Dear Commons Community,

New York Times opinion writer, Roxane Gay, has a piece today asking Americans whether they are ready to fight for the future of our country.   She assumes that Joe Biden will win the presidency, but will face a difficult four years especially with a Republican-controlled US Senate.  She makes a plea to put aside our differences especially those related to race and to come together for the good of us all.

Her conclusion is:

“This is America, a country desperately divided, and desperately flawed. The future of this country is uncertain but it is not hopeless. I am ready to fight for that future, no matter what it holds. Are you?”

Below is her entire op-ed.

Tony

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New York Times

This Is America

The past four years have shattered my faith. But I’m ready to fight for our future. Are you?

By Roxane Gay

Contributing Opinion Writer.

Nov. 5, 2020

Joe Biden appears poised to win the presidency, but his win will not be a landslide. And that’s fine. A win is a win and the margin of that win only sweetens the victory. Democrats can and should celebrate this win if it does, indeed, come to pass.

And still, many of us are disappointed, for good reason. Republicans are likely to maintain control of the Senate, which will make enacting progressive legislation nearly impossible. Odious politicians like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham were re-elected. Though Mr. Biden will probably win more votes than any previous presidential candidate, that President Trump was a contender at all is a disgrace. That Mr. Trump has received nearly 70 million votes is a disgrace. And it says a lot about this country that too many people refuse to face.

This is America. This is not an aberration. This is indeed our country and who the proverbial “we” are. The way this election has played out shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention or if you understand racism and how systemic it really is. Polling can account for a great many factors, but unless they ask about the extent to which racism motivates voters — and find a way to get honest answers on this topic — they will never be able to account for this.

Some Trump voters are proud about their political affiliation. They attend his rallies. They drive around with their cars draped in Trump posters and flags and other paraphernalia. They proudly crow about America and pride and nationalism. They are the subjects of fawning profiles that aim to explain their voting tendencies as the result of “economic anxiety,” as if they are tragically misunderstood. They aren’t. We know exactly who they are.

And then there are the other Trump supporters, the ones who are ashamed. The ones who want to seem urbane. The ones who want to be invited to all the good parties. They lie to pollsters. They lie to family and friends. And when they fill out their ballots, they finally tell the truth. That is their right. We live in a democracy, or at least we say we do.

I expect to hear a lot of frenzied political discourse over the next several months. I imagine pundits will try to understand how the 2020 election panned out and why. Too many white liberals will obsess over early exit polls indicating that 20 percent of Black men and a significant number of the overly broad categories of Latinos and Asians voted for Mr. Trump. They’ll do this instead of reckoning with how more white women voted for the president this time around and how white men remain the most significant demographic of his base. They will say that once more, Black women saved America from itself, which of course, we did, even though some things don’t deserve salvation.

Many will say it was identity politics — which, in their minds means a focus by Democrats on the experiences of marginalized people, which some find distasteful — that kept Mr. Biden from winning by a larger margin. They may be right, but not for the reasons they mean. There is no greater identity politics than that of white people trying to build a firewall around what remains of their empire as this country’s demographics continue to shift.

The United States is not at all united. We live in two countries. In one, people are willing to grapple with racism and bigotry. We acknowledge that women have a right to bodily autonomy, that every American has a right to vote and the right to health care and the right to a fair living wage. We understand that this is a country of abundance and that the only reason economic disparity exists is because of a continued government refusal to tax the wealthy proportionally.

The other United States is committed to defending white supremacy and patriarchy at all costs. Its citizens are the people who believe in QAnon conspiracy theories and take Mr. Trump’s misinformation as gospel. They see America as a country of scarcity, where there will never be enough of anything to go around, so it is every man and woman for themselves.

They are not concerned with the collective, because they believe any success they achieve by virtue of their white privilege is achieved by virtue of merit. They see equity as oppression. They are so terrified, in fact, that as the final votes were counted in Detroit, a group of them swarmed the venue shouting, “Stop the count.” In Arizona, others swarmed a venue shouting, “Count the votes.” The citizens of this version of America only believe in democracy that serves their interests.

