politics and sports

When I was a young revolutionary mopping floors at Herrin Hospital in order to dodge the draft, occasionally I would be assigned to clean the doctors' conference room.  Facing all the chairs was this big revolving blackboard.   You could turn it vertically so that the back was now facing front, so that maybe you would have made your point, but wanted to go on without erasing what you had already written, and you could just spin the blackboard to the other side.

I would always write "SOCIALIZE MEDICINE NOW!!!" on the side facing the back and I imagined that sometime in the next week one of the doctors would be giving a presentation and would fill one side with something about how to make more money and then would spin it over, still facing the other doctors so that he could not see what was written on it, and they would all gasp in horror. 

Socialized medicine was as popular as socialism which was as popular as communism, and not much has changed in the fifty years since then.

Perhaps if you just explained single payer and the way it worked you could get the guy on the next barstool to think it was jake, but as soon as the guy on the next bar stool explained that that was socialized medicine the jig would be up.

Outside of the left socialized medicine has never been popular in America.  Nobody but them ever thought it was inevitable.  I'm surprised that you did.  How did that go over with your brother Birchers?

You wouldn't bring up a single payer bill out of nowhere, it would have to be in the context of some health plan. I think most everybody in the country knows that a single payer bill will n`ever pass through congress.  Republicans like to force votes on bills that will never pass to impress the folks back home.  The dems back home are too smart to be fooled by that tomfoolery so in general the dems don't bring up bills they know won't pass.

In the current climate I think if Trump goes in with less than the majority, he will find damn few delegates will change their vote for him, so if he doesn't get it on the first vote he will never get it.  After that who knows.  Once Trump is out of the picture the reps, who by and large don't like Lyin' Ted, will realize they don't need him anymore and will maybe go for Uncle Johnny Ohio, and of course Mitt will be waiting in the wings with a thumping heart. 

Trump is not going to be anybody's second banana, and nobody would want  Trump as their second banana.  If he doesn't  get it it will be proof that he wasn't treated right and he will go third party.  It's possible he will lose interest at that point, perhaps he will decide that the American people don't deserve him, but even so I think his followers will launch some kind of campaign. 


I was always a Cub fan.  I don't know why. Maybe for the same reason that I always wanted to be left-handed.

It was particularly stupid to be a Cub fan on the south side in the 50s.  The White Sox were always chasing the Yankees and even caught them once, while the Cubs were always mired in last place.  I took a lot of abuse. 

Comiskey being so much closer I went to a lot of Sox games, but every now and then I would be taken to the north side, to the shrine.  This was the only time I ever rode on an el, i was thrilled, it was so high, cars were like toys, people were like ants. 

The north side had trains, the north side had a lot of diagonal streets, no number streets like any sane side of the city would have.  At some point it occurred to me that there was a 5607 N Homan, just like there was a 5607 S Homan!  Talk about blowing my mind.  Did the people there talk backwards, walk on the ceilings and look up at the floors?

But back to sports.  I was good enough for the kid's softball game where the four corners of the intersection were the bases, the street that went right was out, and the ball was some old softball beaten to the consistency of a pillow, but when the game moved to the prairies and took up the hardball i was pretty deficient, though i always liked to play.  By high school when they picked the two sides i was always picked last, and I was always apologetic to the side that got stuck with me.

I followed Gage Park sports a little.  When I got to college and became a hippie i eschewed sports as too square.  When I came out of that and noticed that a lot of my fellow dropouts were also Cub fans I returned to my Cub fandom.  When I started tending bar I had to keep up with sports a little, just to be part of the conversation, but I never got too deep into it.  Now that I'm retired, i follow the Cubs and that's about it.

How about you?  Is there any story to how you became a fan of no sports?