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Friday, November 3, 2017

The Writer's Life 11/3 - Across the Spectrum

Donna Brazile's admission that the Clinton camp and DNC rigged the primary is not news to most, but still a bombshell. In an op-ed piece in today's NY Post, Jonathan Podhoretz covers the revelation, concluding that it is an opportunity for Dems to get their act together. Here's an excerpt: "... Sorry, fellas. The 2016 election was the culmination, not the beginning, of a Democratic implosion. Over the previous six years, Democrats had lost 60-plus House seats, nine Senate seats, 14 governorships and 1000 state and local offices. Russians didn’t do that. Democrats did." After a while, it occurred to me that there's a sort of flaw in Podhoretz's thinking. On the surface, it appears there is a difference between Clinton and Sanders, the unabashed Socialist, but their policies are so similar the difference is meaningless. There's no way of knowing if Sanders would have won the White House, but he represents the policies that the pundit claims resulted in the voter backlash that handed power to Republicans nationwide. With Sanders as the standard bearer, would Democrats have suffered a lesser decline in power across the board? Had he won, with Republican majorities in congress, he would have had to govern by executive fiat. Won't the Dems have to eschew their extreme leftward tilt to regain power? From where I sit, those who voted Republican the past few years were making a case against both Clinton and Sanders, who represent the elite far left.

The lowering of educational standards continues apace. After students charged it is racist to be required to study white British authors, Yale will no longer require English majors to study writers such as Shakespeare and Donne.



Bad news keeps coming for the NFL. Rookie QB sensation Deshaun Watson blew out a knew in a non-contact situation at practice, and is lost for the season. I know he's young and makes a lot of money, but it still sucks. I enjoyed watching highlights of his play at youtube... Show of hands - how many fans thought the Jets would have four wins at this point? My hand isn't up.

It was an interesting session of the floating book shop. Alan, a retired cabbie who's having trouble walking more than a couple of blocks, paused to rest and chat. Soon, a gentleman who lives in the only private house on East 13th between Avenue Z & Shore Road, joined us. He has just closed on it, and also on an apartment in Trump Village for $450,000. He's also bought a parking space there for - get this - $55,000!... My thanks to the young couple who donated approximately 50 books, many of them highly marketable, covering a wide spectrum of genres. Several sold. Matt, a Vietnam vet, bought The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cigars by Tad Gage, and the tall Russian gentleman who read classics in his first language and is now reading them in English, purchased Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. A kind, elderly Russian gentleman who lives in the building in front of which I set up shop donated a two-part hardcover Russian-English dictionary that was swooped up minutes later by another elderly man. And Natalia bought a couple of Russian paperbacks donated by a woman only minutes before. I sold three holdovers from yesterday: The Second Ring of Power by Carlos Castaneda, bought by a lovely middle age Latina; Sex Killers by Richard Glyn Jones, bought by John Jay College professor of Criminology Barry Spunt; and Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace by Scott Thorson and Alex Thorleifson, purchased by Ira. My thanks to all. The selection is as good as it gets right now and includes cook books, best sellers, pictorials, and basketball bios. I left three large books on science in the lobby, and brought the more obscure novels to the apartment, three of which I'll read.
Vic's Sixth novel: http://tinyurl.com/zpuhucj 
Vic's Short Works: http://tinyurl.com/jy55pzc
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