I do not know how we move forward from this moment. I am optimistic, certainly. I am excited that Kamala Harris will be the first Black woman vice president. I am excited that Mr. Biden will not lead and legislate via social media, that he is competent and that he may not lead the revolution but he will, certainly, lead the country.

I am also worried. I am worried about what Mr. Trump’s court-packing will mean for voting rights, reproductive freedom and L.G.B.T.Q. civil rights. I am worried that my marriage is in danger. I am worried that the police will continue to act as if Black lives don’t matter, committing extrajudicial murders with impunity. I am worried that the yawning chasms between the poor and middle class and wealthy will grow ever wider. I am worried that too many people are too comfortable in their lives to care about these problems.

I’ll be honest. The past four years have shattered my faith in just about everything. I feel ridiculous saying that. I feel ridiculous that I was so confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, that I believed that if a terrible person was elected president, checks and balances would minimize the damage he could do. Since Mr. Trump’s election, we have watched him and the Republican Party execute their plans systematically and relentlessly. They have dismantled democratic norms with vigor. We have seen an endless parade of horrors, from families being separated at the Mexican border, to a shattered economy, to an administration completely indifferent to a pandemic that continues to ravage the country. And the list goes on and on. Atrocity only begets more atrocity.

At the same time, the past four years have energized me. They have moved me further left from the comfort of left of center. I have become more active and engaged in my community. I find my sociopolitical stances changing toward real progressive values. I am not the same woman I was and I am grateful for that, even if I hate what brought me to this point.

For much of the 2020 election cycle, many of us wanted anyone but Donald Trump as president because literally anyone but Mr. Trump would be an improvement. The bar he set was subterranean. As the Democratic field narrowed, there was time to consider who would best serve the country, but even as we found our preferred candidates, it was clear that getting Mr. Trump out of office would only be the beginning of the work. That’s where things stand. The state of this country will improve if and when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, but a great many things will stay exactly the same unless we remain as committed to progress under his administration as we were under Mr. Trump’s.

This is America, a country desperately divided, and desperately flawed. The future of this country is uncertain but it is not hopeless. I am ready to fight for that future, no matter what it holds. Are you?

Robin Garrell

Dear Commons Community,

Robin Garrell, President of the CUNY Graduate Center, sent out an email yesterday to the faculty and students, urging that while we wait the results of the 2020 election, we should not despair regardless of the outcome because “upholding democracy and making meaningful change require effort and commitment.”   Our deeply polarized country voted in numbers that shattered all previous elections.  When all the votes are counted close to 150 million people will have exercised their rights as Americans.  It is likely that sometime today (Friday, November 6th), Joe Biden will have earned the 270 votes needed to win the electoral college majority.  However, we know that there will be judicial challenges and exactly how they will all play out is not certain.  Regardless, all of us should heed President Garrell’s advice that in our everyday lives going forward, we should not despair and do what we can for our democracy.

Below is her entire message.

Tony

———————————————————–

Dear Colleagues,

As we anxiously await the final results of the U.S. election, we should feel deeply encouraged by our tremendous participation in the process. During a pandemic we voted in historic numbers. Many in our community spent time writing letters, making calls, and sending texts to get out the vote all over the country. We have seen challenges to our democracy and called them out. Yes, establishing the outcome of the election will take time. We accept this because we want every vote to count.

Upholding democracy and making meaningful change require effort and commitment. The same is true for the important work that we do every day at The Graduate Center. We stand for reason and research, dialogue, and belief in facts and data. Our work as scholars and teachers is the very essence of graduate education for the public good.

Let this be a reminder of our important mission and the strength of our community. Working together to advance knowledge and promote social justice, we will catalyze change and strengthen the democratic values that set this nation apart.

