811. Betrayal.

July 16, 2018 will be recorded in the history books of future decades as the day an American president betrayed the 61,000,000 people who voted for him and the 74,000,000 who didn't, and every other American, by telling the president of Russia that he favors and believes him, a tyrant and dictator, over our own American intelligence and military agencies. It's an incredible day; the day the music died.

810. NPR and Soybean Futures

I listen to NPR News because I believe it has an intellectual bias I don't find elsewhere. Nonetheless I chuckled as I listened earlier to a report on the Chinese tariffs retaliation and the journalist trying to sound fully knowledgeable on "soybean futures." 

I do not remember "soybean futures" being mentioned on NPR in the past. It made me think of Barney Arnold and Jack Crowner and those early morning reports on the radio when I was a little kid.

809. Summer Solstice, 2018

About ten hours from now, at 6:07 a.m. tomorrow morning, we will pass one of those cardinal points on our annual journey around our personal star, the Sun. The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In Louisville the period between sunrise and sunset will be 14 hours, 49 minutes, and 48 seconds, the longest day of the year. We're scheduled for some thunderstorms in between those two markers. 

Happy Solstice. 

I think it calls for naked dancing or something.

808. A little journey - figure it out.

So here was the path having left from my mother's house. South Park Road, Louisville to KY1450W to KY1526W to I-65S to KY245N to KY61S to KY733S to US62E to N. 5th Street, Bardstown to KY1430E to US31E N to KY245S to US150E to BG Parkway E to KY555S (a note on this later) to KY433S (where I piddled around a bit in Mackville - they have a really cool old bank building) - to KY152E to KY442S (the narrow highway full of cattle farms) to KY1920S to the park.

Leaving the park on KY1920S to US150E (where I piddled around a bit in Perryville - I had come across a house for sale online a few weeks ago that I remembered and found it at 216 S. Bragg Street) to US68E to US127N to US127BYP N to US127N (these last two changes require no turns) to I-64W to US42E to US42W to US60W to the Noble Abode in Butchertown.

807. If you think the GOP is conservative, you're not paying attention.

U. S. Senator Rand Paul has shut down the government, not over DACA, but over deficits.

He said, "If you were against President Obama's deficits, and now you're for the Republican deficits, isn't that the very definition of hypocrisy?" This is the same guy who just voted in December to give the rich and the corporate a huge tax break adding immediately to the deficit and long term to the debt. He represents the very meaning of hypocrisy as does the entire GOP crowd these days.

They claim the mantle of evangelicals yet support a president who paid off a whore shortly after the birth of his fifth child by his third wife. And they claim to be conservatives and libertarians yet the tax cut they passed in 2017 mostly helps the rich and the corporate and will add debts for future generations in the same manner that the wars and destruction of the American economy including the automobile and banking industries of George Bush, Jr. were paid for by the excessive borrowing of Barack Obama.

If you remain a conservative, and it is fine if you do, you need to go and form a new party because the Republicans in Washington are in no way conservative. They are big government spenders, big government borrowers, and huge, huge hypocrites. All of you know I am a big government tax-and-spend liberal in the form and image of LBJ and Richard Nixon.I am not a centrist such as Bill or Hillary Clinton or what Barack Obama proved to be, nor am I a borrow-and-spend Republican in the form and image of Ronald Reagan, both George Bush's, and Donald Trump.

806. Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Yeah, tomorrow morning's sky has it all, the triple header.

A super moon, the one when the moon is really close if 224,000 miles can be considered "really close" along with the Full Moon, the Snow Moon, arriving at 8:27 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone, and since this is the second full moon in a calendar month, this is the Blue Moon that comes along "once in a Blue Moon." The last Blue Moon was July 31, 2015. The next one, however, will be two months from tomorrow so maybe they aren't that special after all. But the next one after that doesn't show up until Hallowe'en of 2020. I'll be 60 for that. The last time we had a Blue Moon on Hallowe'en I was 14. I think I remember that, I really do.

But on top of all this there will be a Lunar Eclipse just as the Moon is setting about the time the chickens are rising. At 5:51 a.m. Eastern Time look up and watch as the Moon enters Earth's penumbra (the lighter, outer part of its shadow). The penumbra slightly darkens the Moon, though only a little. It will touch the umbra, the darker part of the shadow which creates an eclipse beginning at 6:48 a.m. However, we'll miss the entire event as the Moon sets at 7:04 a.m.

All this early in the morning to start your Wednesday, end your January, and begin the campaign season in earnest here in Kentucky.

805. Call the House, Call the Senate, and Call the Governor

Governor Bevin has managed to pit 70 groups of program supporters against the 69 others, and many of the 70 seem to have lost sight of the pension crisis. Yes, there are some really good programs he has proposed to cut, in fact almost all of them and a few, maybe three, that maybe should be done away with. 
I'm partial to some eastern Kentucky educational programs, particularly the Robinson Scholars as well as several based in Lexington such as the University Press, this one mostly because my great-grandmother Alice Colston Hockensmith (Miss Alice to you Frankfort people) gave me many books from the press growing up and I've continued her gifts with gifts of my own.

The Chaffee Program in Louisville is an important program on its own but is nostalgically important to me because it is housed where I went to register for school for the first time, the old South Park Elementary School in Fairdale. That's probably not a good reason but it caught my attention. The Agriculture Public Service Program, another UK item, takes me back to my freshman year as an Ag-Econ student. Cuts to the State Tree programs and aid to the local County Conservation Districts show a lack of concern about the environment for the future. There is a conservation district in each county except Logan which has two.

And closing down the cafeteria in the Annex should be grounds for impeachment.

So these programs all have supporters and good reasons for that support. And as the governor points out, they all cost money. And he says he is proposing these cuts to help fund the pension crisis shortcoming which up until his address last night was all most anyone was talking about when it came to budget items in Frankfort.

Thanks to this "list of 70" the governor slyly and intelligently has everyone talking about all kinds of other things they want to spend dollars on and at some point, according to his critics, he is going to say "well if you want this, you can't have that" and "that" is pension reform. To the less cynical and more hopeful (and while it may pit me against my fellow Democrats, I should be counted in this group), he may say "if you want 'this' and 'that' then you've got to raise taxes."

