No Wishy-Washers Need Apply

The good news is that your man Bern won big in Michigan in defiance of the polls, which had all predicted a victory for Hillary. It always pleases me when the polls are proven wrong, too bad it doesn't happen more often.

Wiki has a map that shows who won in which counties, but it doesn't give any numbers. Cruz took a couple of counties in the Western U.P. and four or five counties strung out between Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. The rest of the state, including the Detroit area, went to Trump. The polls had predicted a big win for Trump, and that's what happened. Trump is still ahead on the total delegate count, but Cruz seems to be slowly closing the gap. If Rubio were to drop out and give his delegates to Cruz, he would have it in the bag.

Two guys on the Bloomberg Channel were talking about Trump when I was checking the stock market numbers, so I turned the sound on for awhile. They seemed to be saying that Trump might not be as bad as he appears. They think that a lot of the Trump bull shit is just theatrics and, now that he has everybody's attention, he might settle down and play nice. It makes sense when you think of it. The Reps started out with about two dozen candidates, most of whom were largely unknown to the general public. Any one who was serious about winning would need to find a way to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. Trump already had a reputation for being a mean prick from his TV show, so maybe he decided to play that part in the debates. Of course the possibility exists that he really is a mean prick in real life, and that he was just playing himself on his show. I never watched it but, in every ad I saw for the show, Trump was telling somebody that they were fired, and he seemed to be enjoying it.

Be that as it may, it seems apparent that whoever wins the GOP nomination will be an extremist, and there's still a fair change that your man Bern will win the Dems. What do you suppose the wishy-washers will do if that happens? As I said before, the GOP ran moderate candidates the last two elections, and they both lost. How much worse could they do with Trump or Cruz bearing the standard? What have they got to lose, congress? The congress usually rides in on the president's coat tails but, two years later, all bets are off. Of course, if Hillary wins the Dem Nomination, the left wing nuts will combine with the wishy-washers to put her over the top, unless, they are so pissed that their man Bern got dumped that they stay home and pout. Yeah, why don't you guys do that?

the day after

I remember in election time in the hood every other house had a Daley poster in its window.  I looked on those people enviously, obviously they were all connected and so the man of the house probably had some good job with the city where he didn't have to do much work and he got good pay.  They were probably mostly all Irish, maybe a few Poles.  And here we were Bohunks, and just recently moved in (we moved in when I was four, and everybody else in the hood had been there probably since it had been built, sometime in the twenties), and we weren't even Catholic for Chrissake. 

I never met anybody who was connected, well they probably all went to St Galls, but then the neighborhood kids i knew who went to St Gall, none of them seemed to be connected. 

Garbage-wise I remember that the most important thing about your alderman is if he got you new shiny garbage cans.

Nobody understands Trump's appeal.  They say well in these troubled times.. but if you examine times closely they are all troubled, and even if these times were particularly troubled and we were in some kind of some mess out of the ordinary, why would anybody think that Trump could get us out of it?

I, living in this true blue city, don't know any Trumpists, but I imagine things are pretty red up in that hat on top of the hat on top of Michigan, maybe you could interview one or two for The Beaglesonian.

Trump took your state rather easily.  Cruz was behind by double digits and barely bested Uncle Johnny.  Two days after the election the Chicago papers print out a map showing which districts went which way,  I know you are not as interested in these mundane details as I am, but I wonder if those Trump votes came more from the Detroit area or the rest of the state.  I wonder what sort of people are Detroit area republicans.  I imagine there are still some fat suburbs in the Detroit area. 

We'll be having our primary this Wednesday.  In the last poll Trump was favored but I notice that in the latest nationwide polls he has been slipping to the point where he is almost equal with Cruz.  There are some recent polls that show any of the remaining three guys could beat Trump head to head, but none of them show any signs of dropping out.

Another Great Idea!

I remember one year when all the garbage trucks in Chicago displayed big signs that said "Support Mayor Daley's Campaign For a Cleaner Chicago". My mother thought that it was unethical to use city owned garbage trucks for political advertising, but that's not what it was at all. See, the mayor was proud of his efforts to clean up the city, and he was trying to encourage everybody to pitch in and get the job done. I'm sure the fact that it was an election year had nothing to do with it. I don't think they had PACs in those days, but there must have been some kind organizations that raised money for political campaigns. Wouldn't it have been a nice gesture for Daley's team to actually buy a new garbage truck and donate it to the city? I'm sure, since they were paying for the truck, nobody would have had a problem if they hung a sign on it giving credit where credit was due.

