September 2018 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Second Tuesday in September: New York primary day (NOT)

There are several statewide races this year, including Governor/Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller and Attorney General.

The second Tuesday in September has been primary day in New York State for non-federal offices. It’s not today because it’s September 11, 9/11. It’ll be held Thursday, September 13 instead.

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday so it was primary day. Unsurprising, the voting, which had already begun at 6 a.m. in New York City and a few other counties, was postponed to September 25, notably with seven new polling places.

I understand it, I really do. September 11 is for not forgetting. But what better way to to remember than to stick up a proverbial middle finger at terrorism by casting the ballot that the planes hitting the World Trade Center interrupted? This is, BTW, the third time the vote has been on the 13th, also in 2007 and in 2012.

Truth be told, I think a September primary is too late. In races with an unchallenged incumbent, a late primary is a disadvantage to anyone running in a primary, who will have only eight weeks to consolidate the fractured segments of the party and run against a usually entrenched and better financed opponent.

The federal primary in New York State is at the end of June, so those running for Congress, House and Senate, compete then. I think ALL the primaries should be held at that time. It would also create a savings for the local Boards of Election, who wouldn’t need to find people to staff the voting booths in both June AND September.

Finally, here’s my my annual complaint. People in New York City, Long Island, some NYC suburbs, and Erie County (Buffalo) can vote from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. But those in the rest of the state, it’s only noon until 9 p.m., quite possibly the shortest primary slot in the country.

There are several statewide races this year, including Governor/Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller and Attorney General. Why should the folks downstate have six more hours, 15 instead of nine, to vote? I’d favor some way to even things out, such as 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. everywhere in New York State.

John Ritter would have been 70

John’s father was legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter

John_Ritter There was a popular sitcom in the US on ABC-TV called Three’s Company, which aired from 1977 to 1984. From the IMBD description: “Janet [Joyce DeWitt] and Chrissy [Suzanne Somers] get Jack [John Ritter] as a roommate for their Santa Monica apartment. Jack can cook (he’s studying to be a chef) and, when called to do so, pretends he’s gay to legitimize the arrangement.”

I found the premise more than annoying, and I seldom watched the program, certainly not intentionally. But when I came across it, I agreed with what the late Don Knotts, a co-star on the show, said in 2002, that John Ritter was the “greatest physical comedian on the planet.”

I’d seen him guest star on a variety of shows, most notably The Waltons, MASH, and Dan August before his breakthrough role.

I did watch, on purpose, 8 Simple Rules… for Dating My Teenage Daughter, starting in 2002, with John Ritter as Paul, Katey Sagal as his wife Cate, and Kaley Cuoco, later of The Big Bang Theory, as teenager Bridget. It was a pleasant enough diversion.

Then John Ritter, born September 17, 1948, died from an aortic dissection on September 11, 2003. It was/is a shock when a seemingly healthy guy not quite 55 dies suddenly. They wrote “Paul’s” death into the series, and it was one of the most painful things I’d ever watched on TV. The show continued for another year and a half, bringing in other characters played by James Garner and David Spade, and the producers created a decent, but very different show.

John Ritter’s parents were legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter and actress Dorothy Fay. As a child, I used to listen to Tex on the radio late at night on WWVA, Wheeling, WV.

He had three children with his first wife, actress Nancy Morgan: Jason (b 1980), Carly (b 1982), and Tyler (b 1985) Jason I recognize from playing a teacher named Mark on the TV show Parenthood, but mostly from being the voice of Dipper on the animated series Gravity Falls.

He had one child with his second wife, actress Amy Yasbeck: Stella (b 1998). John Ritter died on Stella’s fifth birthday, and one day before the death of country music legend Johnny Cash. Coincidentally, Tex Ritter had written several songs for Johnny during the 1950s and 1960s.

For ABC Wednesday

Anonymous op-ed, Vichy collaborators, 25th Amendment

The revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, which SHOULD be remarkable, merely confirm what’s we’ve already heard.

anoymous op-ed from the New York Times headline I’ve been away again. Any news?

Last night, the family was watching two episodes of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. In one of the monologues, I had to pause the TV because my wife was so in agreement with the commentary. Specifically, in light of the New York Times anonymous op-ed piece, the notion that there are members of the administration are reigning in the regime’s excess was NOT making her feel more secure.

As Frank Rich Frank Rich noted in New York Magazine:

“If we are to believe Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous, he and his fellow in-house Trump resisters are the ‘adults in the room’ and ‘unsung heroes’ who are ‘working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.’ This is no doubt how Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and all the rest of the president’s Vichy Republicans see themselves too.”