Now I don't know if Matt quite has the gumption to say the word "taxes" or not but I firmly believe that he knows to do both, or to do any true pension reform, taxes must be raised. And, his Medicaid strategy debacle notwithstanding, I believe he wants to correct the pension crisis one way or another. But if he has 70 groups of supporters calling on the 138 to save their program with no coinciding and coordinating call for a raise of revenue, he'll understandably choose to do one or the other, or worse yet, allow the 138 to do one or the other and not both. If your concern is about pensions, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about saving one of the list of 70, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about both, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them we need more revenues. And in this latter case, after you have called your House member and your Senate member, call Governor Bevin at 502-564-2611 and tell him he needs to lead the call for revenue to lead the Commonwealth forward.

This isn't about Democratic or Republican strategy - it is about taking care of the Commonwealth.

804. A Facebook exchange on Governor Bevin's posts about economic activity in the Commonwealth.

This was Governor Bevin's picture, along with the following comment, posted yesterday:

2017 was an INCREDIBLE year for economic development in Kentucky, with each district in the Commonwealth seeing significant business investment.

My response to the governor's post was: 

Then why the massive cuts in revenue to the state? Shouldn't there be increases? You've been in office since 2015. Unemployment in Kentucky is currently up? Explain.

A Mr. Donald Meagher responded to my comment earlier this evening with: 

Jeff Noble why does government have to take and spend more just because there is potential for increased revenue? A smart person would pay down debt or save for a rainy day not commit the potential revenue out to new real debt. An heck if government ends up with a real sizable surplus why not let taxpayers of KY keep more of their pay?

I replied to Mr. Meagher with this:

Mr. Meagher, good question - deserves an answer. And you've misinterpreted my post. Did I mention spending more? You've implied that I have. Tell me where. I said that with the governor touting these good economic tidings, one would expect increases in our revenues, not cuts in our budgets. Again, tell me exactly where I called for increased spending? I didn't. You made that up. But let's address what you said that is important and not fabricated. Yes, we should pay down our debt. Our credit rating has been imperiled since the Pension Crisis began in 2001, which is the same year that the Democrats lost control of the Senate and had to start compromising to pass a budget. I do not know if that is a coincidence or not. It would be nice to have a "real sizable surplus" someday and maybe someday we will. But we also have needs - not extravagant needs, but simple basic needs. Let's take infrastructure, something the president talks about a lot but has done nothing to address. The governor's own Transportation Cabinet has declared that 4000 miles of Kentucky roadway need repairs, that there are 1000 Kentucky projects on the books that need finishing. The Federal Department of Transportation last year ranked 1100 of our Kentucky bridges, bridges that carry you and me and grandmothers to the grocery and grandchildren on buses to schools as "structurally deficient. We pay one of the lowest gas taxes around, currently below 26 cents a gallon. Ohio, a Republican ran state pays 28 cents; Indiana, another Republican ran state pays almost 42 cents. We're woefully underfunding our futures and our safety, and this is just in the area of transportation. You can up and down the line see the need for both more revenue and more spending. The governor knows this although I'm not sure the legislature does. I hope someday we can do just what you say - save some money, have both a good rainy day fund and a surplus - get our credit rating up there with Virginia's - ran by Democrats I might add - their's is AAA, our's is A+. I am hopeful that all these projects the governor keeps telling us about at some point are reflected in the Kentucky budget as increases in our revenues. As of yet they haven't been and that's what my post was about. Here's a prediction for you. I sincerely believe the governor wants to solve the pension crisis. He knows it cannot honestly be done without a tax increase. He also knows that the legislature won't raise taxes on anything. I think once we get past the filing deadline (January 30), you'll see the governor come out swinging for both the framework for pension reform, and after this November's elections a strong push for tax increases to begin the long process of funding the pensions. Remember where you heard this. If you're close to the governor, ask him.

It was a good night.

803. Burrel Farnsley, 1946-2017

Burrel Farnsley's memorial service took place today at Christ Church Cathedral.

Burrel and I have been friends for decades. He has regaled me with many stories about his youth, his family ancestry, his father (and especially his time as mayor and his Friday afternoon Open Houses at City Hall), his ownership of the Schenck Mansion with Sandy Speer up in Vevay, unending theater talk, and lots of the history of the United States, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Episcopal Church. I was a natural pupil for his history lessons.

After his loss to John Yarmuth in the 2006 Democratic Primary, he came and volunteered at our campaign headquarters and somehow became my responsibility. He wanted to do a special Voter Registration Drive to prove a point on voter turnout. He chose two precincts in Smoketown, L111 and L112, and I created the voter lists for him. His goal was to knock on every door of those listed and if the person whose name appeared on the rolls was not the person who answered the door, then he would offer to register whoever answered. If no one answered he left them an already-stamped envelope with a voter registration card to be returned to our office so we could track the results.

I drove him over to the area around Shelby and Breckinridge streets most every day and dropped him off and picked him up later in the day. He'd have a handful of new registrants. We kept track of the all of new voters registered due to his efforts and sent them a letter ahead of the election encouraging them to vote. At the time both precincts voted at the old Presbyterian Community Center.

As it turned out, voter turnout was up, not significantly, but up, in both precincts. Once the voter rolls were updated, we could see that many of Burrel's new registrants were also new voters. His plan was a success.

Burrel and I continued our friendship through the years as his illnesses and demons began to take a toll on his body. He continued to call the office through October from various places, the last being a nursing home in Indiana. Unfortunately, I did not take the last of the calls he made to the office. I regret that now. 

May he rest in peace. O God, Grant to him eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon Burrel. May his soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Here is his obituary as posted in the Courier-Journal on January 2, 2018 by Legacy.com.

Burrel Charles Peaslee Farnsley, who was born on September 13, 1946, died on December 30, 2017. 

Burrel attended Atherton High School and he graduated from the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut. He also attended the University of Louisville. Burrel was a devoted Episcopalian and was a member of the Church of the Advent. He had also been a member of Calvary Episcopal Church. 

Burrel worked in the family's publishing business, the Lost Cause Press. A lifelong Democrat, he sought his party's nomination for mayor, Congress, and Senate. 

Burrel is survived by his brothers and sisters, Sally Bird of Arlington, VA, Ann of Vevay, IN, Alexander of San Diego, CA, and Douglass (Eliza), of Louisville, by his nieces and nephews, and by many friends. 