Nowadays people are always complaining about our crumbling infrastructure, but they don't want to raise taxes to fix it. We have a program in Michigan called, "Adopt a Highway", where local clubs or even families go out a few times a year and pick up litter along a stretch of road, and a sign is placed along that stretch giving them credit for it. Why not expand the program to include construction and maintenance projects? ---- "The construction of the next ten miles of road financed by the Committee to elect John Doe for Governor", or "Pot holes patched courtesy of the Smith for Congress Coalition".

Of course you may be right about Trump. I have no proof, I was just speculating. Here is this guy with no political experience running for President of the United States. His only claim to fame is that he is rich and used to fire his employees on national television. He gets up in front of millions of people, insults the other candidates, generally makes a fool of himself, and people actually vote for him. It's like some famous guy once said, "Nobody ever went broke under estimating the taste of the American People."

I haven't heard the results of today's primaries yet. I understand that three or four other states besides Michigan were voting. According to our local TV news, Trump was way ahead in the polls as of yesterday, but they didn't know that I was voting for Cruz.

a plan to restore the infrastructure

OR, or maybe Trump is just a big rich egotistic fucking asshole who thinks he is smarter than everybody else and is used to being surrounded by yes men and toadies who jump everytime he coughs, and looks at the presidency and it doesn't look that hard at all, and now that he is in it, it isn't hard, and the only people who don't like him are a bunch of losers who will be easily dealt with once he has the reins of power.   That seems much to easiest explanation, but I know how you hate Occam's Razor. 

I don't think Cruz would necessarily be ahead without Trump.  I don't think anybody has any idea what would have happened if Trump hadn't run.  The Florida Sentinel has recently come out endorsing None of the Above in the Republican primary.  It turns out they were Bushies. 

I think one thing we do know is that no matter what Bush never had a snowball's chance.  How could the RINOs not have known that?  Don't they have polls and research and all that jazz?  I think what they thought was that they had all the money and once they started running those ads of Bush in shirtsleeves, his jacket tossed carelessly over his shoulder, the breeze tousling a few stray hairs across his forehead as he strode into the sun, his gaze resolute, yet kindly, the electorate would swoon into line.

I have to kind of admit I have been wrong here.  I have railed in the past about the big PAC money, which you have pooh poohed as not being all that effective, and now I think that you were right, at least as far as upticket races like the presidency.  All these officials complaining about how they have to spend all their time fundraising and maybe they didn't have to.  You know it's a little like voodoo.  If everybody thinks big PACs rule the election then they do, but once everybody realizes that they don't, they don't have much power.  Maybe the candidates could suggest to the moneybags that instead of running all those commercials maybe they could like invest in the infrastructure.  Wouldn't the voter be more impressed driving down the recently refurbished John Kasich Bridge, than viewing a million commercials of the man walking in the sun as described previously?

I don't know what's to become of the RINOs.  Lil' Marco's commercials always end with the claim that a vote for him is sticking it to the establishment.  Normally sunny Uncle Johnny's smile turns dark when it is suggested that he is an establishment candidate.  They have a party but everybody in it hates them.  The best they can do is trot out Mittens to denounce Trump, and here is a guy who had nothing but praise for the guy four years ago.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the election, there has been a bit of a flap because Bernie told the big girl not to interrupt him in rather a brusque manner.  She had indeed interrupted him, and when he told her not to she stopped and waited her turn to speak.  Can you imagine if any republicans had wandered into the amphitheater by mistake and witnessed that exchange?  What the hell you call that a debate?

And there is yet another republican debate this Thursday.  I dare you to take a peek.

A Conspiracy of One

I think I've finally figured out what Trump is trying to do. He is trying to make the right wing nuts look bad by pretending to be one and then making a fool of himself. As you pointed out, Trump is too unreliable to be part of anybody's conspiracy, but that doesn't mean he can't be a whole conspiracy unto himself. I can only guess at his motivation. Maybe he is really a liberal at heart, some rich people are you know. Maybe he's got a thing for Hillary, or maybe he just doesn't like Cruz, who is the one he's hurting the most with his shenanigans. If Trump wasn't there, Cruz would be the solid front runner right now.

