Of Belgium, Ballots and Baseball

Official logo of Brussels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In most of the world, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 was the third day of Spring, a day that already promised to be historic.  A new era of diplomatic and cultural breakthroughs were about to happen in Cuba, despite the continued presence of the leaders that made the United States turn its back on the island nation for nearly sixty years.  In Arizona, Utah and Idaho, voters and caucus-goers made their choices on who they want to see running the country for the next four years.

But before all that happened, this did:

An airport and train station in Brussels, Belgium were hit by explosions that CNN says left 31 dead and 270 injured.  This came a few days after police there arrested a suspect in the November terrorist attack on Paris.  The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for both incidents.

Brussels is the home of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Yet like most European countries, the Belgians haven't figured out how to separate the terrorists from the migrants who have fled from war-torn regions.  How they and other countries respond to this attack has yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the presidential campaign rolls on in the wake of the Brussels attack.  Republican voters in Utah and Arizona had a choice between Donald Trump, who has said NATO has outlived its usefulness and that he would temporarily stop Muslims from coming into the country, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who advocates increased police surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods.  If you're a Democrat, you could choose Hillary Clinton, who has far more foreign policy experience as President Barack Obama's former Secretary of State than either Trump or Clinton, yet doubts remain about her trustworthiness.

Trump and Clinton won their respective primaries in delegate-rich Arizona.  Both of them may be inching closer to their parties' nominations, but their rivals are still doing their best to make it interesting.  Democrat Bernie Sanders won in Utah and Idaho, while Cruz benefited from an anti-Trump backlash in Utah to win there.

Obama was in Cuba, the first President to set foot in that country since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.  He didn't let the Belgian attacks get in the way of his previously announced schedule, but did make a brief mention of it during his address to the Cuban people.  Then he took in a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a team of Cuban all-stars before departing for Argentina.

There's a small but vocal minority in South Florida and elsewhere who have built their lives in this country after fleeing the Castro regime wondering if they're being betrayed because, even if Obama succeeds in making Cuba safe for Americans again, the Castros still remain in place. We ask that small but vocal minority:  If the Castros were gone tomorrow, would you stay in this country or move back to Cuba?

What happened in Belgium on March 22, 2016 had a ripple effect on everything else going on that day.  But while people in Brussels and elsewhere were in shock and mourning, elections were held, diplomacy was conducted and ball games were played.  Life goes on.  The world doesn't stop for terrorism.

Merrick Garland: Supreme Political Pawn

United States Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are currently marching on toward their inevitable November showdown, making news every day with violent rallies, raucous (and sometimes raunchy) debates and new allegations based on old ones.  President Barack Obama has been making news of his own in his final year, occasionally stealing the spotlight from the candidates who want his job.

This is one of those times.  The President has nominated Merrick Garland, an appeals court judge in the District of Columbia, to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice.  He would replace Antonin Scalia, who died a few weeks ago.

Even though, for all we know, Garland is a centrist (not to be confused with liberal) judge with an impressive record in his decisions and in his dealings with others--and a great guy besides, he's going to have a rough time getting confirmed in the toxic political dump that Washington has become.  With Republicans in control of the Senate and still in shock over conservative icon Scalia's passing, they have vowed that there's no way in hell Garland would get a hearing, much less get confirmed.  Even if he is a nice guy.

This comes as no surprise, given the level of animosity GOP leaders have had toward Obama since before Day One of his presidency.  But do they really want to wait until after the election to add a ninth member to the Supreme Court, whether it's Garland or not?  What if the next President is Trump or Clinton--neither of whom Republicans are big fans of?

For the next few months, we're going to hear lots of political this-and-that over Garland's nomination spilling into the campaign?  We'll be hearing scintillating questions such as:  Does Garland have any skeletons in his closet?  How would he vote on Roe v. Wade, Citizens United and other hot-button cases?  What did he really think of replacing Scalia?  Is he just a pawn of the Democrats?

Obviously, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, you have to have a thick skin.  If and when the Senate gets around to having hearings and then voting to confirm, Garland should be ready to show what he's got.  If he's rejected or decides this circus isn't worth his time, then Senate Republicans will have won themselves a hollow victory, and the Court will have to muddle along with eight justices for well into the next term.  You think the country deserves better than this?

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.