/Michael Brown Murder news reports to be tonight's insomnia activity.

One of the clips I saw was Capt. Ron Johnson the solidly build African-American head of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was shoehorned into this situation and seems to have been elected for his ability to sit exactly between a rock (the historically disenfranchised community of African-Americans) and the hard place(the Police in Ferguson who as a group have largely deflected the law).

Capt. Johnson started with an apology to Michael Brown's family, speaking in uniform as a member of law enforcement in that state. But you know got me, what gave me pause?

When Capt. Johnson said to the parishioners ,"I'll protect your right to protest" my eyes watered up. I had to stop watching and wonder if I was just going to start bawling flat out.

If you haven't watched all these black people, not just in the last two months, or two years but since lets just say the last twenty or thirty years, watching all these black and brown people, (Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Timothy Stansbury Jr., Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo, Eric Garner) many of whom haven't committed a crime, several who committed misdemeanors or were caught in situations where they didn't know they were interacting with police, be killed by law enforcement. If you haven't witnessed that through the life of a black, brown or some other variation of "Other" person, then in some ways frankly you're lucky.

Lucky to know you're a citizen of a country that can't get enough talking about Freedom and almost always feels an obligation to protect yours. Do you who are not visually "other" have to interact with assholes despite being an American? Of course. Do you wonder if the government is not trying to take advantage or misuse your tax dollars, despite your not being an "other" american? Yes of course. There's lots of concerns. But usually law enforcement doesn't target you. If someone in law enforcement does target you, you have options, you can seek and expect justice, mistreatment of you will most always only go so far.

That's what hurts. The cop who shot a kid he'd probably never met ten minutes earlier is all kinds of idiot. But the entire police force felt it justifiable to back that idiot. That's a big part of being "other" usually Black as in this case and most cases. The police backed the murder, the victim was Black.That's the full on injustice. It's the same damned injustice. Even with a deep tan in the white house. The injustice starts with the precept that an unarmed, (very possibly innocent) brown skinned male is deserving of gun violence. It's an idea promoted across american society and embraced by law enforcement. Then the injustice continues when the officer of the law kills that black male without (we now know) knowing anything about this male. Then the injustice reaches full voice in the chorus of systematic American racism, when those in charge of the Ferguson Police force decide to back the murder. It starts with a racial history and the ideas that come out of it. But to understand the crime, for friends of those who don't, understand a police officer made very bad decisions, over reacted, killed a person he knew nothing about, and then the Police force decided to do everything it could including leaking false information in public media, to protect the murder.

That's what happened.

When the Highway Patrol officer told the congregation "I'll protect your right to protest" they erupted in cheers. CHEERS. Capt, Ron Johnson didn't promise to get justice (he can't alone) he didn't promise to hunt down the murderer (who's not been charged and was allowed to leave the state) he didn't promise to end racism and bias. He said he'll defend the crowd's American rights, and the people cheered. If you’re anything people refer to as “Black” you know this already. You’ve lived this, near and from afar but always as a member of the group not able to get equal treatment under our law. If you aren’t what people call "Black", or married, parented, bonded, brothered and sistered in some authentic way to someone considered as Black, I’m laying this out for you. The crowd cheered, at a member of law enforcement who resembles us, saying that he’ll simply do his job so we could simply have our right to say we’re terribly sad and upset, without us having to fear those we pay to protect us.

Because that's not something we're used to from American police forces, despite us being American.

Drawer Dropping - Mr Weiner, please, holster that Mayoral bid.

Sigh, look at the headline up there.

Is that what brought you here? Is that all it takes to titillate our minds, motivate our hands, get us to the box, the ballot box? Mr. Weiner, I think you're hoping so.

Anthony, you've disgraced yourself. How can seriously run for Mayor as anything other than a testament to the enduring chutzpah of a born and bred New Yorker?

Mayor. Mayor? No.

Can I see you as flaunter of the deadly duo, collective amnesia/public apathy? Yes. Poster child for Fuggedabout it? Good God, Yes!

Look at that headline. You've knocked off any other reference to "weiner" from google's image search. Doesn't that tell you something? All press isn't actually good press.

Ya know, I'd much rather be blogging about setting the waters of the Gowanus Canal ablaze as luxury hotels are built on it's banks. But you Sir demand my attention and I say, serious Mayoral candidate? GTFOHWTBS!

Brother Weiner, as a man, the urge to introduce and master your Johnson, on-toward the young female masses, is one I struggle with everyday. Every, day. But c'mon man, you went so far across the red line, yours must have looked like a traffic cone. You successfully diverted progress (albeit temporarily) from national political discourse with your package displaying scandal. Then your handling of it, the dodging, the lies, the righteousness, made it worse by a factor of at least two.

No matter how iDeviced-Zombized we are, all it takes it one finger swipe to bring it all back.

Mr. Weiner, I enjoyed you as a Congressmen. I liked that tenacity was an understatement in describing you. You were the Democratic pit-bull, barking loudly and intelligently on the Sunday talk shows. Not only unafraid to snarl, spew, and spit at the Bush administration, but you communicated the clear sense that if you were loosed from your chain you'd bite the shit of him and take out Cheney with your last growl.

But friend, let us be reasonable. You're not getting elected. Part of your reintroduction came with the self-admitted ticking time bomb that in the days to come "women may come forward with more emails, photos, DMs". Really.

I get it. You and some consultants ran a poll that says the current Mayoral candidates are weak. Duh hard to be strong when one guy sucks the air out of the office for twelve years. Now you want to suck up much oxygen from the candidates. Some whom, I'd really like to see have a clean shot at the office (Bill De Blasio). So you yours did some math that says you can get a run-off and worm your way in. You won't. You will distract from serious questions I have about Speaker Quinn (three terms eh, okay...) and you won't get elected.

You already felt so embowered to do what you want that you besmirched a woman who besides being wholly in your corner; wife, mother, partner, is highly intelligent (how did you get her?) and dare I say it, pretty darn foxy (TO SAY THE LEAST). You felt so embolden that in the face of your lies you chose to circle the wagons and ignore your party's (polite at first) calls for you to resign. And now you feel so singular that after all that you want to distract New York City away from more suitable candidates. I get it, you are an island.

Okay big shot, run as an independent. Clearly you think you're a hot-dog.

Happy Memorial Day weekend all, and enjoy your weiner roasts.