BEWARE OF MEDIA AND THEIR POLLS: They are not perfect!

The election of 1948 had a lot in common with 2016. It was CLOSE. All kinds of results from polls. Day after election the Chicago Tribune (probably the second biggest newspaper in the United States) ran with a Dewey victory! The single most famous newspaper error…..ever.

Harry Truman was not popular. He had taken over the Presidency when popular President FDR died. Truman ended up making the most important decision in the history of the United States: to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan.

Thomas E Dewey was the Governor of New York and was relatively unknown throughout the country. Dewey had “made his mark” as New York City District Attorney in successfully prosecuting “The Mob”.

I trust Presidential polls as far as I can throw them. They are only as good as the people who participate in them. I have never been asked to participate in a Presidential poll AND I AM NOT ALONE.

Finally a story about Dewey. In 1948, Presidential Candidates did not rate Secret Service protection. (Not until 1968 when candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated).

I was on a train from Utica, New York to New York City in 1948 near the election. Our train stopped at Albany Union Station. We looked out the window and saw Governor Thomas E Dewey on the platform headed for OUR TRAIN. He was accompanied by just a single New York State Trooper (in uniform and armed with his service revolver).

Now I thought in 1948 that the New York State Troopers were great and could do anything. My grandfather (at that time Paymaster of the NY Central System) joked that Dewey should have ridden in a “Pay Car”. A Pay Car had a railroad detective and two armed paymasters). Of course, by 1948 all the pay cars had gone to scrap and the whole system was paid by check from Utica (the reason I was born in Utica).

Written by Ken Kinlock

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Hate Me Faster

I Ruin Joy

Blah blah, go ahead and hate me. Super juicy.

The number of hateful comments I’ve received lately has just made me realize that my blog kicks ass. Serious, incredible ass, wait, that’s a mirror.

I have made an effort to anger, enlighten and enrich the lives of those who spend their time here. Good for me!!! I get paid oodles of money and get to read mean tweets for days on end. (I don’t make any money)

I should make a video “Skinny reads mean tweets.” Viral!!!!

One request, can you hate me faster? Don’t throw out a tweet, let me answer and then cry in your bed for a week. Come on now, hate me all at once, I have a life to get back to and you’re wasting my precious time. Why the long, drawn out shit?

I know why you hate me, you hate me because your…

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Down the Alley

This alley stretches long

starting from the small, scrub houses

past the old man’s semi shack

his possessions spilling

willy nilly

into the grass forsaken yard.

Ramblers travel this alley

from the postwar huts

to up behind

the 1920 mansions

with pool courtyards

brimming with

moss roses and sweet potato ivy.

Make me a laurel

of purple sage blooms

and moon flowers.

On these blocks

down they go,

alley wise and seeking.

The drifters, the treasure hunters,

the ab-fit joggers

tracing its path

from decay to grace

the madams and marsupials

night creatures

delve into the alley place

as the mansion owners rest

in money sleep.

In the light of day,

traffic slows

from the cracked, overgrown

meager origin

to the pristinely paved ending

and that is where

I find the opossum

now decaying

unlucky nomad

who was busy

about in the laurel flowers

meeting his end

with restless canines

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Retirement

Perspectives on Life, the Universe and Everything

Holes in the sole reveal
an era has passed
move over
go lower
time has lapsed
so fast, so swift
No chance to go astray
no drift
paltry wealth
dwindling health
linear lines, no lift
Now, what of now
is a good question
admission to vegetation
Rodents infestation
to weakened bones
lessons learned
ready to impart
audience depart
that attitude, that flair
no one cares,
all was left has left
daylight robbery, theft
or just life’s bitter end
when no one lends
an ear, supportive hand
any time to a poor soul
punishment for own goal,
grave solitude

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Charles Lloyd | saxophone player

Jazz You Too

Charles Lloyd

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Dragon fly Trollslända

Annas Art - FärgaregårdsAnna

Look what my camera captured the other day 🙂

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odonata
I think it looks like a fairy tale animal.

Anna

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Second Avenue subway to open on schedule: Rep. Carolyn Maloney

A jubilant U.S. Rep, Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria) gave the MTA a final grade of A-plus Tuesday for its progress on the first leg of the Second Avenue subway and said the opening of the massive project was imminent.

“The MTA tells me that as of Oct. 1 the project was 98 percent complete,” Maloney announced at a recently completed plaza at 63rd Street and Third Avenue. The new entrance to the existing station at 63rd Street is part of the project, which involved building three new stations on the Second Avenue line between 96th Street and 63rd Street.

“In just a few short months more than 200,000 riders will ride the Second Avenue subway on day one,” Maloney told transit advocates, elected officials and business owners on the avenue.

The congresswoman said in a press release issued Tuesday “Phase 1 is expected to be completed by December 2016,” a statement that countered widespread pessimism that the MTA would not meet the year-end deadline.

The price tag for the nearly 100-year-old project is $1.3 billion.

“The Second Avenue subway will have a huge impact on people’s lives.” she said. “We’ve passed the point where there is any doubt that it will be finished.”

The MTA said the new subway will take a load off the jammed Lexington Avenue line, which carries 40 percent of all riders in the entire subway system, and deliver passengers to the West Side without requiring transfers to other lines.

Maloney, who began a campaign to revive the Second Avenue subway project in the mid-1990s, said it was “high on my list of things I wanted not accomplish when I first was elected to Congress.

Under Phase 1 the 63rd Street Plaza is 99 percent complete, while the 96th Street station is 97 percent complete, she said. The 86th Street and 72nd Street stations are 94 percent complete.

The Q train will serve the new Second Avenue line and the W train will be brought back to transport Queens riders who have used the Q.

The project was first mentioned in 1919 by New York Public Service Commissioner Daniel Turner. The Great Depression of the Thirties foiled the first plans for the subway, while a new attempt that was made after World War II failed. After years of false starts and the building of some tunnels, the first phase of the Second Avenue subway began construction in March 2007.

Around Spain in a Blue Serge Suit

Windows into History

Entrance to Burgos by David Roberts, 1838

Snippets 89. Charles Marriott (1869-1957) was a writer of fiction with five novels to his name by the time he travelled to Spain and wrote about his experiences there in 1908. A Spanish Holiday is a travel journal detailing his time spent travelling with a friend around Spain. We previously looked at a couple of quotes from his journal in Snippets 36 and Snippets 65. The following quotes are from different locations, the first Burgos, the capital of Castile in northern Spain, and the second from Madrid, but both concern the difficulties Marriott experienced with adapting to the Spanish climate.

At three o’clock on this blazing afternoon we found half-a-dozen beggars outside the portal, wrapped in their blankets, dozing in the sun. On the strength of our dusty and generally down-at-heel appearance they accepted us as brothers, and told us that there…

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Slumdog Millionaire, A Terrific Movie With Determination and Heart

The Tony Burgess Blog

This movie has universal themes of survival, hope and rising above ones circumstances. Dev Patel is a great actor and shines in this great movie. I am not sure how true-to-life the situations are in it so some of my fellow Indian bloggers can help me with that question. This film won an Academy Award for best picture so it has to be good.

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Price discrimination: the bane of consumers everywhere