With best wishes,

Robin L. Garrell
President

Max Boot

Dear Commons Community,

Max Boot, a conservative columnist,  lamented the closeness of the 2020 election in his latest op-ed for The Washington Post, writing “this wasn’t the blue wave election that I wanted or the nation needed.”

“It should not have been this close,” said Boot, recalling President Donald Trump’s catalog of failings, from his lies, divisive rhetoric and impeachment to his catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the cratering of the economy.

“That Trump did so well in the election after doing so badly as president is mind-boggling and disturbing,” wrote the never-Trump pundit who quit the GOP in 2016. “So too is the fact that Republicans seem to have paid little price for allowing him to ride roughshod over the Constitution, lock kids in cages and spread the poison of nativism and racism,” he added.

Boot said the election’s message was “simple if disheartening: demagoguery and dishonesty work.”

“That does not augur well for our future, even if the likely defeat of Trump himself is an enormous achievement,” he concluded. “I recently wrote: “We’re better than this. Aren’t we?” We may not be.”

He may be right!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez sent a notice yesterday describing the University’s budget.  It is not good.  New York State and New York City budget reductions combined with reduced revenue due to a 5.1 percent decline in enrollment are forcing the Chancellor to make difficult decisions.  He has instituted a personnel vacancy freeze; the reduction of part-time personnel hours; the elimination of travel; and enhanced energy savings.  In addition, all managerial employees, who serve at the highest levels of leadership throughout the University, will be furloughed five days this fiscal year.  With respect to the decline in enrollment, I am given to understand that several colleges are showing increases while there are more serious declines in others especially among the community colleges.  

Below is the Chancellor’s full message.

Tony

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OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR

Dear CUNY Faculty and Staff:

As we await the final outcome of yesterday’s presidential election, and following my last letter about our financial situation, I wanted to share the latest news about CUNY’s budget process and the fiscal outlook that informs it.

It pains me to report that CUNY faces a budget shortfall of millions for the current fiscal year ending in June 2021. As a result of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the University has experienced reductions in revenue, seen public funding significantly reduced and been obliged to take on unplanned emergency expenditures. We have been forced to make decisions that only months ago seemed unthinkable.

This is an overview of the various fiscal hurdles we face:

• The City’s recently adopted FY21 budget reduced CUNY funding by $46.3 million, or about 9 percent of the total operating budget of all of our community colleges.
• CUNY spent almost $75 million on unplanned emergency costs related to the pandemic, expenses that included the purchase of laptops and iPads for students, the cost for deep cleaning buildings, overtime costs for public safety and facilities personnel, the purchase of PPEs, cleaning products, signage and other costs associated with the transitioning to distance learning across the system.
• The State is temporarily withholding 20 percent of senior college aid, community college FTE (full-time equivalent) aid, and TAP. If there is no additional assistance from the federal government for New York State, we are facing a real risk of a permanent cut.
• CUNY’s 5.1 percent decline in University-wide enrollment seen so far will result in a $52 million loss of revenue for the University this year.
• CUNY lost $32 million in revenue for the Spring 2020 semester due to a reduction in tuition and other revenue collections.

In light of the uncertainties created by the absence of federal funding, we delayed the presentation and approval process of the 2020-21 CUNY budget, a practice that would have otherwise taken place in May or June. In the absence of a finalized budget, we have delayed Board consideration of a number of potential actions, including the proposed predictable tuition increase and student health and wellness fee. In the meantime, the University has taken the following measures to help shore up the University’s finances and support its students, faculty and staff:

