Caught My Eye…

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It’s Friday and that means it is time for Caught My Eye! Here are the topics for today’s column:

  • AARP Montana Poll
  • Georgia School Shooting
  • Spiritual Activism
  • Roundabouts
  • Comments and Comments
  • One More Thing

AARP Montana Poll:

Thursday, AARP Montana released a 2024 statewide election survey revealing that candidates for president, U.S. Senate, and state races should pay close attention to Montanans ages 50 and older, who make up an outsized portion of the electorate.

The survey found that in the U.S. Senate race, Tim Sheehy (R) leads Senator Jon Tester (D) by 49% – 41% on the full ballot, with 5% of voters supporting a third-party candidate and 4% undecided; Sheehy’s lead widens among older voters, 55% to 39%. In the head-to-head ballot, Sheehy leads Tester among voters overall, 51% – 45% and even more among older voters, 57% – 40%.

AARP commissioned the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward (R) & David Binder Research (D) to conduct a survey of voters in Montana. The firms interviewed 1,064 likely voters, which includes a statewide representative sample of 600 likely voters, and an oversample of 464 likely voters 50 and older. The survey was conducted August 25–29, 2024 via live interviewer on landline (25%) and cellphone (35%), as well as SMS to web (40%). The sample was randomly drawn from the Montana voter list.

It’s hard for me to believe that Sheehy is up on Tester by that much. A few Republicans are starting to spike the ball, but I would hold off. Sheehy is racking up some negative press in recent days that has probably changed some minds. We’ll see what happens when a nonpartisan survey is released that was conducted in September. 

See the complete poll HERE. 

Georgia School Shooting:

Reuters and other sources are reporting that Georgia state officials on Thursday arrested the father of the 14-year-old suspected in a school shooting that killed four people and wounded nine others on Wednesday, saying the father knowingly allowed his son to have the murder weapon. 

Reuters reports that Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

This is not the first case where parents were charged. It may help stem some of the mass shootings. Anything that can stop the senseless shootings is welcome.

Read the full report from Reuters HERE.

Spiritual Activism:

CBS News reported this past week on a movement by evangelicals led by Lance Wallnau who leads the so-called “Courage Tour,” a roving event that targets key battleground counties across the country with a blend of religious and political activism. The events encourage attendees not only to get out the vote, but to sign up to be election workers and poll watchers. 

CBS News says Wallnau is trying to recruit pro-Trump evangelicals willing to look beyond the former president’s past conduct and instead focus on his views about abortion, gender issues and Israel.

I believe that Trump is using Christians and does not believe as they do. I hope that Trump has a real relationship with God, but I have not seen any indication that he does. 

Check out the article HERE. 

Roundabouts:

During my recent road trip, I encountered several roundabouts. I started thinking about Clark Griswold in the movie “European Vacation” getting stuck on a roundabout. (Watch). 

While I did spend some time going around in circles, I did not spend as much time as the Griswold family. 

One person falsely claimed that roundabouts cause tornadoes. Politifact reports:

“We didn’t have tornadoes here until we started putting in the traffic circles,” a man says in the video. “Cause on account of you wanna know why? When people go round and round in circles, it causes disturbance in the atmosphere and causes tornadoes.” 

Sounds pretty reasonable, huh?  Politifact says it’s false. (Source)

Comments and Comments:

Every so often I like to remind readers and people who comment about the rules. As I state on my “About” page:

I enjoy comments, but I don’t allow much vulgarity and I don’t allow nasty name-calling. These things will get your comment deleted. I screen and approve all comments to keep this site at least rated PG.

Since we are in the heart of campaign season I have been getting more comments than usual. That is great – keep them coming. Please try to keep your comments about something that I wrote about in the latest column. I don’t mind a comment from left field once in a while, but several in a row get old, and I often delete them because they have nothing to do with anything. 

I love the back-and-forth debates between the readers, and I don’t mind multiple comments as long as they are about the subject. 

I hope this clarifies some of the rules. 

