IN GERMANY..
Barack Obama warns progressives to avoid 'circular firing squad'
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Per local elections...lots of them
In case you want to see what's going on in local elections,
here's a rundown from Ballotpedia!
here's a rundown from Ballotpedia!
Friday, April 5, 2019
Engagement
In my recent post on this week's Illinois elections, I had mentioned that, while I hadn't seen voter turnout numbers for my local community, I expected they would be "paltry". I may have been spectacularly wrong in guessing who would win the Chicago mayor's race, but at least I nailed the adjective for local voter turnout: this Chicago Tribune story states that turnout in my town was 9.46%.
Even if, as I suppose, nobody else who reads this blog cares about voter turnout in a nondescript Chicago suburb, I would nevertheless ask you to just pause and ponder that number for a moment: fewer than one out of every 10 registered voters could be bothered to exercise their prerogative as citizens to choose who will run the town in which we live, as well as the schools to which we all send our children.
Even if, as I suppose, nobody else who reads this blog cares about voter turnout in a nondescript Chicago suburb, I would nevertheless ask you to just pause and ponder that number for a moment: fewer than one out of every 10 registered voters could be bothered to exercise their prerogative as citizens to choose who will run the town in which we live, as well as the schools to which we all send our children.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Local election report
Yesterday, Tuesday April 2nd, was an election day in Illinois for some local races. The headline event was the Chicago mayoral election. We looked at that race previously, after the primary election in February narrowed the field to the top two vote-getting candidates, Cook County Commissioner Toni Preckwinkle and former US Assistant District Attorney Lori Lightfoot. Both are progressive African American women, with the political veteran Preckwinkle in the role of establishment candidate and election newcomer Lightfoot as the insurgent reformer. I had noted, in our previous look-in, that reformers don't usually do well in Chicago elections. Whatever the merits of that observation, I couldn't have been more wrong as a prognosticator: Lightfoot won in a romp of historic proportions, receiving something on the order of 74% of the vote citywide, and defeating Preckwinkle in all 50 city wards, according to returns that were reported this morning.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Brexit: The Object Relations Explanation
Inevitable that we would get a psychoanalytic explanation of the leave and remain factor in Brexit.
I wouldn't have read it except that DW Winnicott, who wrote my favorite child-rearing manual, Good Enough Mothering, was an important figure in describing "object relations." Think teddy bears.
Plus in this London Review short essay, we are given a succinct account of what Fintan O'Toole means by the English affinity for "Heroic Failure." "The Tory Leave mentality that precipitated Brexit drew on the long-standing tradition of English exceptionalism. The best description I know of this mentality, Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure, characterizes it as ‘the transformation of a screw-up into a demonstration of character’. Examples include the Charge of the Light Brigade, Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, and Dunkirk. In each case, the British character is seen to rise above self-inflicted disaster through studied indifference, and thereby to manifest its inner superiority. Theresa May’s blind, stubborn, quasi-suicidal determination to enforce the referendum is another instance."
I wouldn't have read it except that DW Winnicott, who wrote my favorite child-rearing manual, Good Enough Mothering, was an important figure in describing "object relations." Think teddy bears.
Plus in this London Review short essay, we are given a succinct account of what Fintan O'Toole means by the English affinity for "Heroic Failure." "The Tory Leave mentality that precipitated Brexit drew on the long-standing tradition of English exceptionalism. The best description I know of this mentality, Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure, characterizes it as ‘the transformation of a screw-up into a demonstration of character’. Examples include the Charge of the Light Brigade, Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, and Dunkirk. In each case, the British character is seen to rise above self-inflicted disaster through studied indifference, and thereby to manifest its inner superiority. Theresa May’s blind, stubborn, quasi-suicidal determination to enforce the referendum is another instance."
Monday, April 1, 2019
The day the earth was shot, and almost died
The New Yorker's April 8, 2019 issue includes a feature on a paleontologist, Robert DePalma, who has been digging up some amazing artifacts which, if they're as real and as important as DePalma alleges, will significantly deepen our understanding of an event that surely was among the most catastrophic in the history of earth: the day an asteroid slammed into our planet and ended the Age of Reptiles.
David Ignatius on Kashoggi and Some Disturbing Details
From this article by Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius:
WASHINGTON -- "It has been nearly six months since Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, but the aftershocks continue. The U.S.-Saudi defense and intelligence partnership has been rocked. The future of the relationship is on hold, pending answers from Riyadh."
"...The bottom line is that unless the crown prince takes ownership of this issue and accepts blame for murderous deeds done in his name, his relationship with the United States will remain broken."
WASHINGTON -- "It has been nearly six months since Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, but the aftershocks continue. The U.S.-Saudi defense and intelligence partnership has been rocked. The future of the relationship is on hold, pending answers from Riyadh."
"...The bottom line is that unless the crown prince takes ownership of this issue and accepts blame for murderous deeds done in his name, his relationship with the United States will remain broken."
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