• The Vacancy Review Board, established in April following a hiring and spending freeze, has reduced payroll costs by keeping vacant or consolidating the responsibilities of existing positions, saving the University $33 million in annualized costs as of September. The University’s total full-time staffing level has been reduced by 468 positions since the hiring freeze was announced.
• After the initial authorization of our colleges to cover only short-term expenses and operate on a month-by-month basis, we have now approved semester-based budgets for colleges. In accordance with current state budget management practice mentioned above, the University continues to withhold 20 percent of state funding from all college budgets and Central offices.
• The federal government allocated $250 million to CUNY earlier this year as part of the CARES Act. That included $118 million in direct aid to students, almost all of which has been distributed to 197,000 students so far. The remaining $132 million is to be distributed as part of the University’s FY 2021 budget. We recently allocated $41 million of the funds to cover colleges’ reimbursement for student tuition and fees, health and wellness expenses and IT infrastructure expenses.
• As a result of our sustained transition to distance learning, we have reduced costs through the consolidation of campus space; the reduction of part-time personnel hours; the elimination of travel; and enhanced energy savings. The increase of 16% in our Summer Session enrollment also generated additional revenue that has helped defray costs incurred this fall.

While CUNY, along with state and city officials have lobbied the federal government to exercise leadership and provide the level of aid needed to stave off deep cuts to academic programs and student support services, my team has worked with the Board of Trustees to offset the losses and ensure the University’s uninterrupted operation.

Unfortunately, with no sign of relief from the federal government, I am announcing an additional spending control measure:

• All managerial employees under the Executive Compensation Plan (ECP), committed administrators who serve at the highest levels of leadership throughout the University, will be furloughed five days this fiscal year. As ECP members, the furloughs also impact myself and college presidents and deans. Guidance on how the furloughs will work will be forthcoming.

We all have had to make sacrifices this year, and unfortunately, I expect more potentially difficult decisions in the near term. The elections will very likely have an impact on the financial situation of our state and city. We will work closely with our partners to understand the implications to CUNY and make adjustments in our decisions as needed.

I thank you for your understanding, and will continue to keep you apprised as the way forward becomes clearer and we consider additional strategies to stabilize our University and drive it onward.

Sincerely,

Felo

Dear Commons Community,

After two days of reporting presidential election results, neither Donald Trump or Joe Biden can claim victory.  The above swing state tallies (as of 11/5/20 – 3:00 am EST) show that six states are still in play.  Depending upon the final votes, either candidate can still win. Trump needs to win almost all of the above states and probably at least four.  Biden needs to win at least two.  Listening to the news commentators, Biden is making significant moves in Pennsylvania and Georgia while Trump is making a move in Arizona. The map above is courtesy of the Associated Press.

To quote New York Yankee great Yogi Berra AGAIN: “It ain’t over until it’s over.” 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After more than a year of campaigning for president by Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and after yesterday’s election, we still don’t know who is going to be president. Because of the number of early mail-in ballots, votes have not been counted in several key states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia.  The color-coded map above courtesy of the Associated Press shows where the election stood in each state.  Keep  in mind that the numbers keep changing.

To quote New York Yankee great Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over until it’s over.” 

I was up until 3:30 am last night watching election returns and am going back to bed.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York City public schools see themselves in a predicament of rethinking their strategy for dealing with the coronavirus.  Over the next two weeks, over one million parents in New York City must make a wrenching decision: Should they send their children into classrooms this school year or keep them learning from home, likely until at least next fall?

Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that parents would have until Nov. 15 to decide whether to enroll their children in hybrid learning, a mixture of in-person and remote instruction, for the remainder of the school year.

The city had originally promised parents they could opt into the hybrid program every few months. But the mayor changed the rules because about only a quarter of the district’s 1.1 million students have shown up for in-person classes since September, far fewer than predicted. That has made it difficult for the city to know how to allocate teachers, the mayor said.

Now, the many parents who have kept their children home, whether for safety, convenience or consistency, need to decide: Is hybrid learning working?

It is a question parents in many other places across the country and world are also facing, as more districts prepare to open for at least some mixture of in-person and remote classes. But the choice is particularly fraught in New York City, once a global epicenter of the virus and now one of the few large urban districts in the United States to offer any classroom instruction.  As reported by The New York Times.  (My colleague, David Bloomfield, is cited in the article.)

