Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Are Ballot Selfies Legal? From a Washington Post story by Abigail Ohlheiser.

Abigail Ohlheiser, of the Washington Post

So, exactly how many states ban ballot selfies? CNN’s analysis suggests 18, but there are a few tweaks we’d make to their conclusions. CNN lists Massachusetts as a place where ballot selfies are fine -- but the secretary of the commonwealth told CNN that ballot selfies are illegal, even if there’s nothing they can do to enforce the prohibition. @abbyohlheiser @washingtonpost

Take a ballot selfie in Rhode Island and it's fine.

Do it in New Jersey and you're really out of line.

Try it down in Texas and they'll hang you out to dry.

But out in Californy it's as harmless as bonsai.

Rocky Mountain regions do not seem to mind at all.

But Utah and its Mormons hesitate and like to stall.

I send my ballot in by mail, so mostly I don't care --

but ev'ryone who votes today should get the Croix de Guerre!

Reporter Profile: Sarah Krouse of the Wall Street Journal Has Experienced English Weather and Lived to Tell the Tale

Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Krause thinks England has too little weather

When Sarah Krause worked for the Financial News in London, England, she discovered, as had hundreds of talented writers before her, that English weather is a palpable presence in everyday life, like double decker buses and Yorkshire pudding. If you don't learn to deal with it, you go mad.

When she first arrived in London her editor immediately handed her an umbrella and a stout pair of yellow galoshes.

"You'll need these, lass, afore the lashin' o' the rain!" he told her in a thick Scottish burr.

On her very first assignment, covering the collapse of the bashed neeps market in Brown Willy, Cornwall, it rained for five days straight, and then fog set in that was so thick she couldn't see the forest for the trees -- or something like that.

When it wasn't raining the very ground oozed a sullen damp that got into her socks, her car, her apartment -- even her cherished antique hugger mugger on the fireplace mantel; it grew so moldy that she finally donated it to the National Penicillin League.

And when the sun actually made an appearance it merely highlighted the centuries of soot and Marmite that covered every brick, street light, fountain, and statue in London and the surrounding suburbs. She also discovered that English people see the sun so rarely that it frightens them, and they refer to it as 'the big yellow monster in the sky that wants to kill us with heat rays.'

It never snowed; the Worshipful Guild of Costermongers spread white confetti on the ground every Christmas Eve, and that was it.

Krouse soldiered bravely on for three years under these appalling meteorological conditions before succumbing to dish pan fever and being evacuated back to America by the Royal Navy on the battleship HMS Otiose.

She now writes about the shenanigans of the telecommunication industry for the Wall Street Journal, winning the coveted J. Fred Muggs Award for her coverage of Ted Danson's liver spots.

She makes her home in the back of the former Buster Keaton Land Yacht:

Profile: Washington Post Reporter Paul Kane and the Fightin' Blue Hens

Reporter Paul Kane of the Washington Post obsesses about the Fightin' Blue Hens.

Kane holds a BA from the University of Delaware -- but a BA in exactly what has never been revealed to the public. Some say he studied such subfusc subjects as the mechanics of jellied eels and the entomology of gutta-percha. The most common explanation is that his BA stands for 'Back Again,' because most of his professors had a strong hunch he would have to repeat their classes. Kane remains mute on the matter, except to say that there's only one goose to the gander and keeping your nose clean is more a matter of mind than of kleenex.

Kane has many interests outside of the office, but here again he has steadfastly refused to ever tell anyone, even his immediate family, what those interests are. We can only assume he plays bongos and is working on a petition to ban evaporated milk from all pumpkin pie recipes.

Coworkers say Kane often talks about retiring from the hurly-burly of journalism to move to Portugal so he can pick lint off of merino wool sweaters.

Kane's obsession with Delaware's Fightin' Blue Hens is so strong that he keeps a dozen of them in a small wire coop next to his desk at the newspaper. Whenever his team wins he roasts one for celebration -- and whenever his team loses he roasts two for consolation. He is working with NASA to send a Blue Hen to the Blue Moon of cliched fame.

His middle name is not Clarence, thank goodness.

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Election Day Misinformation -- The Office Desk Phone -- The Non-Vote Bloat

But beware any text messages that tell you that voting hours or locations have changed, that new forms of voter ID are required, or that your voter registration is not valid. NYT. @kevinroose

A gullible voter got text

that his polling station was hexed.

He wore garlic wreaths,

a string of bat teeths,

which made polling judges quite vexed.

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At home and work, technology habits have changed a lot over the years—and then there’s the office desk phone. With people carrying smartphones everywhere, a segment of the workforce has a hang up with the clunky office versions. Employees find them annoying and complicated, if they use desk phones at all. WSJ. @jenniferlevitz

The office phone remains to me

an ever-lovin' mystery.

It lights up like a Christmas tree

and plays a ring tone symphony.

Each button is the apogee

of any kind of clarity.

