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Friday, April 8, 2016

adventures in politics

Only two passages from Michigan to Canada?  Can that be?  Off to the google maps.  My, Michigan is surrounded by water is it not?  Water and Ohio.  I do see a peninsula just north of Lake St Clair, and then there is a river running between the lake and Lake Huron which separates the countries.  Doesn't look all that wide on google maps, I imagine one could swim it on a hot summer afternoon. But wait, there is an interstate 69 running east out of Flint and it appears to cross the St Clair river.  There must be some little guard houses on each side of that bridge.  Interesting the different names for the cities on either side of the St Clair.  Plympton-Wyoming and Shetland on theirs and Smith Creek and Memphis on ours.

Was Reagan running for the nomination in 72?  I don't see any mention of him in the wiki article.  This was his Nixon's election after he went to China, I imagine that burned the butts of the Birchers plenty.  I see where John Asbrook was running against him, now there's a name from the past.

I had my brief venture into politics in 72, hanging around the McGovern office in Champaign and going to meetings and stuff,  It was odd, the people that spent all day in the office somehow believed that McGovern would win, because these guys are always saying they can win and everybody around it gets infected by that.  On election day they got a keg of beer for the victory party, but it was hardly tapped before our man went down and we used it to wash down our bitter tears.  How could America, with such an obvious choice between good and evil, have voted for evil?  Well I was young.

I guess Michigan went for Ford in 76.  Well he was an amiable hometown guy.  There was always that cloud over him having made a deal with Nixon to pardon him.  That probably never happened.  I was all irate when he did pardon Nixon, but with the wisdom of age I guess that was okay. 

Before the polls closed and the beer got tapped and the returns started rolling in in 1972, it was kind of exciting.  We had a big get out the vote thing where our election judges took note of who was voting and sent us a list of which of our guys hadn't voted yet and we went out calling their phones and knocking on their doors and pestering them.  That was fun.

I wanted to do something like that for Obama in 2000, but googling around i couldn't find anywhere to volunteer.  I guess in Chicago they have their own people for that and don't want no volunteers mucking things up.  I eventually went to my alderman and sure he had a place for me.  I ended up standing the requisite hundred feet or whatever it was, from the polling place in my building trying to get signatures for his reelection petition.  People weren't all excited about him, they were pissed because he hadn't attended one of our condo meetings and he hadn't put in some stoplight we wanted. 

He was a little independent, as alderman go, which isn't too far if you recall, so I tried to sell him on that point, but that made things worse.  Nobody wanted an independent alderman, wards with independent aldermen didn't get no services.

I did see an article by a pundit mention my theory that if Trump doesn't get it, the republicans will no longer have a use for Lyin' Ted who they hate anyway, and will drop him for...  Well after that it gets hazy.

You know one thing you notice during primary season is the voices of the candidates and you realize that whoever wins you are going to have to hear that voice all the time, all the fucking time.

I was listening to Lyin' Ted's victory speech after Wisconsin.  I had just tuned in and was waiting to hear from the pundits and see their whizbang maps but he went on and on and on.  He sounds like one of those tv preachers and not a very good one at that.  The big girl is plenty grating and phony when she goes for sincerity.  Bernie is ok, but he is kind of one note.  Uncle Johnny might be ok if he didn't mention Ohio every other sentence.  I hate to say it, but Trump has a bit of charm, in the way that big fucking assholes have charm because they are real.

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