Politics '16: (Delegate) Size Matters

Truman was so widely expected to lose the 1948 election that the Chicago Tribune ran this incorrect headline. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, the results from what was billed "Super Tuesday 2":  Both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are well on their way to the number of delegates needed to win their respective parties' presidential nominations, based on victories in the primaries and caucuses.  Clinton won Mississippi as well as Trump, who also took Michigan and Hawaii.  Idaho chose Texas senator Ted Cruz in its GOP primary.  Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor John Kasich of Ohio?  Let's just say they need a miracle.

But the big news came from the Democratic primary in Michigan, where Clinton lost to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  While this was the worst look the various polling organizations (who thought Clinton would win) have had since "Dewey Defeats Truman" in 1948, it also points up a couple of things the former Secretary of State needs to fix if she is to make it to Election Day:  Clinton is saying most of the right things she needs to get elected, but faces credibility problems when it comes to her e-mails or her dealings with big business.  Also, how come she's losing states like Minnesota and Michigan as well as young voters to Sanders.  For this reason, she needs to win in Ohio and Illinois next week.

As for Sanders, the more he talks, the more unrealistic he sounds.  Free college for all?  Sounds great, but who's going to pay for it?  White people have never known poverty?  If the Great Recession had taught us one thing, it's that you don't need to live in certain areas to be down and out if your house was foreclosed and your job disappeared.  It can be anyone and anywhere at any time, no matter who you are.  Who knows?  They might be Donald Trump's biggest supporters.

Speaking of Trump, the New York billionaire reached new lows in the past week.  First, during the GOP debate in Detroit (telecast live from the Fox Theater on Fox News Channel), he not only referred to Rubio as "Little Marco", but also made comments as to the size of Trump's penis.  Then, at a news conference following his Super Tuesday 2 victories, Trump took the opportunity to pitch products with his name on it.  Classy.

Trump has also scared off another potential competitor in Michael Bloomberg, who was considering a third-party run.  The billionaire media mogul and former mayor of New York City figured out what no one else has ever considered:  A vote for Bloomberg is really a vote for either Trump or Cruz, and he didn't want to subject the country to either of those guys.  If that's true, then it's the most patriotic thing Bloomberg has done yet.  Or the dumbest.

Rubio and Kasich have been hanging around this long, and need to win in their respective states of Florida and Ohio for their campaigns to remain relevant.  If that doesn't happen, they can take a seat next to Dr. Ben Carson, who dropped out last week.

It's getting late to slow down the inevitable march of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton toward their November showdown.  The other candidates are learning, with every remaining primary or caucus, that the size of how many delegates you need to overcome the leaders really does matter.

Nancy Reagan (1921-2016): The Power Behind The Throne

Official White House photograph of Nancy Reagan, wife to then-President of the United States Ronald Reagan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ronald and Nancy Reagan were a team, as most marriages and partnerships tend to be.  For 52 years, they shared houses, children, defended each other and grew old together.  Unlike most marriages and partnerships, this one was played out before the whole world.

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis met as actors before tying the knot, even appearing in one movie together ("Hellcats of the Navy" in 1957).  She was at his side during the transition into politics when he was elected Governor of California in 1966, and then President of the United States in 1980.

As First Lady, Nancy Reagan brought Hollywood-style elegance into the White House, with all the lavish parties and designer dresses she wore.  She was also instrumental in starting the "Just Say No!" campaign, which was intended to get kids to reject drugs and alcohol.  Naive as it sounded even then, the program was a resounding success despite its critics.  And because of it, the President was able to expand the War on Drugs to the level we see today.

There were indications that Reagan was not merely the President's wife, but also the power behind the throne.  She took charge after an assassination attempt on her husband two months into his term, restricting access to him and constantly defending him through illness, scandal and dealings with the Soviet Union on nuclear treaties.  It was reported that the Reagans used astrology (Ronald was an Aquarius, Nancy a Cancer) to guide them through policy decisions.  Because of the President's advancing age (he was 78 at the time he left office) and the lingering effects of the assassination attempt, the First Lady took more matters into her own hands than anyone in his administration felt comfortable with.

A few years after the Reagans left the White House and moved to California, the former President was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease.  After he died in 2004, Nancy Reagan became an advocate for embryonic stem cell research as a potential treatment for Alzheimers and other age-related diseases.  This came as somewhat of a betrayal to her husband's conservative loyalists, who linked embryonic stem cell research to the abortion issue because of the use of fetuses.