“Intuitively, parents understand that the best place for kids is in school,” said Eric Goldberg, an elected parent leader in Manhattan who has chosen hybrid for his own children. “But what is it about the New York City public school experience that is leading families to choose remote learning? When the in-school experience is so compromised and inferior, people think, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

Mr. Goldberg and other parents lamented that the city’s reopening plan focused almost exclusively on reconfiguring school buildings to open safely — which they agreed was the most important goal — but gave little thought to how children were actually going to learn.

As a result, although the city has seen very low virus transmission in its schools so far, many parents and educators have begun to raise urgent concerns about the quality of the hybrid program. In particular, they have questioned a slew of restrictions agreed to by City Hall and the teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, over the summer that limited when and how educators can teach, and that created a major staffing shortage that is not entirely resolved.

That deal, which the city accepted as part of a frenzied effort to reopen schools, held that teachers could not be required to conduct both in-person and remote lessons on the same day — forcing the city to hire thousands of teachers to make up the difference.

The agreement was “probably the biggest screw up” in the city’s halting effort to reopen, said David Bloomfield, a professor of education at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Brooklyn College.

The same deal discouraged teachers from livestreaming their lessons in school buildings to children learning at home over concerns that it would strain teachers and be ineffective for students. But the practice is being used by some local private schools, as well as in many schools across the country.

In an interview, Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, brushed off questions about whether he would consider renegotiating that deal. Instead, he acknowledged that there were major problems with hybrid instruction, but blamed the city for not anticipating the staffing crunch and not developing a better instructional plan.

“They will say, ‘Oh, it’s the U.F.T.’s deal,’” Mr. Mulgrew said about the city. “They should be saying, ‘We’re incompetent, and we shouldn’t be in charge of this anymore.’”

Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, defended the reopening effort, pointing out the difficulty of hiring so many new teachers in a short time.

“Nothing replaces an in-person education for our kids,” she said in a statement. “That’s why we moved heaven and earth to reopen buildings this fall, adding thousands of teachers, an unprecedented testing regime, resources for health and safety, and 350,000 internet-enabled iPads to ensure continuity in instruction.”

The city has spent about $50 million on 5,600 new full-time teachers and substitutes, and has moved an additional 2,000 department staff members with teaching licenses into schools. That is a significant sum for a city that is facing a catastrophic fiscal crisis caused by the pandemic. Last month, the city said it could not afford $900 million in back pay owed to teachers this year under their contract.

Paula White, the director of Educators for Excellence-New York, a teachers’ group that represents thousands of city educators, said the staffing deal was “a watershed moment. Its impact will be felt for some time.”

“Every new teacher represents a significant investment,” she added. “At a time when budgets are strapped more than ever before, every cost has to be weighed against the opportunity cost for other investments.”

But the city still needs to hire several thousand more educators to make hybrid learning work according to plan. As a result, the city abandoned a promise that children enrolled in the hybrid program would receive live teaching on the days they were at home.

The shortage has also meant that many high schools can open their doors only to students taking online classes, because principals did not have enough teachers to staff elective and high-level courses both remotely and in person.

Further complicating the scheduling jigsaw puzzle is that about 24 percent of city teachers have been granted medical accommodations to work from home through December.

Educators across the city say they have found it impossible to abide by the staffing agreement. So, they have created workarounds.

Verneda Johnson, a science teacher in Harlem, said her middle school’s principal and teachers decided to skirt the agreement by establishing that teachers should be able to hold in-person and remote classes on the same day.

“We thought, let’s make the schedule as needed, and if someone ends up with something they find untenable, we’ll fix that,” Ms. Johnson said. “But at the end of the day, you have to do what’s the best for school.”

The president of the city’s principals’ union, Mark Cannizzaro, said educators had “really, really tried to make lemonade out of lemons.” But, he added, “Long-term, I don’t think this is going to be sustainable.”