Burrel was predeceased by his parents, Charles and Nancy Farnsley. Charles Peaslee Farnsley was mayor of Louisville from 1948 to 1953. From 1965 to 1966, Mayor Farnsley was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Burrel was brilliant and will be missed by his family members and by his many friends. Burrel's family expresses their gratitude to the staff of Riverview Village for the outstanding care they provided during his final month. Visitation will be 4 - 7 PM Tuesday at Pearson's Funeral Home, 149 Breckenridge Lane. A Memorial Service will be 1 PM Wednesday at Christ Church Cathedral, 421 South Second Street.

Burrel's ashes will be buried in the Farnsley family lot at Cave Hill Cemetery. Pearson Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements. In lieu, of flowers, memorials may be made to Calvary Episcopal Church or Christ Church Cathedral.

802. It's a new year and a full moon, and some other stuff. 2018 begins.

Fellow Moon Lovers, tonight's the night. The First Full Moon of 2018, a supermoon presently rising as a larger than usual orb in the eastern skies, occurs about three hours from now, at 9:24 p.m. E.S.T. It is known by some as the Wolf Moon for the sounds of wolves howling, communicating with each other on the cold lonesome nights of January. Find a fellow Moon Lover and do some howling! Tonight's the night!

I was prompted by a friend today to start posting more on the blog. Today's entry marks the eleventh anniversary of the blog so we are entering the twelfth year. At least for the next four and half months, it will be an interesting year due to politics. I'll explain in a subsequent post. 

For now, this is a start. Welcome back.

801. The G20's Biggest Loser?

The G20 Summit is over. The biggest loser? America.

The speech in Poland, where supporters were bussed in to applaud our president's every word, was the highlight of his visit. As for the G20 Summit itself, the president has left the United States a weaker nation on the international front. We are now where we were prior to President McKinley's expansion of the American Empire. That began in 1896.

America First is only true in one nation. The president's followers, his sheep, may like that, may think this is good putting those smaller players in their places. But we cannot exist in isolation. The president has moved us backwards 121 years. We are the laughingstock of the world and no longer a world power.

Japan and the European Union brokered a deal while the president had Ivanka take his place at the trade table. I'm trying to imagine the outcry if Obama had sat Malia down there or if Clinton had put Chelsea in the same chair. Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Trudeau, and President Macron are now the leaders of the free world. We are a colonial nation, provincial in power, and no longer a player.

When the great powers of the world start placing tariffs on incoming goods and Americans start paying the price for the president's cowardice, what his sheep call bravado, on the international front, and our pocketbooks see our dollars go to support empires in other countries, he will no longer be president. He will be back home in Trump Tower and will have no worries about the 325M people he has left behind and his sheep, his followers, will wonder "What happened? Where is our shepherd to save us?"

800. Wow. An appropriate number to think about where to go next.

Is anyone still reading?  I'm just curious.  The blog is now over ten years old and I rarely post anymore.  Please leave a comment.  Let me know who is out there, please.  -- Jeff

799. Thank you, President Obama. Good Luck, Mr. Trump.

Eight years ago tomorrow on a very cold morning I stood in line with Jessie Phelps, Brandon Jewell, Chris Hartman, Christa Robinson, and over one million of our close friends as we waited for the new president to take the Oath of Office. I had voted for Barack Obama in both the Primary and the General of the previous year. I had met him at Slugger Field in 2006 when he made a campaign appearance for then-candidate John Yarmuth who was running his first (and successful) race for Congress, of which I had a part as an adviser, a role I still have in the Yarmuth for Congress campaign apparatus.

I was as excited as I have ever been at the onset of a new presidential administration. I was hopeful for all those people, those million-plus who spilled out into the National Mall on that cold morning, and for those people with whom I had waited in line to vote at the L-113 polling place on S. Shelby Street two months earlier, and especially hopeful for the minorities in the crowd and the young folks who had pushed Barack Obama’s popular vote to over 51%, the first of Obama’s two 51+% elections, the only president to have such a margin twice since Dwight Eisenhower. We were all very hopeful, very excited. It was a good time to be a liberal Christian Democrat, labels I still hold dear, labels I know President Obama also holds dear.

Looking ahead to his departure I wanted to reflect on the eight years which have had mixed results on many fronts. No one can doubt that many people have prospered. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has improved over 150% during his administration, outperforming all but three other presidencies, those of Clinton, FDR, and Coolidge. The job force has seen an increase for 75 straight months. Under President Obama, estimates are that about 15,000,000 new jobs have been created, making him the third best president in this regard in modern history, behind Clinton in first and Reagan in second. More than a few of those jobs came about building and rebuilding parts of America’s infrastructure as part of the “Stimulus Plan” known officially as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. You can see real literal concrete improvements in most any community in the Republic, whether rural, suburban, or urban. However, it must also be acknowledged that many of the jobs created since 2009 have lacked the buying power of the jobs they replaced. Automation and cheap labor overseas have taken a toll on American labor. Kentucky has seen its share of jobs gained in the automotive and related industries while we have also suffered with losses in the coal mines. Obama, and specifically the EPA, gets blamed for the coal losses but that’s simply a GOP selling point. Twice as many coal jobs were lost under Reagan as were lost under Obama. We’ve lost coal jobs under every president, Democrat or Republican, during the last 30 years with the single exception of George W. Bush’s terms of office. It should be said that even in Kentucky the job indices are looking good. The last jobs report dated November 2016 indicated unemployment was below 10% in every Kentucky county save one, Magoffin, for the first time since 2007.

The bright light shining on the Obama administration has been the Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010. Before any discussion of Obamacare, I would ask how many people were complaining about their healthcare costs before Obamacare? Most people would have to admit they were. To be sure, there are problems with Obamacare. The Congress has had almost seven years to resolve those problems but has chosen not to. Could it be that they weighed the good with the bad and determined the good outweighed the bad? I don’t know. For all the talk from everybody on the GOP side to repeal Obamacare on Day One “root and branch” that hasn’t happened and we are quickly getting to Month Two. Obamacare has its detractors, a small few of whom have legitimate complaints about it but many of whom dislike like it mostly because it is Obama’s plan. Personally I’ve always considered it the first step to a more socialized system of healthcare delivery, true healthcare, as opposed to an insurance system, but few people either in favor or opposed seem to understand that distinction. Like so many things, people are either for or against based on the idea that it belongs to Obama. As of tomorrow, it will belong to the new president.