Nancy Reagan died Sunday of congestive heart failure at age 94.  Presumably, she and Ronald are together again working as a team.

Super Night for Clinton and Trump

Donald Trump enters the Oscar De LA Renta Fashion Show, New York. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In several states and territories, March 1 was Super Tuesday, a chance for the remaining 2016 presidential candidates to rack up delegates by winning as many primaries and caucuses as they could to qualify for their party's nomination.  It also was the last realistic chance to slow down the campaign juggernauts of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Turns out, there was something for everybody.  For the GOP, Senator Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas and Oklahoma to the north, while Florida's Senator Marco Rubio got his first win in Minnesota.  For the Democrats, Senator Bernie Sanders did better.  He won his home state of Vermont plus Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.

But Trump and Clinton each won seven states Tuesday, most of them in the South, giving them substantial leads in the delegate counts.  That's going to make it real difficult for their opponents to be anything other than spoilers.

According to ABC News.com, Trump currently has 319 delegates (he needs 1237 to clinch the GOP nomination), Cruz has 226 and Rubio 110.  Among Democrats, Clinton has a 581-338 lead over Sanders (including superdelegates).  She needs 2383 to win.

What does Super Tuesday tell us?  For former Secretary of State Clinton, it means that Democrats seem to prefer a candidate with experience who will continue President Barack Obama's policies, and not the rabble-rousing alternative of Sanders' policies.

Trump?  It's past time to take this guy seriously.  The New York billionaire has tapped into the fear and loathing of those who think they're being left behind, and appreciate his big talk about making America great again.  Minorities, women and certain religions "losers"?  Build a wall on the border with Mexico and making them pay for it?  Tacit approval of the KKK?  No matter how ugly Trump's rhetoric gets, his approval rating keeps going up "tremendously".

If Trump should become the Republican presidential nominee, the party will have no one to blame but themselves.  The GOP, more than anyone else, have brought the country to a standstill with their endless shenanigans in Washington that's been going on since Obama first took the oath of office.  They're even willing to wait a whole year before filling the vacancy in the Supreme Court, which was created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, preferably with a Republican president making the pick.  They're the ones who fell asleep at the switch when Trump was rising, and are now scrambling to find a way to bring him down before it's too late.

We will soon be left with Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton (and maybe a third-party candidate?) on the next Super Tuesday.  That's Election Day in November.  As Trump would say, this one's gonna be "yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge".

OscarsSoDiverse

English: Chris rock at the Madagascar 2 premiere in Israel. עברית: כריס רוק בבכורה של מדגסקר 2 בישראל (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To make up for the glaring fact that the Motion Picture Academy failed to nominate a single person of color in any of its acting categories for the second consecutive year (and for the third time since 2011), the 88th Academy Awards ceremony telecast on ABC (whose parent company, Disney, has had its own history of racial insensitivity) was sprinkled with African-Americans in the audience, as stage presenters and in those movie montages to show how inclusive they are in the face of threatened boycotts.

The host this year was Chris Rock, whose opening monologue succeeded in making anyone in the Dolby Theater audience and those watching on TV who wasn't black uncomfortable with his edgy jokes.  The president of the academy is Cheryl Boone Isaacs.  The Oscar telecast had bent over backwards so much to show how diverse they were that it felt patronizing to watch, given that this came on the next-to-last day of Black History Month..

Those who took home the silver statuettes Sunday certainly deserved their honors.  But it is also instructive to know that African-Americans have waited a long time to take home Oscar themselves.

"Spotlight", a film about the making of the Boston Globe's newspaper investigation into a child sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic priests, was the surprise choice for Best Picture.  "Twelve Years a Slave" won the honor in 2013.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who was mauled by a bear in his role in "The Revenant", won for Best Actor.  Though it was pretty much a lifetime achievement award for all the roles he was nominated for (and lost), DiCaprio used his acceptance speech to call attention to the threat of climate change.  Forest Whitaker won the award for "The Last King of Scotland" in 2006.

Alejandro G. Inarritu won a second consecutive Best Director Oscar for "The Revenant".  An African-American has yet to win in this category.

The Best Actress Oscar went to Brie Larson for her role in "Room".  Halle Berry was the first (and so far only) African-American to receive this honor in 2001 for "Monster's Ball".

