The moral divide between the two major American political parties has become pretty stark. On the one hand, you have a party which stands for respect, inclusiveness, diversity, and multiculturalism; and on the other you have a party which no longer even feels the necessity to cloak its racist language in "dog whistles" anymore. Dog whistles are so passé, at least over on the Republican side of the aisle today. All manner of bigotry (including racism) is now not something for the GOP to condemn or punish or even be ashamed about, instead it is to be either enabled (by saying nothing) or actually celebrated in front of throngs of cheering crowds.

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We seem to be entering the homestretch of the midterm election cycle, and I should begin by pointing out that this term is loaded with meaning. A "homestretch," of course, is the last part of a race, generally a horse race. So that's what the political media reports on -- the "horserace" aspect of the contest. Or, put more simply: the polls. But the reputation of professional pollsters has taken quite a beating over the past six years, as they have been proven surprisingly wrong time and time again. So everyone should cast a very skeptical eye over all the polls we'll all be hearing about over the next month. Because the recent polling miscalls (most notably in 2016 and 2020) can all be boiled down to one key cause: pollsters cannot accurately predict who is going to turn out to vote.

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We were reminded of an old political saying this week: "Only Nixon could go to China." Only a president who was long known as a staunch anti-communist warrior could open up American relations with communist China in the depths of the Cold War, without being painted as some sort of pinko/commie back home. This week's update might read: "Only Biden could pardon weed crimes." Joe Biden, before he became Barack Obama's vice president, had spent much of his life in the Senate being the biggest, baddest drug warrior around. He actually coined the term "drug czar" and worked with the Reagan administration to make the Office of National Drug Control Policy a reality. He's never been pro-legalization in any way, a fact that didn't exactly help him in the 2020 Democratic primaries. But there he was yesterday, taking the first steps away from the War On Weed that any U.S. President has ever taken.

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[The scene: A room deep within the Republican Party headquarters. Applicants are being screened as possible future candidates for office. There is a panel of GOP bigwigs behind a table, as the door opens and a rather large creature with reddish skin enters and takes a seat facing the panel.]

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The Republican Party has gone through a number of complete 180-degree ideological turns in the past few years (since Donald Trump's hostile takeover bid), but one of the most shameless is how they have now perfected a tactic they used to roundly criticize Democrats for using: "Playing the victim card." A few decades back, when marginalized groups started demanding real political power (or even just "a seat at the table"), Republicans would heap scorn on them for "playing the victim card." To them, this meant these marginalized groups were trading on the injustices they had suffered throughout history to get favored status that would dilute the power of straight White males. They rarely came out and admitted it in such stark terms, but that was at the heart of it. By their rights, these marginalized people should have just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and achieved the American dream and power without any help or consideration from society at large. As far as Republicans were concerned, playing the victim card was a bad and weak and shameful thing to do.

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The Supreme Court began its new term today, Donald Trump just said publicly that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell "has a DEATH WISH," and President Joe Biden is touring Puerto Rico to see the damage caused by Hurricane Fiona (where he will not insultingly toss paper towel rolls at devastated Americans, one assumes). But I'm going to set all that aside for the moment and devote a column to grammar.

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We've long thought that America is at her best when disaster strikes. We've thought this since the massive 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in fact, which we rode out in San Francisco. And we saw firsthand that when life is disrupted, it is disrupted equally. Everyone is affected, so everyone puts aside all their differences and just pitches in to help in the immediate aftermath. Maybe this is a rosy-tinted view, but it still holds mostly true.

Case in point is Hurricane Ian, which just devastated Florida and seems on its way to devastate the Carolinas next. Ian has been one of the biggest hurricanes in American history already (fifth-largest, from one news report) and we haven't even begun to comprehend the scope of the damage or how long it will take to recover from it. The damage isn't even over yet, and most of the East Coast will at least get some heavy rains before Ian disintegrates.

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This column isn't about politics. It's about safety, and television, and common sense. Because if things don't change, someone is going to get badly hurt and/or die. While we're all watching. Which is why today I'm writing something I have long thought: no sane person should ever "report live" from a hurricane.

What is the benefit to having a human being standing in a street fighting hurricane-force winds? There is none. A shot of the street itself is more than enough to show what is happening.

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Program Note: Sorry for the lack of a new column today, but I had family visiting and therefore was away from politics for the day. I went looking for a column to run again today and came across this, from a little more than two years ago today. Thankfully the worst of my predictions didn't happen, but things sure turned out a lot worse than the rosiest of my projections. In any case, it's already been a long two years and we're going to have to put up with this situation for a long time to come as well, so here's a look at what started it all.

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We do try to avoid it in general, but this week it is impossible not to lead our news wrap-up with the ongoing Donald Trump Follies. Spoiler alert: it wasn't a very good week in Trumpland.

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