The weather has been brutal as of late. The end of the Bills’ season was also brutal. Topping it all off was that strange press conference with Terry Pegula and Brandon Beane.
Here are some facts, observations, and heard-on-the-streets:
With Kansas City, Baltimore, and Cincinnati removed from the playoffs it should have gone better, even with all games on the road. The win over Jacksonville was nice and pretty much a whole team effort for 60 minutes. The wheels came off in Denver. Even Superman can have a bad day. The game should not have come down to one disputed call.
I have written more than once that it appeared to me that Sean McDermott was one of those coaches who can run through a good season and get the team into the playoffs, only to unravel in the playoffs. For whatever the reasons, that’s McDermott’s track record. Maybe he winds up as the head coach for another team, but more likely he gets a job as a defensive coordinator.
The team has a solid core but there are many free agents, many of whom won’t be returning. They need a burner wide receiver badly to take advantage of Josh Allen’s arm. We will see how Beane does with the draft and free agency as the boss of everything football, unchallenged by the head coach. Will that affect who might be interested in coming to Buffalo to coach?
While we are on sports, I have taken a few shots at the Buffalo Sabres operations. They have done much better since general manager Kevyn Adams left the team. I don’t understand how changing the general manager affects the play on the ice, but so far so good.
On the political front things are getting stranger and stranger. The craziness of Donald Trump never ceases to amaze.
“America First” for Trump and his MAGA followers has quickly morphed into “let’s go seize the world.” Venezuela wasn’t really about their president’s drug dealings, given that Trump just recently pardoned the former president of Honduras who was doing the same thing. The incursion into Venezuela was simply to get control of the country’s oil reserves. Now there is just the little problem that American oil companies are not rushing to get into business in that country.
And then there is Iceland Greenland. What in the world is that all about? The not-all-together Trump has been tripping all over himself as words flow free form out of his mouth. The Donald “TACO” Trump fiasco with Greenland at the Davos Conference was pretty bad. Canada and the European countries ran right over him.
His “Board of Peace” is going nowhere. The participant countries, at one billion dollars per, are a weird collection of dictatorships and countries that many people have never heard of. Trump could be chairman for life if he chooses. And he thinks it could replace the United Nations? Where is the money going? Bizarre!
And then, of course, there are the continuing foreign adventures in Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran. Meanwhile he’s done nothing about the cost of living. He and his team have floated ideas like 50-year mortgages and credit card interest rate caps that are going nowhere.
It is fun to watch House Speaker Mike Johnson dance around everything, operating with his razor-thin majority that includes various factions that can derail any issue at a moment’s notice. He would be gone except for the fact that no one else wants the job.
In New York the state parties will be selecting their statewide tickets for governor, lt. governor, attorney general, and comptroller in the next few days. The governor and lt. governor candidates will run as a team for the first time in recent memory. The Democratic selection for lt. governor should be interesting since Kathy Hochul’s first two lieutenants did not work out too well. Actually, when you look at history over the past fifty years all governors, except for Mario Cuomo with Stan Lundine, have had problems getting along with their lieutenants.
Republican candidate for governor Bruce Blakeman has his work cut out for him raising money for the campaign. His million dollar-plus account does not stack up too well against Hochul’s $20+ million treasury.
In the 2024 round of state legislative elections there were only nine Western New York candidates participating in the state’s Public Campaign Financing Program. There will be many more this year after everyone saw how the public money can enlarge a candidate’s financial resources. The jury is still out on how well the program functions. A couple scandals have developed. One candidate’s committee representative informed me that the audits of the 2024 experience are still ongoing.
There will be several Western New York state Supreme Court justice seats on the ballot this year, so interested lawyers will be positioning themselves to win party endorsements for those spots.
The only countywide office up for election in Erie County this year will be for County Clerk. Incumbent Mickey Kearns will be running for another term. Might there be a Republican primary for the job? Democrats will make their endorsement soon. Petitions hit the streets on February 24th – brr!
Mayor Sean Ryan’s first budget is scheduled to be presented to the Common Council on April 8th. The leftover issues resulting from unrealistic budgets prepared by former Mayor Byron Brown over twenty years are substantial.
Early voting in the state Senate’s 61st District special election is underway. Here is a link to the Erie County Board of Elections website that explains the locations, dates, and times when early voting will be conducted: EARLYVOTING-KidsSE.pub
Publisher’s note: The next post will publish on Wednesday, February 4th, to include reporting on the Special Election in State Senate District 61.
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