Sunday 2 September 2018

The 3 Chief Questions of 2020's Presidential Election

1.  Can Gary Johnson pull 4.5-million again, with Jill Stein pulling 1.5-million Green Party votes nationwide?  My guess is that they can't.

2.  There are a couple of blue state wins for Hillary that were roughly two-percent wins.....can the Democrats repeat in those states? The states are Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire. 

3.  Will a 25-percent turnout for black voters for Trump make that big of a difference?

Funeral Hype

Out of the twenty-odd funerals that I've attended in my life....none ever involved 'negative-chatter' as part of the ceremony.  To be honest, with Air Force folks in attendance....if you had gone to 'negative-chatter', a fair number of us would have just gotten up and walked out of the chapel or church. 

I worked with one guy who'd gone back to the US for some funeral of a relative, and one of the living relatives spoke up after Minister had done his piece....'demonizing' two or three of the other relatives for bad treatment of the dead individual.  This being a black community....things apparently got hectic and the funeral just kinda ended at that point, and half the group escorting the casket out to the yard for a quick burial. Based on the description of the event, there was divided respect over the dead person, but enough to at least show up at their funeral. 

Other than two short clips....I didn't really observe the McCain or Franklin 'propaganda' festival.  I did observe a minute or two of Bush, and of Al Sharpton.

I'm guessing a bunch of political pretenders will all go now and write up funeral instructions that the President is not to be invited, and only special people may be on the invitation list. 

The effect of these two funerals on the bulk of American society?  Zero.  Franklin's funeral might have gotten forty millions to tune in for the first part, but I think by the halfway point....they'd probably lost a quarter of the viewers.

In the case of McCain, I would suggest few Democrats watched (having a negative opinion of the guy to start with), and even fewer Republicans watched.  Maybe a quarter of the folks from Arizona cared, but beyond that...it was just a wasted TV gimmick.

My impression of Bush?  While I greatly regret my vote for McCain in 2008....I think in the past year I've come to rank my vote for Bush in 2000 as a major mistake.  Even though Gore was really lacking, at least he was brighter, and perhaps more capable than Bush.  I suspect that a quarter of people who voted for Bush....feel this way.