Jonathan Kingston, whose two sons are enrolled in the hybrid program at Public School 128 in Middle Village, Queens, is furious at the city and the teachers’ union for discouraging the livestreaming of lessons.

P.S. 128 has a staffing shortage, and livestreaming appears to be the only way for students in person and online to learn the same material at roughly the same pace. With little guidance from the city, the school was only able to set up livestreaming starting just two weeks ago.

The city “could have done this in July, August, even September, instead of throwing our teachers and principal into an unwinnable situation,” Mr. Kingston said.

Still, despite the logistical morass, Mr. Kingston and other parents said they would stay in the hybrid program, mostly because their children were so delighted to be back in the classroom.

“So far, we are very happy,” Elga Castro, whose daughter is a third grader at Dos Puentes Elementary School in Washington Heights. “Everything moves to the second place when compared to their happiness about going back to school.”

For all the problems with the hybrid program, educators and parents said remote learning was also far from ideal, though it had improved since the spring.

Some schools are reporting very large remote class sizes, another negative effect of the staffing crunch. Many schools also have not received enough laptops and tablets, and scores of students living in homeless shelters are struggling to log on for their online classes.

Despite such limitations, nearly half the district’s Black and Latino families decided to start the school year remote-only, along with over 60 percent of Asian-American families. White families have opted for remote learning at the lowest rate.

That racial dynamic could undermine the mayor’s assertion that he had a moral imperative to reopen schools for the least advantaged families.

If in the coming weeks only a small percentage of students restart in-person classes, the city has indicated it may increase the number of days that hybrid students can physically attend school, because some classrooms are only about half full.

But if students of color continue to stay away from school in large numbers, the many benefits of in-person schooling — from live instruction to mental health services to hot meals — may not reach many of the most vulnerable students.

That is more evidence that the reopening plan was not built around the needs of children who require more in-person classes, said Mark Treyger, chair of the City Council’s education committee.

Mr. Treyger has recommended that the city essentially start over and offer classroom instruction only to pre-K and elementary school students, children with disabilities and students living in homeless shelters.

“This model is not working,” he said. “I think the time for change was yesterday.”

YES!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

We learned over the weekend that Sean Connery died at his home in the Bahamas at the age of 90.  He had been suffering from dementia for several years.  For those of us growing up in the 1960s, we could not wait for the latest James Bond movie to be released each summer. He was the first Bond and for most of us the best.

Here is a description of his life and career, courtesy of BBC News.

His acting career spanned seven decades and he won an Oscar in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables.

Sir Sean’s other films included The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Rock.

Jason Connery said his father “had many of his family, who could be in the Bahamas, around him” when he died overnight in Nassau. Much of the Bond film Thunderball had been filmed there.

He said: “We are all working at understanding this huge event as it only happened so recently, even though my dad has been unwell for some time.

“A sad day for all who knew and loved my dad and a sad loss for all people around the world who enjoyed the wonderful gift he had as an actor.”

His publicist Nancy Seltzer said: “There will be a private ceremony followed by a memorial yet to be planned once the virus has ended.”

He leaves his wife Micheline and sons Jason and Stephane.  

Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, said Sir Sean was “one of the true greats of cinema”.

“Sir Sean Connery will be remembered as Bond and so much more,” he said.

“He defined an era and a style. The wit and charm he portrayed on screen could be measured in megawatts; he helped create the modern blockbuster.

“He will continue to influence actors and film-makers alike for years to come. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.”

In reference to Sir Sean’s love of golf, he added: “Wherever he is, I hope there is a golf course.”

Dame Shirley Bassey, who sang the themes to three Bond films including Goldfinger, paid tribute saying: “I’m incredibly saddened to hear of Sean’s passing.

“My thoughts are with his family. He was a wonderful person, a true gentleman and we will be forever connected by Bond.”

Sir Sean, from Fountainbridge in Edinburgh, had his first major film appearance in 1957 British gangster film No Road Back.

