Michele gave me a new mechanical watch for my birthday and I want to brag about it (without seeming to be bragging too much, of course). It is a Chinese watch made by the Tianjin Watch Factory which, at first glance, doesn’t seem like much to brag about but Tianjin has a great history.

The Tianjin Watch Factory, under the brand name Sea-Gull, is the world’s largest manufacturer of mechanical watch movements. According to Wikipedia, the Tianjin Watch Factory makes about twenty-five percent of all the mechanical movements worldwide. That is a whole bunch of watch movements, even if most of them are in watches with other names, including many Swiss names. As an aside, according to Google: a watch movement is considered Swiss if: the movement has been assembled in Switzerland and, the movement has been inspected by the manufacturer in Switzerland and; the components of Swiss manufacture account for at least 50 percent of the total value, without taking into account the cost of assembly. End aside.

To sort of start at the beginning, in 1955, the Chinese government put together four Chinese watchmakers to form the government-owned Tianjin Watch Company. In those days, the three main chronograph movement manufacturers were all Swiss: Lemania, Valjoux and Venus. To raise expansion money, Venus wanted to sell the machinery they had that made their excellent, but expensive to produce, Caliber 175 movement so they could upgrade to a less expensive design (they changed from a tower of gears that moved to start the stopwatch function to a simpler cam system). In 1963 the government – a committee, actually, that according to the factory was headed by the Ministry of First Light Industry and included the Air Force Command, Naval Command, Naval Supplies, Naval Navigation units and other departments totaling 38 senior officers participated – assigned Tianjin Watch Company the task of producing a Pilot’s Watch for the Air Force and Tianjin, the Chinese government, really, bought the Caliber 175 equipment and the design rights from Venus. Tianjin then upgraded the original 17-jewel movement to a new 19-jewel movement, the ST19, to make a more robust watch that could take the vibration and shock of being in a fighter jet. The final design was approved in 1965 – but, for some unknown reason 1963 has become the identifier – and Tianjin built 1700 of them for the Air Force under the name Sea-Gull.   

Ten years ago, in May 2009, I bought a fake Patek Philippe mechanical watch, from a fake watch dealer in a back alley off of Nanjing Road in Shanghai. As an aside, I was going to say Nanjing Road is roughly the equivalent of Fisherman’s Wharf or Times Square, but that isn’t really quite accurate. In Europe, many cities have a blocked off walking/shopping area that is both a tourist area and a local hangout, Chinese Cities have similar areas, except they are always a long, wide, main street (at least the shopping streets we saw were). Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s version. End aside. The fake Patek Philippe, it turned out, in an ironic twist, became my favorite watch. Watches have been getting bigger and my fake Patek Philippe was the largest watch I have and my other watches, being older and smaller, seemed increasingly outdated, it kept good time, and I liked the way it looked with its simple case and see-through back that showed off the mechanical works. Even though it was relatively expensive for a back alley watch, about $225, Michele remembers, ten years on, like any mechanical watch, it needs cleaning to run accurately. The last time I had a mechanical watch cleaned and oiled, it set me back $350 and I haven’t wanted to spend that much on this watch. Actually, I probably would except that the fake stainless steel finish is wearing off.

Michele wanted to replace my now non-op fake watch and she thought that replacing it with another Chinese watch had a – for lack of a better word – whimsical symmetry. After wandering around the web for who knows how long, Michele came up with the Tianjin Seagull Watch Group’s Sea-Gull 1963.

A digital watch is a tool for keeping time – in Formula One, they measure lap times to a thousandth of a second, no mechanical watch can do that – a mechanical watch has a slightly different raison d’être. They are artifacts of human mechanical cleverness and design, in a way, and they are also jewelry, in a way. Nobody pays $150,000 for an A. Lange & Sohne Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar Terraluna – or even $35,000 for a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, for that matter – because it keeps better time. Yeah, they keep pretty good time but, if you really want to keep time, use your smartphone. Mechanical watches are sold on heritage, among other things, and more than a couple of watch companies have reissued their most iconic designs to play on that heritage. Sea-Gull is not only a huge manufacturer of watch parts but they have been making mechanical watches since 1955 and they have been both expanding and moving upscale so in 2011 they decided to show their heritage by reissuing the Sea-Gull 1963, upgraded to 21 jewels, to celebrate its 50th Anniversary {sic}.

Since the original reissue was the same size as the original 1963, and the current reissue is now even larger, Michele spent even more time online finding the original reissue, at an online shop specializing in Russian watches in Munich, Germany. He likes them so much, it is the only non-Russian watch he sells. Now, thanks to Michele, I am the proud owner of a Sea-Gull 1963 Chronograph Official Pilot’s Watch with a Seagull ST19 movement, which arrived with a package of German Russian-style crackers.

“We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” President John F. Kennedy at the Yale University Commencement, 1962.

We all think the other guy listens and reads Fake News and we are right. The other guy does listen to Fake News and we are all, to somebody, the other guy. By way of example, here are a couple of headlines from June 20th. After Iran’s Drone Attack, Trump Says This Country ‘Will Not Stand for It‘ is from the New York Times, whose default position is that Trump is more dangerous than a box of snakes, and the headline and the accompanying article suggest that Trump might attack Iran any time. Over at Fox, whose default position is that Trump is close to the Second Coming, the headline is: Measured Responses Ahead – Top lawmakers speak out after Situation Room briefing with Trump on Iran Threat suggests a more reasoned response, while, over at Al Jazeera the headline also suggests Trump is more reasonable: Iran accuses US of ‘provocation’ as Trump downplays drone strike. All are factual and all are filtered news and, to a certain extent, Fake News.

