Eric The Blue

Electoral data points

1. 

If I'm clicking about The Web at night and discover suddenly that it's 3 in the morning, the site I'm most likely at, if not baseball-reference.com, is this "extremely detailed map of the 2020 election." It shows the result of the last presidential election at the precinct level—that is, the vote totals reported out of every polling place (almost) in the land. It's full of curiosities, like the one pictured above, which displays the result in one of the rare precincts in Los Angeles County carried by Trump. As you can see, it's in Beverly Hills. You can make out two main roads within the precinct. The east-west one that divides the precinct into a northerly and southerly half is Sunset Boulevard. The north-south road that intersects Sunset Boulevard near the precinct's eastern edge is Rodeo Drive. If you use the above link to go to the site itself, you can zoom in to a level where those street names are labeled. I wanted to stay out far enough to suggest how anomalous the Beverly Hills result was, compared to the surrounding territory. Biden carried Los Angeles County by 71 to 28 percent. In the dark blue precincts, his advantage was no less than 85 to 15 percent. But in the Beverly Hills precinct where the head of the National Rifle Association buys his Italian suits—your dues hard at work, schmucks!—Trump won by 19 points.

I admit that highlighting the result in a single precinct (though in the context of the ones around it) is a pretty sketchy method of rebutting the frequently heard claim that Democrats are "elitist snobs" while Republicans are the party of "working people." More scientific methods might include, for example, exit poll data indicating Biden carried voters earning less than $50,000 per year by 57 to 42 percent. He also carried those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 by a nearly identical 56 to 43 percent margin. Trump, however, won voters with 6-figure incomes by 54 to 43 percent. These macro data points tend to confirm the micro one from Beverly Hills, though in my opinion the micro one is a little more eye-catching—like the shoppers along Rodeo Drive.

The exit poll data, overall, are about as interesting as the extremely detailed map. Here's just one more revealing bit, out of many. "Are you white and a born-again Christian?" Of those answering No, 62 percent voted for Biden. Of those answering Yes, 76 percent voted for Trump. It's easy to see why.

 

 

Lunching out

I usually work, without taking a lunch, till about 1 o'clock, and notwithstanding the morning oatmeal am famished when walking out of school. Luckily the most direct route home takes me past some favorite eateries that I haven't visited since pre-pandemic times. Today it was Kramarczuk's, where I had the cabbage roll pictured above, with rye bread and the side of cucumber, tomato, and onions in a vinegar dressing. If I remember right, it was about $12 for everything. Regarding the bread: delicious, but back in the day you just served yourself from the plastic bags left open by the napkins and stuff, and they'd bring out new loaves when either the rye or pumpernickel was depleted. Now if you want bread they give you three slices from the loaf they keep on their side of the cafeteria line. Probably shouldn't complain since my own habits may have played a part in the development of the new policy. 

After spending the morning around 4th- and 5th-graders and their mostly 30ish teachers, it was nice to dine surrounded by mature Slavs—maybe I'm not next in line for extinction, after all. I'm sort of curious about where they come from, however. They used to live in the neighborhood, which is now specked with high rises that are presumably home to the young professionals who may be seen walking their designer dogs while on a work break from the home office. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s no longer possible to buy a case of High Life at Surdyk's, the neighborhood liquor store that now includes a cheese shoppe. For gazillions of my out-of-town readers, Kramarczuk's is in "lower northeast" Minneapolis, just across the Hennepin Avenue bridge from downtown. It used to be inhabited by people with names like, well, Kramarczuk, who would have had no use for local businesses such as "Base Camp Fitness."

I like how, if you click on "salads" at Kramarczuk's online menu, the first listing is for "American Potato" and the second is for "German Potato." You can have kale but you'll have to scroll. 

One day last week I lunched at Emily's Lebanese Deli, about a mile up University Avenue, almost to Broadway, where nordeast still looks like nordeast. I had some kind of a combo platter and was reminded that, though famous for liking everything, the stuffed grape leaf isn't among my all-time favorites. I'll go back, but maybe not before I've had the Bar Burger at the bar in Jax. Seventeen dollars, but what the hell, I used to get by without a part-time job. Might have a beer with it. 