There are other issues where Obama has, in my opinion, done the right thing. Approving federal dollars for stem-cell research might be at the top of that list. The long-term ramifications of this research are unknown but it may be helpful for many generations to come and anytime you can “pay it forward” on such a large scale should be considered a good thing, an honorable thing. Science played a large role in the Obama administration. His Science Fairs for middle-school students were, in a word, cool. I am hopeful that science finds as great or a greater role in the upcoming administration.

I have liked the steady calm delivery of the president. I have liked his passion and emotion. I have liked what I think is his honesty. I have liked his level-headedness and his willingness to speak to Americans across all social and economic boundaries. In listening to him I am convinced that while he is far more intelligent than most of us, he has taken great efforts at communicating with as many people as possible in a way they understand. He is an honest successor to President Reagan as a great communicator.

An honest assessment of the president must include those areas where I find fault with him. Those are mostly on the foreign policy front. Admittedly, I am not all that smart when it comes to foreign policy. A lot of foreign policy in my mind is intertwined with military policy where I believe in a small but strong military but also believe in as little war as possible. The Obama for whom I voted in 2008 seemed to be more aligned with my views on this front than the Obama who served eight years as Commander-In-Chief. Yes, Osama Bin Laden is gone but so are lots of innocent civilians. Yes, we are out of Iraq but we are deeper than ever in Afghanistan. I do not wholly approve of drone warfare although maybe I need to know more about it. I do not completely understand Syria, the Arab Spring, and our responses to that but I do not approve of what we have done or are doing. We misread the events involving Russia and Ukraine and I’m not sure we know where we stand with either country.

And that brings us to Russia.

Russia, the remnant country of the former USSR.

All my life we have been taught that Russia is the enemy. We waited to see who would blink. We crawled under our desks in grade school imperiled by the Cold War. We implored Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” We have been at odds with Russia for decades. Now suddenly we aren’t. Suddenly we’re okay with Russia. I don’t get that. I don’t get that military people I know suddenly have a newfound love for Russia. No one can quite explain it or maybe they just don’t want to.

In the very early morning hours of November 9th, a few short minutes after Hillary Clinton conceded the previous night’s election, I posted a congratulatory note on my Facebook page to President-Elect Trump. I had just gotten off the phone with my longtime friend Preston Bates who, while not supporting Mr. Trump, had precisely nailed the Electoral College down to the First Congressional District of Maine and its separate balloting from the rest of the state a few days earlier. While it is disconcerting to me that in a race where 74,074,037 voted against someone for whom 62,979,879 voted that the lesser-voted candidate won, that is our system. We are a federal Republic of states and our states vote for president, not our residents. I’ve never complained about the Electoral College to my recollection; this isn’t the time to start.

I am hopeful that the new president builds on the job gains made under President Obama. I am hopeful that the new president sees a 150% increase in the Dow Jones Average just as President Obama has. I am hopeful that the new president continues the $831 Billion commitment on infrastructure found in the Stimulus Plan of 2009. I am hopeful that the president continues to work with our science and technology community to find new treatments and medical procedures for those in need. I am hopeful for lot of things. And while I do not share the new president’s agenda in many regards, I do not want him to fail as I do not believe we have the resources to recover.

To “make America great again” is a noble goal. I believe we are a great nation but that there was a time when we were even greater. And in those days there was one major difference, something which has been taken from us and this is the resolve and the idea that the government can and should be a vehicle for the collective improvement of we, the people. To “make America great again” will require a lot of coming together as opposed to tearing apart. And it will require money. Lots of money, first to get out of debt and then a lot more to do the programs the new president wishes to implement.

America is in debt. We first went “deep in debt” under President Reagan when he borrowed-and-spent the Republic down so much as to tripling the National Debt while he was in office. Even Obama hasn’t done that. And beginning with Reagan, who enjoyed a federal tax rate on the wealthiest earners of 50% for most of his presidency, we’ve been lowering that rate and exempting more and more people from taxes. If we go back to the “great times” of Nixon, Ford, or Johnson, that rate is 70%. Lots of people look to Eisenhower as president during America’s golden era. The rate then was 91%. To make America great again will mean paying for it. We are getting the government we are willing to pay for. Simply changing presidents will not make America great again; changing our attitude toward the government will.

So, farewell and thank you, President Obama. Thank you so much. You brought us hope and it mostly worked. And thank you too to Mrs. Obama and Sasha and Malia for their class and graciousness. Finally, Good Luck, Mr. Trump. You’ve made a lot of promises. You will need a lot of luck and hard work to deliver on those promises. That starts tomorrow – or, as you have indicated, Monday.

798. Trump's one solid rock - Putin.

Next weekend President-Elect Trump becomes President Trump. It will be interesting to see what else he flip-flops on between now and then. Since the campaign there have been a number of things. He's flipped on prosecuting Hillary. "Lock her up" was just for show. He's flipped on Obama going from "he's the most ignorant president in history" to "I have great respect and will seek his counsel." He's flipped on gay marriage changing his mind as to appointing justices who might flip the current law. He's flipped on illegal immigrants from throwing out all 11 million to working on the 3 to 4 million who are proven criminals, something I agree with him on. He flipped on his feelings for the Electoral College calling it "a disaster" before the election and, well, afterwards understandably calling it "genius." He flipped on settling the Trump University case, saying in March "I won't settle" but settling nonetheless for $25M in September. He's even flipped on Obamacare, going from "It has to go on Day One" to agreeing with Sen. Rand Paul that it should not be repealed until there is something to replace it with. Incidentally, Day One was last week. And the big one, the Wall. Mexico was going to pay for the Wall - not just a fence, but a Wall, a big Wall. Now Americans are going to pay for it at a cost of about $10.7M a mile and we're going to beg Mexico to reimburse us. Oh brother. But there is one thing the President-Elect has never wavered on - his undying support and alliance with Vladimir Putin and the Russian state. He continues to defend Russia even against our our intelligence and military officials. As Andy Rooney would say, "Why is that?"