There seem to be two groups of Democrats, people who are already for a candidate – and I am sort of in that camp, having several people I favor and several that, right now, I wouldn’t vote for – and people who want to wait until they hear from everybody. My pitch is that no matter what group you fall in, if you are going to vote, you should watch the upcoming debates. They will probably be the only unfiltered look at the candidates that we will ever get. I’m a political junkie so the fact that I enjoyed the 2016 debates might not count for much, but enjoyment is not the main purpose here, one of these people might end up running the country and, even if you view spending two hours out of your life watching the debates as a pain in the ass, this year we do need to pay attention. All that said, I watched both the Democratic and Republican debates four years ago and the earlier ones, especially, were fascinating; there were more people and a bigger range of answers that seemed less processed.

The first night, Wednesday, June 26 – at 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time on NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo – will feature Senator Cory Booker, former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Maryland Congressperson John Delaney, Hawaii Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Former Congressperson Beto O’Rourke, Ohio Congressperson Tim Ryan, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (in alphabetical order). Yikes! that is a long list – it’s hard not to drift off in the middle – clearly Elizabeth Warren is the heavyweight in this group but I am also interested in how Tulsi Gabbard and Jay Inslee will do. And why is Castro almost invisible in this race? He is a very impressive guy.

The second night, Thursday, June 27 – same time and place – will feature Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, Former Vice-President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, California Senator Kamala Harris, Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, Bernie Sanders, and almost local, to me, Congressperson Eric Swalwell, along with two interesting and more serious than they, at first, might seem, outsiders, self-help guru Marianne Williamson, and businessman turned social media star Andrew Yang. Like the Republicans in 2016, the debaters who poll highest will be in the middle so Biden and Sanders will be next to each other, the archetype political glad-hander next to the political loner should be very interesting.

Watch the debates; not only is being an informed Citizen good for you, it is good for the Country. The debates are on NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo, Wednesday and Thursday, June 26th and 27th at 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time.

Mike Gravel says he is running for President but what he really wants to do is stand on the sidelines and throw Truth Bombs. OK, that’s way too snide, too snide to actually encompass the bigger truth – but I liked the line so I kept it – to say it more accurately, as Gravel says on his ActBlue Donate page, Sen. Mike Gravel is trying to qualify for the Democratic debates to force the conversation to the left and criticize Wall Street Democrats like Joe Biden to their faces. He is 87, and that, among other drawbacks, make his chances of getting the nomination zero but what he has to say should be heard, in my opinion, and the way to do that is to get him to the debate which is why I’m suggesting you send him a buck.

I understand that Gravel is considered a fringe candidate but only in today’s strange main-stream media feedback loop, wherein war is considered sensible and we can’t afford the Green New Deal to save the planet because we have to give very rich people a tax cut. Gravel is considered a fringe candidate because he is supposed to be a leftist looney. That Gravel is a leftist is true, certainly by today’s standards, after all, he is against our continual war going all the way back to Vietnam – he was instrumental in getting The Pentagon Papers published – and very pro doing something big about Global Climate Change. It is pretty easy to say that he is looney – just look at his campaign ad below – but I think it is more useful to think of him as an eccentric old uncle that always tells the truth even when it is embarrassing. As FiveThirtyEight said: He is a former two-term United States senator, and while his candidacy is not plausible, it is principled. Send him a buck, it’ll be worth it.

I am in favor of Impeaching Trump. More accurately, I am in favor of Impeaching Trump if he is guilty of High Crimes and Misdemeanors or if he hasn’t committed any High Crimes or Misdemeanors, shutting up about the whole thing. It seems to me that what Speaker Pelosi is doing by saying: “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,” is totally misguided. If Trump has committed crimes worthy of prison – and if is the operative word here – then he should not be president. This statement seems to me to be exactly what so many people hate about inside the beltway politics.

Laurence Tribe, a Constitutional legal scholar at Harvard Law School, has come up with a workaround. As I understand it, Pelosi thinks Trump is guilty of High Crimes or Misdemeanors but is concerned that most people – or so we are told by polls – don’t want him Impeached. Tribe says House Impeachment Inquiry —> House Hearing of Both Sides —> Verdict of high Crimes —> Choice by House of Representatives between (a) House Resolution of Condemnation (no Senate trial) or (b) Impeachment Trial in Senate. It is an interesting article by somebody who has actually thought about it. Check it out.

…are two movies that I really liked but have been hesitant to recommend. They are documentaries which is a plus in my book but not in everybody’s and they are political which might turn off even more people. My fear is that they are mediocre movies and I only enjoyed them – thoroughly, I might add – because I liked the plot and am stunned senseless by my infatuation with the stars, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Maybe that is the case but I don’t think so, especially because they are garnering awards at Film Festivals. The movies are similar in that they both involve unknown women running against the Democratic establishment in the primaries; in Time for Omar’s case, it is for the Minnesota Senate in 2016 and in Knock Down the House, it is four women, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Amy Vilela of Nevada, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Paula Jean Swearengin of West Virginia running in the 2018 Federal primaries.

Both of these films take place when Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez were still unknowns before they became national figures. National heroes to some, including me, and arch villains to others. AOC, as Alexandria is almost universally known, is probably the most famous because she has been instrumental in making progressive policies, especially The Green New Deal, acceptable talking points and she is featured – in the negative – so often on FOX. Ilhan, because of her vocal disapproval of Isreal’s policy towards Palestinians, is one of those rare people to draw the ire of both Republican President Trump and Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer.

I have written this paragraph several times, trying to explain why I think both these movies would be worth your time but I’ve come to the conclusion that my best bet is just to show the trailers. Time for Omar is available of Amazon and Knock Down the House is available on Netflix.