Queens and princes, senators and footballers

Stunned to read that Prince Andrew didn't want Charles to be King, and even lobbied the Queen to implement a work-around. Big, if true. 

Been reading about Brett Favre, too. Maybe I should be thankful that I don't have a butt-load of money as no Republican official would ever think to tempt me with a scheme whereby a few million dollars intended for impoverished Mississippians gets “misdirected” to my accounts. Apparently Favre's defense is that he had no idea where the money came from. Plausible—but, if he's that dumb, he should run for US Senate, like Herschel Walker. In a few years, then, the three stupidest senators could be Tommy Tuberville (former head football coach at Ole Miss and Auburn), Herschel Walker (former star running back at the University of Georgia), and Brett Favre (former star quarterback at Southern Mississippi). I realize Favre isn't running for high office, but he's grifting, so it's only a matter of time.

Before disagreeing, note that I said stupidest, not vilest. The vilest is probably Ted Cruz, of Texas. I'm going through the SEC in my head, thinking of their schools and senators, an exercise that reminded me just now of Marsha Blackburn. She represents Tennessee in the US Senate and may be dumber than any of the footballers. Lincoln should just have let the South go. It would be okay if these blockheads were senators from another country. 

Among schoolchildren

I got a part-time job working around 20 hours per week, and I find that if I give up watching Twins games on TV, a sacrifice like swearing off the picking of scabs, I have as much time as before to read, sleep, walk the dog, and do my best to help with 6th- and 9th-grade math homework in the evenings. Lots of math, actually, since my gig is working as a math tutor at an elementary school in Columbia Heights, the suburb I grew up in.

First impression: lots more Spanish spoken than when I was growing up—I guess it's the first language, and the one still spoken at home, for around half the kids in the school, which is called Valley View. It's not the one I went to more than 50 years ago, but the building footprint is identical to the one I did attend less than a mile away, and the experience of being in there is the flip side to what I felt recently when stopping at an exurban Target with the same layout as the one by my house: it all seems familiar, but it's weird that everyone in the store is white.

Today at Valley View I helped a girl take a math assessment on a laptop. She's black, wore a head covering, and, though I noticed on a form that the language spoken in her home is supposedly Somali, her English was fluent and unaccented. Very fluent. Perhaps another Norwegian would call her an over-sharer, one of these kids who, every time the teacher asks a question, has her hand in the air: "Oh, oh, me, call on me!" For her math assessment, she sat with one leg crossed over the other, neither one reaching the floor and the foot of her top leg vibrating rapidly as she gave her attention to each problem. After every answer, a new problem would flash up on the screen, and I'd hear her whisper to herself, "Oh my God!" Once, when she said it with particular vehemence, I peered over her shoulder to get a look at the problem: adding not two, not three, but four numbers together, and requiring (it soon developed) a fair amount of what is now called "regrouping." 

Kids crack me up. After an elementary career spent scoffing at school, my new middle-schooler now walks with friends to the neighborhood Caribou, where they do their homework together. At least that's what they tell me they're doing. They bring their backpacks and money for smoothies, so it's either largely true or a somewhat elaborate ruse. She has called me a "school nerd" but, honestly, I did my homework alone, in my room and at the last minute, if at all. 

Confession of error

This article, "Confession of Error on My Abortion Post," by a National Review writer, seems to me like the first cousin of a Freudian slip. The author, Andrew McCarthy, had criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham's call for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks gestational age, on the ground that it would prevent states from adopting stricter limits, including comprehensive bans with no exceptions for rape such as have already been adopted in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. But Graham's proposed federal law would do no such thing. States that wanted comprehensive bans could still have them. The 15-week ban would apply nationally to states that, for example, wanted to retain the same access to abortion as existed under Roe. 

My take on this is that McCarthy assumed Graham, a politician, was attempting to dress the wound the Dobbs decision has inflicted on Republican prospects in the midterms. One can imagine an agreement, advertised as a compromise, whereby Republicans, in order to secure a nationwide ban after 15 weeks, would give up the extreme measures that have been enacted in a slew of red states. If Democrats voted against such a "compromise," Republicans could then ask: Who's extreme? McCarthy, however, doesn't want red states to have to live with a mere 15-week ban, even if it might be good politics.