797. McConnell, Trump, and coal. Nixon goes to China.

Senator McConnell, recent Kentucky history, and a prediction on President Trump and the coal voters. 

Earlier today my high school friend, a conservative voter but one who'll vote a Third Party when pressed, explained to another high school friend, like me a Liberal Democrat, that one problem with Kentucky is we have a number of uninformed, ignorant, and one issue voters - her words, not mine. I couldn't agree more although we may disagree on which voters are which. But is this news? Is it news that we're finally showing up as a Red State? Neither is news. It must be said that Kentucky is a Red State and has been for some time even though we've just gotten around to electing a Republican governor last year and turned out our Democratic House this year. The truth is we've been Red since the 1990s. (Being Red appears to be popular right now in more ways than one.) The growth in voter identity (as opposed to registration) between 1996 and 2016 has almost entirely been in the GOP column.

If you look at the presidential numbers starting with Bill Clinton in 1992 and whoever the Republican has been, the Democrats have gotten about the same number of votes for 24 years, around the 700K mark, while the GOP candidates have increased up to about 1M. So that isn't an anti-Hillary or anti-Obama vote but is rather a change in values, or is it? The Democrats' last bit of strength in our state, outside of Louisville, Lexington, and sometimes Frankfort, was in coal country in Prestonsburg and Pikeville in the east and Owensboro and Henderson in the west. Only Henderson remains nominally Democratic, but it is both a natural gas town and a coal town. President Obama and Hillary Clinton's EPA policies, policies started by President Nixon I'll note, finally took their toll. But the voters believe coal is alive. It isn't. It is dying or dead, especially the type mined in eastern Kentucky.

The GOP has flat out lied about coal for about 15 years. I believe one of the good things which may come out of Mr. Trump's presidency is the truth about coal. The new president has surrounded himself with oil and gas proponents, not coal guys. I believe at some point President Trump will double-cross his eastern and western Kentucky coal voters by telling them the truth. It will be a "Nixon-goes-to-China" thing. It will take a Republican to tell them for them to believe it. Which gets us back to Senator McConnell and why he has been re-elected with relative ease since 1984.

He had his own "Nixon-goes-to-China" moment with tobacco in the mid-1980s, back when he still could tell the truth on matters. Democrats in Kentucky allowed him to own the issue of the tobacco buy-out program both in the '80s and the follow up provisions in 2004, which came to an end with the final payments of a $100B program paid in late 2014. He politically converted all the flat tobacco-growing land from D to R - the 1st, 2nd, and 6th congressional districts, with the tobacco buy-out. He has been rewarded and, perhaps, rightly so, giving tobacco farmers a way out with real money. They're now producing more corn and soybeans and even shrimp and catfish. Kentucky State University added an aquaculture program to train farmers to farm something else. But he hasn't done it with coal, that last remnant of Democratic voters.

Why? Because other than eco-tourism, there is little you can do with empty and topless mountains. So, they've continued to lie and promise a light at the end of the tunnel. To be sure, many Kentucky Democrats have joined in the charade. But it is only a false light and President Trump's gas and oil men, the original GOP in the GOP (gas, oil, and petrol) will, I believe, put an end to it. They'll make sure no more money is wasted on a product in competition with their own. It is possible then, when the GOP lie about coal is revealed and admitted to, that some of those former Democratic-voting Kentuckians may become Democrats once again in the voting booths and then, perhaps, we'll have a more balanced state politically. But it will take 20 years to get back to a good place and we'll all be older and ready to leave the future to someone else at that point, if not sooner.

Nil Desperandum.

796. On Assange

I'm glad he's been cut off. I remember once when I was six or seven (so this was fifty years ago) laying in the backyard by my grandfather's workshop staring up at the sky. I noticed something very small fly over. In time it flew over again, maybe an hour later, in the same pattern. Curious, I spoke to my grandfather about it. He told me it was the government and if I had done nothing wrong I had nothing to worry about. I still remember that conversation.

I've always known the government was up to something ever since that day fifty years ago. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned against was already in place on that day five years later and was probably in place when Ike gave his warning. I also learned that day not to fear my government if I have done nothing wrong. So far, that belief has worked. You may call it naivete; I call reality. The government does things I'll never know about for reasons I'll never understand. It doesn't matter which party is in power. So I choose my politics on which party I believe does the best for the most and I accept that whichever choice I make will never be the best choice which can be made. And I accepted a long time ago that given we have many people making these choices, all with our own perception of what is good and evil and right and wrong - this year about 110,000,000 will be doing so all with their own personal agendas.

None of us are completely right or wrong. Nor will we ever be. I'm content with that.

Here's the closing paragraph of a poem I learned when I was 8 years old by James Whitcomb Riley:

"My doctern is to lay aside

Contensions, and be satisfied:

Jest do your best, and praise er blame

That follers that, counts jest the same.

I've allus noticed grate success

Is mixed with troubles, more er less,

And it's the man who does the best

That gits more kicks than all the rest."

795. It's Been An Interesting Day on the GOP Side

It's been an interesting day on the GOP side. Mr. Trump gave a "foreign policy" speech mostly about Hillary Clinton. He also offered an olive branch of sorts to Muslims - he wants to be their friend now that he's going to be the nominee as opposed to banning them from Ellis Island and other points of entry to the Republic. And he didn't mention "The Wall" down there along the Mexican border he’s been proposing to build for most of the Primary season. Suddenly he is "presidential." He didn't say much else either other than "we're going to be great." No real specifics, just regular Donald stuff. Then Ted the Canadian chose Mrs. Carly Fiorina, HP and Compaq’s destroyer-in-chief, as his running mate, the sort of Hail Mary pass Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon, threw ahead of the 1976 GOP convention, naming liberal Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate in the hopes of salvation at the 11th hour. It probably lost him the convention as conservatives, particularly from the South, then switched to the far more moderate incumbent Gerald Ford who up to that point had been struggling. Ford locked up the nomination but lost the election. Finally, did I mention Governor Matt Bevin, the alleged Tea Partier who lives in a nice mansion on Louisville’s east side, is on a taxpayer-funded junket to Europe? Life is otherwise okay.

