Imagine That !

I don't know what to tell you about Michigan politics. Historically, the urban areas used to vote Democrat and the rural areas used to vote Republican, except for the Upper Peninsula which was always Democrat because of its union heritage. Nowadays, everybody seems to swing back and forth, depending on who has pissed them off lately. In 2010, when we last elected a governor, everybody was pissed off about Obama care, so they swung to the right. By 2012 they seemed to have forgotten about that and re-elected Obama, although they still kept the legislature Republican. Go figure!

My accountant is a licensed and certified guy who, I just recently learned is also gay. Imagine that! It came up in a casual conversation with my hypothetical wife, who said that everybody in town knew about it but me. Anyway, he told us that you don't have to file if your income is below a certain level. If you have a job and taxes were withheld by your employer, you need to file to get your refund but, since I didn't pay anything in, I can't get anything back, so I don't need to file. I was kind of nervous about that so, for the last two years, he had me turn in all my papers so the he could determine if I still didn't need to file, which I didn't. He doesn't charge for that service either, so I guess all gays aren't bad guys after all.

I saw a thing about Wiki on TV once. They said that all their stuff is written by unpaid volunteers, and that anybody can edit any of it at will. They occasionally get vandalized, but the serious contributors keep an eye out for that and restore the text as soon as they notice that it has been corrupted. Apparently, the good guys are more stubborn than the vandals, and will restore it as many times as they need to till the vandals give up.

I don't think that the Tea Party wants to "achieve power on its own". Their mission is to reduce the size and scope of government, and they will support any candidate who promises to do that, whether or not he is a member of one of their organizations. Our own congressman, who represents the whole Upper Peninsula and a few counties in the Lower, was the first Republican to be elected by our district in living memory. He has been elected twice with Tea Party support, but they must figure that he has gone soft in office because they are now sponsoring a challenger in the up coming primary. I personally was disappointed when he wimped out on that fake government shutdown thing, and plan to vote for the challenger myself.

According to Wiki, most of the 19th Century populists lived in the West and the South. The Westerners wanted to include the colored folks, but the Southerners did not. The Southern Black populists ultimately got caught up in the "Jim Crow" hysteria that followed "the collapse of Reconstruction" and were never heard from again. I may look into that some more this weekend. I wasn't aware that Reconstruction ever collapsed, but I suppose that it must have or it would still be going on today. Whatever it is that is going on today, I don't think anybody calls it "Reconstruction".

Have a nice trip, and watch out for the tornadoes!