Mark Rylance won his Best Supporting Actor award for "Bridge of Spies", beating out Sylvester Stallone, who reprised his Rocky Balboa character in "Creed", which was about an African-American boxer.  Morgan Freeman, who won this award for "Million Dollar Baby" (also about boxing) in 2004, returned this year to announce "Spotlight" as Best Picture.

The Best Supporting Actress Oscar went to Alicia Vikander for her role in "The Danish Girl".  Lupita Nyong'o also won in this category for "Twelve Years a Slave".  Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Oscar of any kind in 1939, playing a servant in "Gone With The Wind".

Among other things . . .

• Current Awards Show Diva Lady Gaga nailed it with her angry performance of "Til It happens to You" from "The Hunting Ground", a film about campus sexual violence.  She lost the Best Original Song Oscar to Sam Smith, who performed yet another theme to yet another James Bond movie.  Smith dedicated his award to the LGBT community, of which he says he's a member.
• "Mad Max: Fury Road" won most of the technical awards (six), proving that the Academy can reward apocalyptic science fiction movies as long as there isn't any acting involved.
• The Thank You scroll that rolled along the bottom of your TV screen as if this were ESPN or CNN, was intended to spare us from some Oscar winners' interminable laundry list of them thanking God and their agents.  It backfired because some of them still insisted on thanking people verbally from the stage, before the orchestra serenaded them off.
• This year's Academy Awards telecast was seen by 34.5 million viewers, the lowest number in six years.  Would it be too much to ask if they could move the announcement of the major awards to an earlier hour?  Like sometime before midnight in the East and Midwest?

While this year's awards ceremony was a knee-jerk reaction to the Motion Picture Academy's lack of diversity, it is only part of the problem,  As long as Hollywood is run mostly by white men who see the success or failure of a project not in terms of black or white, but in how much green they can make, women and people of color will continue to find it difficult to succeed in show business.  And that will continue to be reflected every time the Oscar nominations are announced.

Trump, Clinton Lead White House Derby

English: Trump International Hotel and Tower and the Chicago River (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been leading in the polls for the past few weeks, and have taken the early leads in the race to secure nominations for their respective parties to the point where--if something doesn't happen soon--they could face each other in the general election.

Trump dominated the Republican primary in South Carolina on Saturday, just as he did in New Hampshire.  Senator Marco Rubio of Florida finished second, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was third.

Former Secretary of State Clinton overcame her nervousness about Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont's upstaging her to win the Nevada caucus. also on Saturday.

In the GOP delegate count (according to Real Clear Politics) Trump has the early lead with 67, Cruz with 11, and Rubio with 10.  To gain the nomination, 1237 delegates are needed to win.

Clinton had 502 delegates on the Democratic side (Real Clear Politics includes so-called "superdelegates" here) to Sanders' 70. She needs 2382 to win.

We all know by now that every time Trump opens his mouth, he's bound to offend someone.  That person right now is none other than Pope Francis, who said that Trump's plan to wall off the U.S.-Mexican border is what he considers to be un-Christian behavior.  The Donald, going where other politicians fear to tread when it comes to dealing with certain religious leaders, called the remark "disgraceful".  Besides, isn't the Vatican itself walled off?  This is just one reason why Trump is where he is.  You've heard people complain that politicians will say and do just about anything to get elected?  This guy does that, and the public and media just lap it up.

The GOP field is down to five candidates following the departure of Jeb Bush.  In any other election, the former Florida governor would have been the favorite, being rich, powerful and connected.  He just ran up against someone just like him, but without the political history and reserve.  Does this mean that the Bush political dynasty is over, or is it just taking a break?

Rubio may not have won a single primary thus far, but by default he's being seen as the choice of mainstream Republicans now that Bush is gone.  They believe Cruz is too extreme and Trump is too . . . too much to be taken seriously as credible conservatives.  One wonders if it's already too late to stop Trump, despite the GOP's best efforts.  If they're putting in an effort at all.

The next biggie on the campaign trail (not counting the South Carolina Democratic primary this Saturday, where Clinton is expected to win) is Super Tuesday on March 1, where 11 states with primaries or caucuses will help decide the fate of the field.

No doubt you have seen ads for the candidates bombard your TV screens in the more highly-contested states.  Not so much in Minnesota, where Clinton and Sanders have had their messages on local stations.  But where's the GOP?  Do they think this state isn't important in the grand scheme of things politically?