794. Where is Crittenden Drive?

Mt friend Michael and I took a drive out to South Louisville this afternoon to enjoy the traditional Green River Style fish dinner at the Suburban Lodge on the corner of S. Third Street and W. Collins Court.  Our after dinner drive turned into an impromptu tour of the neighborhoods and streets - old, new, and gone - of the area.

We progressed out of the Suburban parking lot, itself a new location prompted by the extension of Central Avenue east of 2nd Street up and over the L&N yards over to Crittenden Drive, thereby connecting Freedom Hall with Churchill Downs.

Our first neighborhood was that of Wilder Park.  We were in fact on what was at one time called Wilder Parkway but now goes by the more mundane S. 2nd Street. We followed through the area passing the Wilder Park Park, renamed for Huston Quin, a one term judge on the Kentucky Court of Appeals and later, from 1921-1925, a Republican mayor of the old City of Louisville.

Cutting over to the east a few blocks we ended up on the western edition of Louisville Avenue, the only one which is left.  There was also at one time an eastern edition of Louisville Avenue with the L&N Railroad running down the middle.  One point of the drive was to point out to Michael, who was born just over 27 years years ago, where Highland Park was, since it isn't there anymore.

I had mentioned Highland Park while we were eating as the only real competition Suburban has for its style of fish is served up at the Highland Park Lodge which at one time was on the eastern Louisville Avenue in what was at one time Highland Park.  The Highland Park Lodge has since relocated to the former Okolona Post Office building on a street called Pinecroft Drive but what originally known as Lambert Road.  But, I digress.

Tracking down the two Louisville Avenues led us to the multiple Crittenden Drives in the area.  I have complained now and then over the last twenty-five years about the name-identification problems in this area to the various Public Works directors and offered solutions but to no avail.  As all of this area was new to Michael, he clearly saw the problems.

At the intersection of Crittenden Drive and the cross-street just north of the Watterson, the sign to the west identifying the cross-street said Park Boulevard while the sign to the east said Phillips Lane.   I told him neither sign was correct.  It should or could read Seneca Avenue or maybe Ashton Avenue to the east.  It should not read Phillips Lane.  It is hard to say what it should read to the west.  Park Boulevard is and has been for a century about two blocks west of Crittenden Drive, back when Crittenden Drive was known as Ashbottom Road.  S. Floyd Street turns into Park Boulevard where the old Highland Park city limits used to begin just north of the Dakota Street right-of-way.

All of the east-west streets, like Dakota and Seneca, were named for the Native American tribes which once owned and occupied the North American continent before the illegal immigration of white Europeans.  Oh, wait.  This isn't a political post.  It is a geography post.

At the intersection of this newly built and misnamed east-west street which the city has labelled as Park Boulevard and the other Park Boulevard, there is a sign indicating the continuation of this new road to the west and south along the L&N is called Crittenden Drive, this despite the fact there is another Crittenden Drive, the original one, the one formerly called Ashbottom Road, two blocks to the east.  There is, in fact, a U. S. Post Office, at 4440 Crittenden Drive on that original roadway.  Oh well.

We followed the new roadway, the new Crittenden Drive, alongside the railroad, to its intersection with a somewhat reconfigured but still recognizable Woodlawn Overpass.  This is the overpass we long remember as starting out on (that old) Crittenden Drive as Nevada Avenue and ending up on the South Louisville side as Woodlawn Avenue.  We've always had fun with names changing like that.  Anyway, we followed this new Crittenden Drive which eventually rejoined the old one out past the FedEx plant where once stood International Harvester (1945-1985) and before that, the Curtiss-Wright Airplane shops (1942-1945).  But that Crittenden Drive comes to a dead end somewhere around the old city limits line of the old City of Highland Park which was also, later, the old city limits line of the old City of Louisville.  It was at one time Eagan Avenue but in the 1980s was changed to MacLean Avenue.

We circled back up to the Woodlawn Overpass in what I described to Michael would be a double-loop, crossing over to Allmond Avenue and the Iroquois Station Post Office, which houses the Zip Codes 40209, 40214, and 40215.  Allmond circles around and ends at Strawberry Lane, the southern appellation of the western edition of Louisville Avenue.  About two blocks south of where MacLean Avenue once crossed over the tracks, a new bridge has been built, largely at the urging and with the funding direction of long time Alderman and Councilman Dan Johnson.  This is the Crittenden Drive Connector which leads to a new street entirely, "South Crittenden Drive," a street which wasn't there when I was in high school.

I'll be honest - I cannot tell what was where back in the day.  It looks to be about where the old Kroger Distribution Center was next to the old GES Department Store, in the curve south of the airport, where the original "new" Crittenden Drive broke off from Ashbottom Road and made its way around the old "bottom" of Standiford Field, back before the great Airport Expansion Project which began in the 1980s.

This new road hugs the railroad and the spur lines which feed the Ford Motor Company and extend eastward to General Electric, although they are rarely used east of the Ford plant.  The new "South" Crittenden Drive joins Grade Lane about two blocks south of where the older "new" Crittenden Drive once did prior to 1985.

In our short drive, we were on three different "new" Crittenden Drives, plus the Crittenden Drive Connector.  While Highland Park is gone and Park Boulevard seems a little misguided, and Seneca Avenue and Ashton Avenue are out of place, Crittenden Drive is alive and well in several different and unconnected places.

793. Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

There's an old saying, "Everything in moderation, including moderation."  It's been attributed to many people including Ben Franklin and Oscar Wilde.  It comes to mind of late when thinking about the Duke Boys and their car, the General Lee.  I'm just not all that clear that taking the Duke Boys off the air accomplishes much.  Understand, this doesn't affect me.  I stopped watching TV in 1984, about six months before the Dukes of Hazzard series came to an end.  Then I think about places like Gettysburg and Perryville, both of which I've visited and both of which are celebrating battle anniversaries today.  People from Kentucky on both sides of a war fought and died acting mostly on orders well above their rank. In my post of June 28th I mentioned my unsettled and unsettling self-to-self discussion on the Old South, revisionist history, censorship, and the potential of book burning.  I'm still having that discussion.  Censorship is a big problem for me.  Book burning, deleting history from our history, is also a big problem for me.  How can we learn from the past if we have relegated it to the rubbish heap?

