Airlines cap prices for Hurricane Irma evacuees

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13. The newspaper my dad worked for was in Republican upstate NY

I remember, at the tender age of 17, putting a Republican Congressman from near Watertown, NY, at ease a few years after Franco died (I had just come home from living in Spain). He was all concerned that the Communist Party was now legal again in Spain, and might gain traction. I told him I had just lived there, and spoke two of the main languages spoken in Spain. I told him that the PCE was a passing fetish, and it would fade into obscurity UNLESS we made a big stink about it. To his credit, he did listen, and he indeed made no stink about it. Sure enough, the PCE faded into obscurity.

The Republican areas of New York State are notorious for some of their right wing extremism, as I recall. My dad used to often have contact with a Republican Congressman named Jerry Solomon, who was sort of a Steve King of the northeast. Although he knew my dad to be a "libbrul," he nevertheless cited him in the Congressional Record as being fair in his reporting (Sen. Moynihan did the same in the Senate). Via my dad, I knew plenty of New York Republicans. Some were nut cases like Al D'Amato, and some were genuinely nice guys (Javits, Rockefeller). But I'd prefer their company to some of the nut cases we have in Texas, like Louie Gohmert and Greg Abbott, or slime balls like Ted Cruz.