Nine Shift

Why Republicans Will Win in 2020

Two political analysts, including Michael Steele, say the disastrous presidential campaign of Donald Trump is good news for the GOP.

NineShift has predicted the GOP will win the White House in 2020. We stick with that prediction.

What the two political analysts say is that by hitting bottom, the GOP has the opportunity to redesign itself to appeal to minorities, women and Gen Y in 2020. Here's one story.

Don't know about minorities. Don't know about women.  DO know about Gen Y. The GOP will indeed revise its positions to meet the needs of Gen Y.  Here's two positions that the GOP will keep:

1.Support for business
2.Support for family values, although "family" will be redefined to include LGBTQ community.

PLUS the GOP will dump not just Trump but also its last-century positions on education, infrastructure, minimum wage, gay rights, civil rights for blacks, gun control, for a start. Essentially GOP will adopt Sander's agenda. 

Wild Card:  We predict GOP will win in 2020 based partly, but maybe primarily, on its advocacy for private passenger trains.

I'm a Card Carrying Member of the Revolution

I am now a card carrying member of the revolution.  My Uncle Jack - - yes, the father of one of the Monkees - - went on a date in the 1930s.  When Coretta’s father asked him if he was a Communist, Jack pulled out a card and proudly stated he was a card carrying Communist.  Wrong thing to say of course, So Uncle Jack never got a second date with Coretta, who married a dentist.   Today I am now a MasterCard carrying member of the Bernie Sanders revolution, his follow-up or next progressive organization.

Tea Party Now Dead

Donald Trump is dealing a death blow to the Tea Party.  We predicted the Tea Party would be dead by November 7, 2016.  It is. 

 

Where Bernie Sanders is Wrong

Bernie is not alone.  President Obama tells this untruth as well.  They both think factory jobs can come back to the U.S. They both want factory jobs to come back.  They both want your daughter to work on an assembly line.  Fortunately for Malia and Sasha, and for society, that won’t happen.  It took me a year to finally find something wrong with Bernie’s policies. 

The Post Factual Age

No such thing. Just nonsense.  Both the public and the media (even the BBC) thinks the political dialogue, with Mr. Trump as the headliner of course, has never put forth so many lies, untruths, and created such an unreal unworld.
  But no, this happens throughout history.  In the 1960s most Americans believed that most civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, were communists.
   Many societal lies and myths are a result of people’s fears, and play to those fears. What moves society along is the reality and actuality of change.  In two decades, for example, few people will think American Moslems are any more likely to be a terrorist than anyone else.

Clinton to ‘Invade’ XXX in 2018

It’s a last century rite (or right)of passage, to show you are tough, firm, patriotic, a man - - and ought to be reelected. Invade a country. In your second year in office.
Kennedy,  Cuba, 1961
Johnson, Vietnam (escalated), 1965
Nixon, Cambodia
Carter, ?
Reagan, Grenada, 1981; Nicaragua (via contras), 1985
Bush, Iraq, 1989
W. Clinton, Kosovo bombing (with NATO), 1999
Bush, Afghanistan, Iraq
Obama, ?
H. Clinton, TBA, 2018

This post a work in progress.  You can contribute to it by providing additional historical facts.

New “cycle” coming in auto sales

Chrysler is giving fake sales figures.  General Motors is, more wisely profit wise, focusing less on ‘selling’ cars to rental agencies.  And Ford says it is in a new ‘sales cycle’ that very well may see lower car sales.  But really, what ‘cycle’?  When are these cycles?  Or is this just carspeak for the end is near.

Was 2016 the Peak Year for Cars?

The year 1916 was the year with the most ridership on passenger trains.  And of course within a decade the car had replaced the train as the primary mode of transportation in the country.
   Could history be repeating itself?  Again?  For the nth time?  This year, or last, was the year of the highest sales of cars in history.  And yet, and yet,  trains and light rail are taking over….

Train Update

My good friend in Tiverton, RI, home of the fastest stretch of Amtrak rail in the country, asks me every once in a while the news about trains.  Here’s the latest:
1.Build it now.
   Andrew Cuomo fairly screamed ‘build it now’ in announcing new improvements to the New York City subway system.  Instead of a multiple decades plan, he and others understand transit is so central to the New York City of the 21^st century that they cannot wait.
   This is a big departure.  Up until now, transit was a long term thing.  Now it is more immediate.
2.Trains need to run on time.
   This is perhaps the biggest news for trains recently.  The federal agency overseeing trains ordered that intermediate stops, not just final stops, would be measured for on-time performance. Even bigger, the agency reinforced its support that passenger trains have the ‘right of way’ or priority on the track, even or especially track owned by private companies. This is intended to improve on time performance of passenger trains, a big deal.
3.Subway to the Sea. 
   Subway to the Sea.  Subway to the Sea. Even in Los Angeles, the new subway from downtown LA to Santa Monica is getting good ridership, and publicity.  When Detroit and Los Angeles build light rail, you know something is changing.

Gender Facts still Taboo in College

   Faculty, at least teaching faculty, are clinging to beliefs over facts with regard to learning and gender.  Despite all the research, they insist males and females learn the same, have the same brains, and of course that males should be more like females. 
   The research side of universities is coming up with all this biological, neurological, hormonal research into the brain.  The hormones are different, the neurology is different, and so each sex thinks and learns differently.  But then at the very same university, on the other side of campus, where students are being taught, the faculty blindly cling to the past beliefs of Gloria Steinem and all the disproven myths. 

Today I give a session, "Gender in the Online Classroom,"  a first ever presentation by anyone, at the big Distance Teaching and Learning conference in Madison, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Madison.