One More Thing:

My Kansas City Chiefs are 1-0 after beating the Baltimore Ravens last night in Kansas City. The final score was 27-20.  

Enjoy your football this weekend! 

## HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND ##

22 thoughts on “Caught My Eye…”

  1. Comments and Comments:

    … you are fairly lenient with regard to your posts and comments.

    Who I write for won’t allow terms like *WOKE or *MAGA to be published in any context.

    Wanted to write about those terms once but was told that derogatory terms would diminish the over all dialogue.

    Chin up then and may the best man, or woman, win 🙂

    • Just curious as to what is derogatory about those two terms in the eyes of your employer? Our trump supporters often wear MAGA hats. Hence, rather than continually have to write out trump supporter, MAGA works. It’s just short hand.

      I don’t think they mind being called MAGAs. Oh sure the subtext is they’re knuckle dragging uneducated morons to any thinking person, but the MAGAs seem to be quite proud of their anti-intellectualism. Makes them not elitists like us wokies. And that’s another great MAGA term. Elitist. So undefinable it ends up meaning nothing.

      And woke also fails as a derogatory term because the MAGAs are totally unable to define it succinctly or adequately to make us feel bad. It fails to hit home! Therefore us wokies aren’t really bothered by the term. We just smile and yawn and say yeah we’re woke. Whatever that means. For woke to us means unselfish people who actually care about good government, decency, the common good, and our fellow man. In other words, everything the MAGAs aren’t.

      So woke ends up being an ineffable term for advocating for human rights for all citizens, which is another way of saying we’re not prejudiced, racist, bigoted, or xenophobic. And for that the MAGAs hate us! Their America is none of the above. In other words, Trump’s America.

      BTW, can you tell us who you write for? If you can’t, that’s fine too. But maybe we could read some of your stuff. Sounds interesting. Me, personally, I love a good comment section. It’s amazing the breadth of knowledge and experience in the general population out there. And humor too.

    • Don’t worry about answering Gertlk. He thinks he’s getting paid by the word some days.
      Welcome and thanks for your comments. -JmB

  3. Just wanted to offer this PSA.

    Demand photo ID and paper ballots.

    Don’t let Sheehy and Trump cheat.

  4. since labor day I’ve gotten 10 calls from unknown numbers- generally I don’t answer unknown number calls but I have answered a couple this week just to see. same thing every time- a poll about tester -sheehy- at which point I hang up. MAGA folks don’t hang up they’re just dying to express their support to anyone that will listen. we shall see in November but I wouldn’t trust these polls one bit

    • I don’t answer unknown calls but I have participated in several polls via text about the race between Tester and Sheehy.
      I have not trusted polls for the past few Presidential elections. -JmB

  5. Spiritual activism can lead to some very undemocratic and fascist outcomes. I doubt the average American is familiar with the history of the Spanish Civil War, but the Catholic Church was a major player in Franco’s fascist regime. They were Spanish Nazis, aided by Hitler. The atrocities they committed were horrific resulting in the deaths of millions.

    And now we have Vance, who has recently converted to Catholicism, advocating for a Franco style government in this country. This is very scary stuff, folks. Pay attention to what these trump people are saying. They mean it!

    “Some Catholics, including conservatives, have raised alarms about the company Vance has kept. They say postliberalism has historical connections to 20th century European movements that are associated with authoritarian regimes like Francisco Franco’s in Spain.

    “We’re talking about people that prefer right-wing authoritarian regimes,” Patterson said. In a postliberal society, he said, citizens become “subjects” and personal liberty subjected to “administrative despotism.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/takeaways-aps-report-jd-vance-120350257.html

    “We need to overthrow them.” J.D. Vance

    https://2paragraphs.com/2024/07/unless-we-overthrow-them-j-d-vance-says-we-are-going-to-keep-losing/

    I am very familiar with Catholic history because I was raised in a strict Catholic family. I left the church many years ago when I realized what it was really like. There are some really good church members out there doing great things in the world, but then there are the christofascist kooks too. Unfortunately, we thought the church was changing and becoming more liberal. We were wrong.

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