But he was wrong about what the senator is proposing. Graham, too, is unwilling to force red states to permit abortions up to 15 weeks after fertilization. It's worth recalling, I think, that the winning argument at the Supreme Court was that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that states therefore should be able to do as they see fit regarding abortion policy. People like McCarthy and Graham celebrated the decision, but its logic was so "summer of '22." Now it's been a few weeks, football season has begun, and it develops that only states with legislatures and governors who agree with Graham and McCarthy should be left alone to do as they see fit. Graham, especially, wants the Big Bad Federal Government to enact a national law telling Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and others that what they'd like to do, which is what they have been doing for years, is now going to be illegal. "Federalism if you agree with me; a national ban for all who don't."

It's sort of comical to see one nut having to apologize for assuming, falsely, that another nut feels constrained by logic, coherence, consistency, and an election-year wish to appear "reasonable."  

Kids go to “school,” education does not occur

We senior citizens like to think of ourselves as old hands who've seen it all, but twice a week I'm shocked by something, and one of the two for this week is going to be this article, in The New York Times, about private Jewish religious schools in New York. It begins:

The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York's largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring. 

But in 2019 the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. 

Every one of them failed.

And continues:

The leaders of New York's Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition—and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish. 

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency. . . .

The schools appear to be operating in violation of state laws that guaranty children an adequate education. Even so, the Times found, the Hasidic boys' schools have found ways of tapping into enormous sums of government money, collecting more than $1 billion in the past four years alone.

Maybe I’m shocked only because I’ve had a possibly exalted view of the intellectual acumen of Jews ever since I learned Albert Einstein was Jewish in the same week I heard Archie Bunker tell Edith that he didn’t want a Jewish doctor “unless I’m really sick.” Years ago I saw a movie, "Jesus Camp," about young kids sunk in the religious zealotry of the adults in their lives, and was nudged toward the view that Christian fundamentalism is child abuse. Now I’m thinking the phenomenon is ecumenical. It's outrageous that government supports with tax dollars religious schools that aren't teaching kids any math or science or literature (besides the Bible) while the politicians most eager to give them money are complaining about test scores at public schools and purging the libraries of books fundamentalists don't want to read. You can disagree with me, but I don´t want to hear from you till you’ve solved a problem from my 9th-grade public school kid’s math homework tonight:

Write an equation for the parabola that cuts the x-axis at 3, passes through (5, 12), and has an axis of symmetry at x = 2.

Apparently the children of Hasidim would benefit from being subjected to a standard form of adolescent torture that their elders, though plenty cruel, are in no position even to imagine.

Kids follow the news

I remember sometimes getting annoyed at people who would regale me with stories about their charming children. It's not necessarily your turn now, because there's still time to click the back button.

I have a 6th-grader and a 9th-grader, both girls. On Thursdays, the 6th-grader has a piano lesson at 6:30. I don't like trying to fit supper into the window before music, and even less do I enjoy thinking about what to make for supper while driving home from the lesson after 7:00. So it occurred that last night about 7:30 we were taking our usual Thursday night seats at the Lowbrow when the 9th-grader's phone dinged. Because she's socially ambitious and admires all her sister's friends, the 6th-grader immediately demanded to know who the text was from. Without looking up from her phone, the 9th-grader adopted a practiced tone of jaded indifference and answered:

"What if I tell you who it isn't from? It isn't from the Queen of England."

On the road

I guess the state of New Jersey is attempting to edify motorists by posting signs like this at rest stops along the Garden State Turnpike.

Since a liberal arts education is worthless but for the rare occasion it allows you to shake your damn head while contemplating the work product of people who’ve landed an 8-5 office job, I'm not going to suppress the urge to note that the sign's claim is dubious for several reasons, including:

1. Aristotle was born after Socrates died, which would have made it hard for the two of them to speak over one another, on arête or anything else; and
2. Socrates, the first of the three to be born, was executed in 399 BC, so the date of the fake quote is off by a couple thousand years. 

It'll all be forgiven if the rest rooms are clean.