792. A proposal to amend the By-Laws of the Kentucky Democratic Party

Given the events of the day - the Charleston shooting, the president's apparent surrender on Constitutional gun control (just as we have Constitutional limits of speech and assembly), and it also being my niece's birthday, this probably isn't important to most of you. But it is to me. I've just emailed a proposal to a certain governing body for changes to their body of laws, changes I've been writing in my mind since the summer of 2008. I think they're finally going to be heard and have a substantial chance of making it from my thought to their code. I am pleased.

791. The occasional restatement of my political belief

As a kid (I'm now 54) I was probably something of a Southern Democrat. As a college student I started moving to the Left. I messed around with a leftist anti-war style of Libertarianism popular in the 1980s but abandoned it to an even more Leftist belief. Finally, once in my 30s and 40s, I came to realize that the America I knew was a fairly successful country and a fairly successful socialist country. Admittedly, it was so because of high taxes, taxes assessed on and paid mostly by the rich and the corporate. Since June 6, 1978 (or thereabouts), we have been systematically lowering taxes across the board, and especially as a percentage among the rich and corporate, and replacing them with fees and surcharges. a more pay-as-you-play system. I find this antithetical to the idea of "We the people" united in our effort to be more like our Constitution, where, in the Preamble, are the adjectives "domestic," "common," "general," and "our," and the plural pronoun "ourselves," all implying some connectivity to each other and our prosperity. I know I am in the minority among your readers but I still strongly believe our Constitution is complicit in our socialism.

790. When We All Get To Heaven - a tribute to Wendell Ford

There's an old Methodist hymn that many of us know - When we all get to heaven.  It is very loosely based on the passage from the Gospel of Saint John, Chapter 14, Verse 2, the familiar scripture relating the many rooms of the House of God according to his son Jesus.  Well, maybe it is.  The writer, Eliza Hewitt, wrote it in the 1890s and along with the composer, Emily Wilson, was a regular at Methodist Camp Meetings in New Jersey.  If you've ever been to camp, you know there is a lot of fellowship, a lot of praying, and a lot of singing going on amongst friends close and not-so-close - like a big family reunion of those folks you only see at weddings and funerals.  Today's occasion for a blogpost was a funeral service of sorts, the State Memorial Service of the late Wendell Hampton Ford, former State Senator, Lieutenant Governor, Governor, and United States Senator, and a personal if somewhat distant friend.  Ford died January 22, 2015 at the age of 90.

I posted on Facebook a few days ago my first introduction to Wendell Ford in 1971, a rally for the election of Wendell Ford and Julian Carroll held at the old Okolona Democratic Headquarters followed by a parade out to Southern High School and another rally.  There would be many more meetings including one about six months later as I served as a page in the Senate, serving then-State Senators Tom Mobley and Walter Huddleston.  During the week, on February 18, 1972, I dropped into the Governor's Office and introduced myself to everyone.  I was 11 years old at the time.  Governor Ford sent me a letter later than day recounting my visiting his office as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.  After visiting every-so-often with my grandmother, who probably did consider it second nature, I can only say I was following in her footsteps.  I still have that letter.

Through the years, Governor and later United States Senator Ford has been a friend, inspiration, mentor, and, for an abbreviated period, boss - twice.  In 1980 I worked under the direction of a lady from Jeffersontown who was one of his campaign bosses - I can never remember her name but I can always remember those big '70s style glasses she wore, along with wigs that were never quite where they should be.  She introduced me to "working a rolodex."  She had quite a rolodex.  Later, for a brief period in the mid 1980s, between one of those periods of unemployment at City Hall, I was offered a chance to work in the Senator's office in the District of Columbia.  I made a visit, got cold feet, and returned to Louisville.  It is one of the capital mistakes of my lifetime.

Over the years and especially since his retirement from elective office in 1998, Senator Ford has become one of the icons of Kentucky's political history, ranking up there at the top with Henry Clay, Alben Barkley, and, giving credit where it is due, Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr., the only person serving longer than Ford as a United States Senator from Kentucky.  He has been the hero of nearly every Democratic campaign, the one person Democratic candidates seek out above all others for an endorsement.  He had most recently endorsed Jack Conway in his race to be one of his successors in the Governor's Office.

Yesterday and today, Wendell Ford became the twenty-first person to lie in state in our State Capitol, depending upon who is counting, who they are counting, and if they are counting all of our capitol buildings.  And today was the official State Memorial ceremony marking the life and death of this beloved statesman and politician.  It was beautifully delivered by Governor Steve Beshear, eulogist Thomas Preston, Lieutenant Governor Crit Luallen, cantor Colmon Elridge, and musicians from the Owensboro Orchestra. And that gets us back to that Methodist hymn, When we all get to heaven.

I have been enamored of our State Capitol and, indeed, our State Government since my very early visits with my grandmother as a little boy in the 1960s.  I remember the first time I was a page around the age of 7 for then-State Representative Tommie Riddle of Okolona.  I remember returning there when our neighbor at the end of the street, Dottie Priddy, was elected as a State Representative in 1969.  And I have a great fondness in my heart and soul for the time I spent in Junior KYA and KYA while a student at Durrett from 7th through 12th grades, and later as an Adviser for Lexington's Morton Junior High School while I was student at UK.  Then in 1980, with the help of Dottie Priddy, I got to go to work for the Legislative Research Commission, the official staff to Kentucky's General Assembly.  I was, in my mind, working in heaven.  I have never lost my passionate feeling for this wonderful body, working in a beautiful building, in what has been and remains one of my favorite cities on the planet.

Over all these years, I have come to know many, many people associated with that building.  Governors, lieutenant governors, other statewide electeds, and a lot of the folks who helped to put all those people in office.  Through involvement with the Kentucky Young Democrats (and thanks to Dale Emmons and others, the Young Democrats of America), I established friendships and relationships which have remained in tact over the decades.  I see them at political events, BBQs, football and basketball games (mostly in Lexington), and other sundry places, some planned, some unplanned.  Most of us gather the first Saturday in August for food and fun at Fancy Farm.  There are other events where any number of these folks might show up - the Hillbilly Days in Pikeville, Court Days in Mount Sterling, St. John's Picnic in Paducah, or the old Guidiglis family picnic in northern Kentucky, something I have lost track of.

