Here are this week's offerings: the unknown TPP court; win, lose, compromise; voting rights; future career; baseball; extreme birding; extreme swimming; liberal arts anyone?; the greater depression; anti-Americanism; Piggly Wiggly; swift justice.

Secret court. This article from the Huffington Post is about the court no one has heard of. It is an intimate part of the intense discussion surrounding the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership, itself much in the 2016 presidential debate.

Win, Lose, Compromise? NYT columnist Thomas Friedman writes about the parallels between our current presidential campaigns and tortured Middle Easter politics.

Yes, I know, politics ain’t bean bag. It’s about winning. But it’s also about winning with a mandate to govern. And right now, everything suggests that the next four years will be just like the last eight: a gridlocked, toxic, Sunni-Shiite, Democrat-Republican civil war, with little search for common ground. That’s how you ruin, not run, a great country. (emphasis added)

Voting rights in NC. The USSC has upheld a lower federal court's ruling that effectively prevents NC from using its recently enacted (restrictive) voting rights act in November 2016. The lower court gave credence to evidence to the "almost surgical precision" with which NC sought to lessen the impact of the state's African American voters. It found no credible evidence of meaningful voter fraud, the purported reason for NC's actions. Apparently, NC officials thought Chicago's cunning admonition,  "vote early and often" was at work there, too.
     In a related matter, it has been noted that far fewer 16 year-old are getting driver's licenses, especially in urban areas. In two years time, they will need some proof of age when they go to register and then vote. States may well see a rise in the number of residents wanting/needing some form of state-issued id.

Career choices. This headline from Roll Call, September 2nd: "Rubio's Career Depends on Winning Re-Election to Senate." Missing is the (pejorative) word "Political?" Of course, that might suggest he could find alternative, gainful employment, but certainly not as a lobbyist.

Baseball, a fond goodbye. Here is columnist George Will on an apolitical topic he loves: baseball. He reminisces with his readers about the life and career of Vince Scully, beloved and soon-to-retire, announcer for the LA (nee Brooklyn) Dodgers. He notes that....
In recent years, Scully [now 88] has not accompanied the Dodgers on the road. Hence this recent tweet quoting an 8-year-old Dodgers fan, Zoe: “I hate when the Dodgers have away games. They don’t tell stories.”.... For many years now, Scully has worked alone because he wants to talk not to someone seated next to him but to each listener, which was FDR’s talent [in those folksy fireside chats]. A free society — a society of persuasion, exhortation and neighborliness — resonates with familiar voices, such as FDR’s and Reagan’s. And Scully’s....Baseball, more than any other American institution, and Scully, more than any other baseball person, braid America’s generations.
Poignantly, Will notes that Scully will, indeed, accompany the team to San Francisco for this season's final series. He concludes, "In this era of fungible and forgettable celebrities, [Scully] is a rarity: For millions of friends he never met, his very absence will be a mellow presence."

Birding. A story in last Saturday's Washington Post tells the story of two Americans who have set a new record, one near and dear to only those denizens of the birding community. John Weigel and Olaf Danielson have both spied 750 North American birds, and all before the end of August, itself a record.

Swimming. The "wonkblog," in the same morning's newspaper, noted a seeming "mysterious current" in the Rio Olympics pool, one that may have influenced some swimmers' times. Interestingly, this same phenomena was observed once before, at the 2013 World Swimming Championships in Barcelona, but, as had been planned, that temporary pool was torn down.

Liberal arts vs STEM. The on line article title, "Meet the parents who won't let their kids study literature," is only slightly misleading. The subtitle reads, "Forcing college kids to ignore the liberal arts won't help them in a competitive economy." Startlingly, these are parents who will not let their college bound students major in the liberal arts.
      The author relates that a "....Harvard University professor Jill Lepore recalled hosting an information session at her home for undergraduates interested in a program she directs on history and literature. One student who attended, Lepore told the New York Times, kept getting text messages from her parents ordering her to leave the meeting immediately." Of course, one has to wonder how/why this student's "helicopter parents" even knew their daughter was at this professor's information session.
     Studies indicate that many double majors can be attributed to the differing desires of parents and their students. The recent Great Recession has only exacerbated the decline in humanities majors. "This focus on college as job training reflects not only a misreading of the data on jobs and pay, but also a fundamental misunderstanding of the way labor markets work, the way careers develop and the purpose of higher education."
     So much for finding a well-read computer geek.

Depression? Here is a very sobering article, an alternative view of our current situation. If Quinn's statistics his interpretation there of are to be believed, our economic situation is at best shaky. You decide.

Anti-Americanism. In this Washington Post article, "Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s," Michael Birnbaum discusses the fervent, pervasive anti-Americanism sweeping Russia. He says that not since dark days of Stalin has there been such hatred that today is felt from Putin's Kremlin to the proverbial man-in-the-street. This seems to parallel the feelings Anne Garrels found and noted in her recent book, Into Putin Country: A Journey to the Real Russia. A people, a nation that seems to have lost its way, lost hope.

Grocery store innovation. On September 6, 1916, Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, TN. Its innovation was to allow customers to pick their selections from open shelves without having to deal with a clerk behind the counter. This item is primarily noteworthy for my readers in the south, since PWs are not common in the north. Will wonders never cease?

Swift justice. On September 6, 1901, President McKiinley was shot at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and died eight days later. Czolgosz was swiftly executed on October 29, 1901.
     The really bad news for NY-state Republicans: they had rid themselves of their not-so-conservative, independently-minded Governor, Theodore Roosevelt, by having him named as McKinley's running mate. Guess what?  "He's back," only now he is president and titular head of the Republican party. The best laid plans.....

Thank you for reading. I hope your Labor Day weekend was enjoyable.