He first played James Bond in Dr No in 1962 and went on to appear in five other official films – and the unofficial Never Say Never Again in 1983.

He was largely regarded as being the best actor to have played 007 in the long-running franchise, often being named as such in polls.

Connery made the character of James Bond his own, blending ruthlessness with sardonic wit. Many critics didn’t like it and some of the reviews were scathing. But the public did not agree.

The action scenes, sex and exotic locations were a winning formula.

In truth, his Bond is now a museum piece; the portrayal of women impossibly dated. The action scenes are still thrilling, but the sex too often bordered on the non-consensual.

Thankfully, its been a while since 007 slapped a woman on the backside and forced a kiss. But Connery’s performance was of its time, enjoyed by millions of both sexes and gave the silver screen a 20th Century icon.

He was knighted by the Queen at Holyrood Palace in 2000. In August, he celebrated his 90th birthday.

Bond producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they were “devastated by the news” of his death.

They said: “He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words ‘the name’s Bond… James Bond’.

“He revolutionized the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him.”

Star Wars director George Lucas, who also created the Indiana Jones character, said Sir Sean “left an indelible mark in cinematic history”.

“He will always hold a special place in my heart as Indy’s dad. With an air of intelligent authority and sly sense of comedic mischief, only someone like Sean Connery could render Indiana Jones immediately into boyish regret or relief through a stern fatherly chiding or rejoiceful hug.

“I’m thankful for having had the good fortune to have known and worked with him. My thoughts are with his family.”

Just the seven as 007 – Connery’s Bond movies

• Dr No (1962)
• From Russia with Love (1963)
• Goldfinger (1964)
• Thunderball (1965)
• You Only Live Twice (1967)
• Diamonds are Forever (1971)
• Never Say Never Again (1983)

Sir Sean was a long-time supporter of Scottish independence, saying in interviews in the run-up to the 2014 referendum that he might return from his Bahamas home to live in Scotland if it voted to break away from the rest of the UK.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “I was heartbroken to learn this morning of the passing of Sir Sean Connery. Our nation today mourns one of her best loved sons.

“Sean was born into a working class Edinburgh family and through talent and sheer hard work, became an international film icon and one of the world’s most accomplished actors. Sean will be remembered best as James Bond – the classic 007 – but his roles were many and varied.

“He was a global legend but, first and foremost, a patriotic and proud Scot – his towering presence at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 showed his love for the country of his birth. Sean was a lifelong advocate of an independent Scotland and those of us who share that belief owe him a great debt of gratitude.”  

Alex Salmond, former first minister of Scotland, who was close friends with Sir Sean, described him as “the world’s greatest Scot, the last of the real Hollywood stars, the definitive Bond”.

He said: “Sean Connery was all of these things but much more. He was also a staunch patriot, a deep thinker and outstanding human being.”

He added: “‘Scotland Forever’ wasn’t just tattooed on his forearm but was imprinted on his soul.”

May he rest in peace!

Tony

Cindy and John McCain

Dear Commons Community,

Cindy McCain, the widow of 2008 Republican presidential candidate and longtime Arizona Sen. John McCain, said yesterday that one specific incident was “the final straw” for her with President Donald Trump. 

McCain, who has since endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, told “60 Minutes” it was Trump’s disrespect for those who had served in the military. 

“For me, the final straw was the, you know, ‘They’re losers and suckers,’” she said, referring to an Atlantic report that Trump had used the epithets to describe fallen soldiers. The report was later confirmed by other news agencies.

McCain said:   “You know, I’m the mother of two veterans and a wife of a veteran, and my father was a veteran. They were not losers and suckers by any chance. It angered me a great deal. It angered me. And so I thought, I can either sit here and be angry or I can do something.”

McCain also spoke about her late husband’s friendship with Biden in a video shown during the Democratic National Convention in August. She formally endorsed Biden about a month later. 

May God bless you, Mrs. McCain!

Tony