And, Rich notes, this is utter BS. These are NOT profiles in courage. As the Boston Globe noted, “Cabinet members shouldn’t be applauded for resorting to extralegal measures in response to Trump’s erratic behavior when the Constitution provides a legal recourse.”

Sadly, the Times piece and the revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, which SHOULD be remarkable, merely confirm what’s we’ve already heard, a White House “riddled with resistance, madness, and sheer lunacy,” led by a person of what appears to be erratic behavior and instability. Naturally, the counterattack violates federal regulations.

Guessing the author of the piece has become a parlor game. I’ve heard/read convincing arguments for several. Slate makes the case for the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, my favorite GOP Presidential candidate in 2012.

The regime has called on the Department of Justice to find the writer, which is funny because Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an obvious possibility. Has anyone been so publicly ridiculed by his boss for so long and kept his job, so far?

Counselor Kellyanne Conway says her boss thinks it’s someone in national security. For what it’s worth, both my daughter and I thought it might be her. She’s very crafty and could write a piece using phrases suggesting that Vice-President Mike Pence is the author.

The anonymous writer says the cabal he or she represents dismissed invoking the 25th Amendment in order to avoid a constitutional crisis. Based on the evidence, we’re already there.

Music: Do What You Want – Billy Preston

The That’s The Way God Planned It album was produced by one George Harrison

Do What You Want In May of 1971, I hitchhiked from Binghamton to New Paltz to see my girlfriend. Long story short, she broke up with me, and I was pretty devastated.

She did kindly drive me to a boarding school in nearby Poughkeepsie, where I saw my friend Steve. I had met him in Binghamton Central High School a couple years earlier. I don’t remember much about what we talked about, except he was really looking forward to seeing this great new singer named Bonnie Raitt again. I’d never of her.

At some point, he played the 1969 Billy Preston album That’s The Way God Planned It, produced by one George Harrison and released on Apple Records, with pikers such as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Ginger Baker playing on it. Naturally, I knew who Preston was from the Beatles Get Back session.

The first track on the album, Do What You Want, I loved instantly. It’s a wonderfully imperfect recording that starts off much slower than it ends. (The song When You Dance, I Can Really Love by Neil Young from that era does the same thing.)

Recently, I was looking for Do What You Want To on YouTube, and I came across a DIFFERENT recording on Billy’s eponymous 11th album from 1976 on A&M. It’s not a BAD song, but I find it far inferior.

it’s rather like the lyrics to the B-side of Outa-Space, one of Billy’s A&M hits, I Wrote a Simple Song:
I wrote a simple song
With simple words and harmony
Wasn’t very long
Before a star, I was bound to be

They took my simple song, yes, they did
They changed the words and the melody
Made it all sound wrong, yeah
Now it sounds like a symphony

There are very few people – Dustbury is probably one – who has such a specific memory of music in a time and place as I do.

Listen to
Do What You Want (1969)
Do What You Want (1976)

That’s The Way God Planned It (#62 pop in 1969, #65 pop in 1972)

I Wrote a Simple Song (#77 pop in 1972)

I saw Billy Preston live at the Elting Gym at the college in New Paltz in 1971 or 1972. He would have been 72 this month.

Cool Congressional Districts website

Today, this is New York’s 22nd district. Eleven other districts have served this area since 1953.

NY22
“For better or worse, the way Congressional districts are drawn can determine who wins elections, which communities are represented, and what laws are passed. Explore how your own district has changed (sometimes dramatically) over time.”

That’s the introduction to What the District, the ACLU’s nifty website showing changes in Congressional maps since I was born. I opted to select Binghamton, NY, on the Southern Tier of the state as my point of reference because it was my hometown, so I’m more aware of the changes over time.

The chart above does NOT show the size of the district, although you get a sense of it as you directly type in a city, or for larger places, the ZIP Code. In the earlier years, the Binghamton district was pretty compact.

Then in the 1970s, it sprawled eastward for most redistricting periods. When I was in New Paltz, near the Hudson River, in that decade, I was surprised to discover I was now in the same district as Binghamton.

Interestingly, after the 2010 Census, the district stretched northward to include Utica instead of eastward.

The specific description of my home district: “Today, this is New York’s 22nd district. Eleven other districts have served this area since 1953. As in most states, the New York state legislature has the power to draw new congressional district boundaries.”

One of the realities in New York State is that it has lost Congressional representation from 43 in 1953 to 27 in 2013. It could go down further in 2023, not because of an absolute loss in population from decade to decade, but because other states are growing at a faster clip.

“New York state has the 9 smallest Congressional districts in the country by land area, all of them less than 30 square miles in size.” Of course all of those are in New York City, not upstate.