Today's gathering in memory of Governor Ford brought all those people together, a sort of "When we all get to heaven" occasion.  There was plenty of rejoicing at seeing old and new friends and relaying and relating stories of the great man whose coffin was lying in state before the larger-than-life statue of Kentucky's president, Abraham Lincoln.  We were all there.  I saw former governors Carroll, Brown, Collins, and Patton.  I saw three congressmen, Yarmuth, Rogers, and Guthrie - but only spoke to one - a nice chat with Congressman Guthrie about how the 2012 redistricting plan wasn't quite put into practice.  We both laughed.  I saw Mary Sue Helm, who now works for Secretary of State Grimes, but for me is someone I've known since 1979 when we both worked in the office of then-Jefferson County Clerk Bremer Ehrler.  I saw Adrian Arnold, a former member of the House.  We chatted briefly.  Mr. Arnold came to the House in 1974, the same year as Steve Beshear.  Wendell Ford was governor at the time.  Later I stood behind James Kay, one of Kentucky's newest members of the House elected from Woodford County.  I saw my councilman, Metro Council President David Tandy, along with my senator, Gerald Neal.  I saw a number of my old Young Democrat friends, starting with Dale Emmons and Earl M. "Mickey" McGuire, who took me to my first YDA convention.  I saw many of my fellow members of the Kentucky Democratic Party State Central Committee, a body I sought office to every fourth year from 1980 to 2000 before finally winning in 2004 (and being re-elected in one fashion or another in both 2008 and 2012).  And while I didn't speak to him, the most powerful Republican in the Republic, and arguably the second most powerful man on the planet, the aforementioned Mitch McConnell was seated forty feet away, in a much more prominent place than mine.  I did say hello to former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chou, wife of the senator.  Both large city mayors were there although I only spoke with Lexington's.  Many current and former statewide electeds were there, including Alison Grimes (and her father, with whom I had an extended conversation outside the Governor's Office), Todd Hollenbach (father and son), John Young Brown (father, son, and grandson), Bobby Babbage, Ben Chandler, and old John Stevenson was upstairs in a wheelchair.  And the thing is, he touched all of these people and many more.

It was, in a word, heaven.  That isn't meant sacrilegiously.  I do believe in an afterlife which involves heaven.  But today was close.  It was quite a gathering.  The state's powerful and less-than-powerful, all together in a place they presumably love.  It is, I will note, the second such gathering of a place's powerful and less-than-powerful gathered together to pay respect to a deceased leader the likes of which we won't see again soon which I've attended in the last few days.

Rest In Peace, Senator Ford.          

(picture by John Rogers of Glasgow, Ky.)

1. Sing the wondrous love of Jesus,
   Sing His mercy and His grace;
   In the mansions bright and blessed
   He’ll prepare for us a place.
   • When we all get to heaven,
     What a day of rejoicing that will be!
     When we all see Jesus,
     We’ll sing and shout the victory!

789. Gowdy, briefly, a coward.

I think the best part of the 114th Congress so far was watching Trey Gowdy's star fall so fast once he announced that he would have voted for Boehner for Speaker, something his Tea Party/Benghazi zealots simply cannot abide. Of course the BMOC Gowdy didn't even show up for the vote claiming the weather precluded his arrival in Washington DC. Excuses, excuses.

788. Counties Visited in 2014

Every year since 1979 I've maintained a Kentucky Highway Map with the counties I visited through the course of the year.  In two of those years, 1979 (which prompted the idea) and 1987, I visited all 120 counties.  Both of those milestones can be attributed to participation in political campaigns.  I also maintain an Excel sheet of the visits so as to note how many times each county has made the list. And once again, two counties in particular escaped my driving, Lawrence and Elliott.  To date, the only two years I've made it to either were '79 and '87.

So attached is this year's map.  The westernmost point was in Fancy Farm of Graves County.  No surprise there although it is the first time I had made it down to the August event since 2011.  The easternmost point was crossing into Catlettsburg along I-64 in Boyd County just a few days ago.  I exited and spent a little time in Ashland and up to Greenup, where I had not been since Robin Webb's special election to the State Senate a few years ago.  The southernmost point was crossing through the Cumberland Gap in June on US25E.  Finally, the northernmost point was in northern Owen County during a summer drive.

I made it to a total of 47 of Kentucky's 120 counties.  So far the number for 2015 is 1.  For previous entries on this subject, see postings 258, 581, 671, 719, and 759.

Happy New Year.

787. 2015 Resolutions

On the Eighth Day of Christmas it is customary to look ahead and resolve to do this, that, and the other. My Ten Resolutions for 2015 are: 1) Everybody's favorite - lose weight. I currently weigh the most I ever have. It is depressing. 2) Go swimming. It occurs to me I never once went swimming in 2014. 3) More canoeing. This is misleading as it implies I canoe with some regularity. My first canoe trip, on Floyd's Fork, was in 2014 arranged by Councilman Stuart Benson and with the encouragement and great help of my friend Shane. I'm hoping Shane will help me again. 4) Go hiking and/or camping. This is something I have done here and there my entire life, just not enough of. 5) Write more (and not on Facebook). Readers of my blog, Ohio River 606 (which will celebrate its 8th Birthday on Sunday), know that my entries have fallen to just a few each year. Were it not for Sherman Brown allowing me to post his Counties game this past year, there would have been fifteen entries as opposed to 135. 5a) The writing directive implies I should start one of the three books I have been writing in my head for decades. 6) Take a foreign language class in the Jefferson County Public Schools Adult Ed program. In high school I had four years of Spanish, one of Latin, and two of Russian. Language and language development have always been interests of mine. 7) Work on my house. It isn't bad but it needs work. And I need to go through the fifty or so boxes which remain unpacked in either the front room or the garage. 7a) Work on the garage. I really don't need all those old yard signs, some dating back to 1985. 8) Get a little more involved in the causes in which I believe. While I run my mouth on Facebook and make nominal donations now and then, I need to dedicate a little more time and talent. My causes are generally limited to three fields - religion, politics, and theater. 9) Celebrate every day the friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances which make up every day of life. There is a 1936 song stating "Christmas comes but once a year." It is good to remember that other than February 29th all the other days do as well and are deserving of celebration. This also implies mending the fences I tend to erect now and then with certain souls. 10) Did I mention losing weight?