If I were Trump I would decree

that office phones are history!

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About half the country’s eligible voters don’t vote — well more than that in most midterms. Yet in a situation such as Tuesday’s election, with the nation divided into relatively equal-size groups of locked-in partisans and control of Congress and some state capitals depending on closely contested races, nonvoters in their own way hold great power. In dozens of battlegrounds, especially in politically essential suburban House districts, it’s the habitual nonvoters who control the margin. Washington Post. @mffisher @kristinegWP

I never voted in my life;

who needs that kind of noisy strife?

Instead I write these lyric lines

(as trite as many valentines.)

My head and heart are in the clouds;

I leave all else to fake news crowds.

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Monday, November 5, 2018

Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post is a Person for All Seasons

Margaret Sullivan writes about the media for the Washington Post

Margaret Sullivan hails from Buffalo, New York, where she began her journalistic career as an intern on the Buffalo News. She is remembered fondly by her former colleagues as an eager beaver and go-getter who never let the grass grow under her feet and kept an eye peeled for the Main Chance. (It should be noted that all of her former colleagues have been jailed for cliche abuse.)

As a member of the Pulitzer Prize board she helped shape the sound and feel of American reporting, as well as its texture and flavor -- to say nothing of raising its Scoville scale.

Her interests include refurbishing aqualungs and bottling beetroot jelly. She is a registered Whig.

She often teaches classes in basic Wildroot Hair Cream and Creative Napping at Columbia University.

Her latest non-fiction book is entitled "The Big Coffee Table Book of Screen Savers."

Halloween Costumes That Can Get You Fired -- My Ballot ain't safe anymore -- Killing Saudi Critics

An Idaho superintendent has issued a public apology and placed 14 employees on paid administrative leave after staff at a public elementary school dressed up as Mexicans and a border wall for Halloween. WaPo. @emrosenberg

When dressing up for Halloween

beware of the national spleen

that lacks any humor

and sits like a tumor

upon the American scene.

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The controversy is the latest in a rash of concerns that have flared across the country, as candidates in both parties have traded accusations about threats to ballot integrity amid multiple reports about voting irregularities. The issue has started to affect voter confidence, according to new polling, which shows that a majority of voters in both parties are deeply suspicious about the opposing party’s commitment to fair elections. WaPo. @AmyEGardner

My ballot ain't safe anymore.

The hackers who work way offshore

have got it disguised

so it's compromised

and makes me vote for Michael Moore!

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To repatriate its critics, the Saudi government has tried to lure them back or enlisted friendly regional governments to arrest them or even carried out brazen kidnappings in Europe. WaPo. @kfahim @LovedayM

Killing Saudi critics is easy as can be.

You stuff 'em in a basket, then skewer them promptly.

Or have a friendly nation put them in chains, toot suite.

Then hang 'em up to perish out in the glaring heat.

Rather than a critic, I'd be a camel there --

No one would try to shoot me and I'd get loving care.

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"Never trust a furriner."

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Curious - if you go to church today, how is the election being handled? Did your pastor discuss it? What did you think? Email me Elizabeth dot Dias at nytimes dot com

Elizabeth Dias, of the New York Times

In reply to her tweet of six hours ago, I emailed her thus:

I belong to the Provo Utah North Park Stake, the North Park Second Ward, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which is no longer the ‘Mormon Church’ or the ‘LDS Church’ if you please.)

I attended Sacrament Meeting this morning at 8:30 a.m. As is customary in the Church on the first Sunday of the month, the Meeting was mostly taken up with members from the congregation going up to the pulpit and sharing their testimony about the Church. On an impromptu and voluntary basis. Most of those who got up (including me) felt moved to talk about the Book of Mormon. No one said anything at all about the upcoming Elections. There were no endorsements, harangues, complaints, or even suggestions to get out and vote. If you had landed from Mars and gone into our Meeting you would never know there was any kind of election going on at all.

And I like that. I get enough guff from the media during the week on who to vote for and what will happen if I don’t vote a certain way. On Sunday I like to forget all that and try to contemplate on the peace and beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- not the machinations of Trump or the deteriorating global environment. This is not a head-in-the-sand attitude -- it is a prudent and temporary hiatus from the gloom and contention of the modern world. I think it lowers my blood pressure and I know it gives me more patience, charity, and perspective when I dive back into the real world of politics and elections tomorrow.

And really, if you have ever studied the Book of Mormon, it has a lot to say about modern politics and the destiny of our country and the whole of North and South America. Here is just one quote:

Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever. 2 Nephi Chapter 1 Verse 7.

There’s plenty more language like that in the Book of Mormon that we all would do well to heed during the upcoming election.

BTW -- I am in no way a spokesperson for my Church, and the opinions expressed herein are strictly my own.

Whenever my church I attend

I find it a peaceful godsend.

No politics mar

This pleasant sidebar;

My bowels and my stiff neck unbend.