The next few weeks will tell a lot about who's going to be the nominees for both parties.  The way things are going, however, this race may just have been decided.

The Grammys 2016: A Night of Tributes

English: Gaga opening the Monster Ball with Dance in the Dark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe the theme for the 58th Grammy Awards should have been "Taps".  There were so many musical tributes to recording artists who have died since the last Grammys that the "In Memoriam" segment on the CBS telecast was hardly necessary.

The Eagles (minus Don Felder) and Jackson Browne performed "Take It Easy" in Glenn Frey's honor.  Lady Gaga channeled David Bowie in between ads for a certain computer chip.  Stevie Wonder and Pentatonix saluted Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire.  Even B.B. King, Michael Jackson and that guy from Motorhead got their big Grammy sendoff before the official roll call of those artists and music executives who didn't get their own tributes.  Unfortunately, that included Natalie Cole.

Lionel Richie is still among the living, but he got a tribute anyway as recipient of a major music industry honor.  With an all-star cast that included John Legend and Demi Lovato, Richie had to step in and save it from totally tanking.

Beyond the nostalgia, it was a big night for Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift.  Lamar won five Grammys, including one for Best Rap Album, which was "To Pimp a Butterfly".  On the telecast, he performed an acclaimed medley of "The Blacker The Berry" and "Alright".

Swift won three Grammys including Album of the Year for "1989", which was her declaration of independence from country music.  Swift's acceptance speech was a thinly veiled rebuke to Kanye West's (who didn't show up this year) misogynistic comments about her, dressed in the message that girls and women need to own their accomplishments instead of waiting for men to validate them.

Record of the Year went to "Uptown Funk", the Mark Ronson collaboration with Bruno Mars that was heard everywhere last year.  Trouble is, DJ/producer Ronson will end up lumped in with Santana and Quincy Jones for having hits under their name that are better remembered for somebody else's vocals.

Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud", which he co-wrote, was named Song of the Year.  Meghan Trainor took home the Best New Artist award, even though "All About That Bass" was two years ago.

Other Grammy takeaways:

• The hip hop-meets-history production of "Hamilton" won a Grammy for Best Musical/Theater Album.  This is noteworthy only because CBS brought its cameras inside the Broadway theater where the musical was playing, televising the opening number.  They wouldn't have done that if another musical had won, would they?
• If you had paid close attention to Gwen Stefani's live music video with its red hues and a huge bulls eye prominently featured, you would have known it was a commercial for Target.
• You'll also notice that the Grammys have become just like every other awards show on TV:  a Red Carpet pre-show, celebrities (some of them from the network's own shows) either announcing awards or introducing other acts, and so much Oscar-worthy bloat that three and a half hours just aren't enough.  Maybe that's why ratings are down.

After Antonin Scalia (1936-2016), Turmoil In The Court

photograph of the justices, cropped to show Justice Scalia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the beginning of Saturday night's Republican debate in South Carolina, the six remaining presidential candidates put down their pitchforks long enough to pay their respects to Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who just hours before had died at 79.  After imploring the necessity of keeping a conservative majority on the Court, the candidates resumed their regularly scheduled train wreck of a debate.

Scalia, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, was one of those justices whose controversial actions and decisions in defending the Constitution made him beloved among his conservative supporters while being extremely disliked by his detractors.  He helped move the Court to the right, sometimes to the point of alienating other conservatives with his judicial opinions.

The death of Scalia leaves the Court with eight justices, at least temporarily.  Because of this, several decisions this term may either end up deadlocked or postponed until a new justice is confirmed.

This could take awhile.  President Barack Obama has said he would make his choice soon, making it the third time he has performed this task, which has previously resulted in confirmations for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.  But this is an election year, and Republicans would rather that the next President decide the next justice.  It might happen anyway, given the hard feelings between Obama and the GOP-dominated Senate which must approve his nominee.

While you were watching the squawking and finger-pointing among the GOP candidates, it should have occured to you that one of these guys (along with Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton) will have the power over the next four years to nominate their own Supreme Court justice.  If not a replacement for Antonin Scalia, then it's for whoever else steps down along the line.  Then the new President will have his or her own ideological battle with the Senate before they turn thumbs up or down on the nominee.  After that, it's anyone's guess as to how the new justice will rule once that person takes a seat on the Supreme Court bench.

In other words:  America, choose wisely.