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.

Biden, of course, won't face any sort of political payback for his move. The American public is now overwhelmingly against marijuana still being illegal. Three-fourths of the states now allow it to be used medicinally. Currently adults can legally buy and smoke weed recreationally in 19 states and the District of Columbia. Next month, the citizens of five more states will vote on whether to fully legalize recreational use. The tipping point was reached a long time ago, but up until now the federal government has not made any move whatsoever to acknowledge this new reality.

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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.]

"Hello, Mister... um... Beer... zyub?"

"It's actually pronounced: 'Be-el-ze-bub.'"

"Oh, OK, that certainly is an... um... unusual name." The panel's chair glanced left and right and met worried expressions. "Is it some sort of ethnic thing? We could work with that, if it's one of the ones we approve of, of course."

"It's root is actually Philistine, but the Canaanites had a simpler name for me, if that would help -- Baal."

"Mr. Ball... Ball... yes, I think that might be easier for the voters to remember."

"It's Baal, not 'ball,' but I'm used to hearing that one."

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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.

Now, however, Republicans absolutely revel in playing whole decks of victim cards. They've turned it into a farcical artform, in fact. Because they have learned that their own followers support them even more when they can paint any transgression under the sun as the fault of those who pointed it out. It doesn't matter what the transgression is or even how serious, because it will soon get lost in all the victim games they trot out. Trump himself is the master of doing so, and other Republicans have been taking note.

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Once again, the Ukrainian military has impressed the world and humiliated Vladimir Putin's Russia. Whole Russian battlefronts are collapsing, in two major areas of the country. In one, the Russians apparently were ordered to pull back, but in the other they were just plain overrun by Ukrainian advances. Militarily, significant gains have been made (and are being made, even as I write this), but there is still a whole lot of occupied territory left for Ukraine to retake (just to keep things in perspective). But for the time being, Ukraine has scored both a psychological victory and a very real military one on the ground.

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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.

I've been thinking about this particular bugaboo for months now, because I have been noticing it with more and more frequency. But the subject remained on the back burner for me; something to be addressed perhaps on a slow day during the political "Silly Season." But under Biden, the Silly Seasons haven't been as silly and the national political media hasn't gotten completely unhinged over some ridiculous made-up "scandal" or another, so there was just no opportunity to write about this. But now I'm gonna.

If you cringed at the final word in the preceding paragraph (to say nothing of the headline), you are not alone. The Grammar Police urge is within us all, to varying degrees. And it is jarring, when you are expecting a fairly formal writing style, to come across a colloquial spelling such as "gonna."

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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.

But already, some of the "We're all in this together" spirit has been showing. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis actually had some words of praise for President Joe Biden, which is downright astonishing since DeSantis yearns to run for Biden's job in two years. But there DeSantis was, praising the Biden administration's handling of the crisis so far. DeSantis is also heavily supporting the concept of federal disaster relief money flowing into his state, to help his constituents recover and eventually rebuild.

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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.

During Hurricane Ian, a weather reporter came perilously close to proving this point in the worst way. Watch the video clip if you haven't already seen it. Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel gets hit by a rather large tree branch that is being whipped along by the wind, then struggles to stand up while clinging to a street sign's pole. Another sign behind him has already been blown down by the wind.

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A U.S. senator just got his comeuppance this week, and it really couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. Senator Joe Manchin was forced to pull his pet bill (that would have greenlighted a pipeline in West Virginia), due to lack of bipartisan support. Because he backed down, the government now appears to be in no danger of shutting down this Friday. Both the Senate and the House appear to be on a glide path to passing a short-term budget deal that will kick the "government shutdown" can down the road to mid-December, at the end of the lame-duck Congress. So all around, it's good news: the government will continue to be funded, and Joe Manchin has now gotten a taste of his own medicine.

Forgive me if I sound a wee bit bitter (or feeling a good bit of schadenfreude, more like), but after a full year and a half of watching Joe Manchin essentially proclaim himself king of the Democratic agenda, it's hard not to feel a "what goes around comes around" vibe.

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Right before I sat down to write this, the January 6th House Select Committee announced it was postponing tomorrow's publicly-televised hearing, due to Hurricane Ian being scheduled to hit Florida. Nevertheless, I was going to write about the committee today anyway, so these comments will eventually be valid, whenever they do reschedule their hearing. And although it might be seen as an extension of what I say here, I cannot fault the committee for taking into account a natural disaster and being respectful of the people of Florida who will be in danger. Postponing was the right decision, in other words, as far as I am concerned.

Overall, two big things have struck me about the committee's public presentations: how tightly organized they are, providing "good television" (which is not just rare but unheard-of for congressional committees); and how disorganized the scheduling has always been. Most of the hearings have not been announced with much lead time (one was thrown together in a single day), and confusion reigns over what each hearing will consist of.

Perhaps this is all meant to tease the public -- "Tune in, or you might miss a big surprise!" That could be. Or perhaps it is just the committee's internal wrangling -- they reportedly have a hard problem reaching consensus on this stuff, so you get conflicting reports ahead of time as to what to expect next. That could be, too.

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