I heard most of what you told me about the recent primary developments on the evening news, but you filled in some details that I had wondered about. I was switching channels during the commercials and I caught some political commentary on the Bloomberg Channel. The commentators agreed that this has been the strangest campaign this country has seen since at least the Civil War, and wondered if it was going to be the new normal. They used the word "outrageous" to describe Trump's behavior several times, but it was tinged with grudging admiration. They said that, every time Trump says something outrageous, it's all over the news, which gives him a lot of free publicity. I said something like that some time ago. The GOP started out with over 20 candidates, most of whom were unknown to the general public, and Trump found a way to distinguish himself from the pack early on. It may be just an act, but all politicians are actors more or less. It will be interesting to see if he keeps it up now, or tries to switch gears and play a different part. If he does, he just might get away with it because the public has short memories. I am starting to see why you think of politics as entertainment.
You're on the right track with those French phrases, but you have them backwards. Savoir faire literally translates as "way of going", and it comes out idiomatically as "knows what he's doing, or where he's going." Je ne sais qua translates literally as "I don't know what", and describes a mysterious charm or attraction that somebody might exude, as in "He has a certain je ne sais qua". I think that comes closer to describing what we call cool in American vernacular. Then again, I had to ask what cool meant, so I couldn't possibly understand it. I did take two years of French in high school, but that was a long time ago. Do the Germans have a word for it? The only German I remember is, "Ein bier bitte".
The three proposals on our ballot were millage renewals. They were specific to our school district, but other districts all over the state were voting on proposals of their own. Renewals usually pass, it's when they ask for a millage increase that people get concerned about it. The other proposal that I mistakenly thought was going to be on the ballot was a statewide proposal to raise the sales tax from 6% to 7% to replace revenue lost when they eliminated the sales tax on gasoline so they could get away with raising the gas tax. Decades ago they took money from the road fund and put it into public transportation, and our roads have been deteriorating ever since. It's possible that this one is going to be on the ballot in November and whoever put the election notice together made a mistake. I find that easier to believe than that I imagined the whole thing.
Our local paper used to be considered a morning paper. The reporters worked an afternoon shift and the printers worked midnights. When the post office, only a block or two away, opened in the morning, the papers would be sitting on their doorstep and they would go out with that day's mail. Now the paper is printed in Sault Ste. Marie, some 80 miles away, so we are probably getting it a day late. The reporting of the fate of the millage proposals should be in tomorrow's paper, unless they're just going to blow it off because those Yoopers could careless about what happens in Cheboygan.
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