I don't care what They want me to do, I have decided to vote for Cruz because he has the best chance of beating Trump. As you have pointed out, all the Republican candidates have the same ideology, so the only difference is their personalities. Both Trump and Cruz have abrasive personalities, but that seems to be what is selling these days. Cruz at least is a true conservative, while Trump is a Trumpist pretending to be a conservative. Where was Trump for the last eight years while Cruz was in the trenches, stubbornly resisting everything that Obama was trying to accomplish? Trump harassed Obama about his birth certificate, but that's about it. I'm pretty sure that, if Cruz is elected, he will spend the first couple years of his term trying to undo all the damage that Obama has done. Trump, on the other hand, will be too busy building his wall and trying to round up all those illegals to bother with things like that.

I hear your man Bern is giving Hillary a run for her money. Good for him! I would like to see Bern run against Cruz. Then the voters would have a real choice for a change, and the wishy-washers would have no place to go.

I think all the candidates will still be on the ballot. The reason I say that is my man Rand has somehow gotten himself one delegate.While it is common to say a candidate has "dropped out of the race", the candidates themselves have been announcing that they "are suspending their campaign". If, by some miracle, they did win, I'm sure they wouldn't turn down the nomination.

I have never tried one of those e-cigarettes, but I don't remember why not. I think that, when they first came out, I wrote them off as some kind of gimmick, and now they're saying they're just as harmful to your health as the regular cigarettes. I smoke less than a pack a day and it doesn't seem to bother me. I suppose I would cough my lungs out if I tried to run a marathon, but that's never going to happen anyway.

voting

Oh you know, manners, like hemlines, go up and down, the sixties, which were really from 65 to 75, are forty years ago now.  I don't think our heyday is to blame for Donald bragging about his dick.  I blame the Republicans (of course), well actually I blame Fox news which used to be allied with the republicans, but anymore is allied with those who call the republicans of the Reagan (RIP Nancy) era RINOs.  All four of the remaining candidates (including Aw Shucks, I'm from Ohio, Uncle Johnny Kasich) regularly rail against the establishment, when they aren't railing at each other, and they have scarcely time anymore to mention the big girl antichrist.

But I think Fox started this new phase of incivility in politics.  Right from the start they were yelling and calling names.  When they had a liberal opinion guy they outnumbered him and didn't let him get a word edgewise.  Then they started inviting some of those hooligans into the very civil Sunday morning talk shows, where they continued to interrupt and outshout everybody else.  It's just terrible I tell you. 

I think your primary tomorrow will be a big one.  I think They want you to vote for Cruz who They expect is the only guy who can knock off Trump who They hate the most, but They aren't too nuts about Cruz, so maybe They want you to vote for Lil Marco.  You could vote for Uncle Johnny, I'm sure They don't want you to vote for him, but maybe Ron Paul is still on the ballot and you can vote your conscience. 

I have early voted for Bern (will be in New Orleans next week, a late winter vacation), and against my state rep who is taking money from the republican gov to betray his party, and against the Cook County States Attorney who has been behind a few police shooting coverups.

You sound pretty scheduled, as am I.  I like it because then I don't have to make any decisions, I just do whatever comes next, and the next thing I know I am going to bed, and when I wake up I am into the shower, and then coffee and The Beaglesonian, then the newspaper, then painting, then lunch
(a bowl of vegetables), then my nap, then the gym or a long walk, then supper and the crossword puzzle, and maybe fritter a bit until 8 when there is a Hill Street Blues rerun and I have my single beer of the day, and then off to bed.  Some might think that is rigid, but I think of it as optimizing my time.

I smoke a pack of cigs every other week.  Lately I have been falling off the wagon a bit.  I would get an urge for like just one cig on Friday or Saturday night of my cigless weekend, and I would tell myself I could buy a pack and just smoke one.  Of course I was lying to myself.  I was helpless in the face of that opened pack, little cylinders of death peeking out beneath the foil, smoke me, smoke me. 

So I bought myself an ecig and it has helped out a lot.  When I simply must have a cig I take a puff or two off the ecig.  When you light up a real cig, you are committed to smoking the whole damn thing, but the ecig you can just set it aside after one or two puffs, and it supplies just enough oomph to satisfy the craving, but not enough oomph that you want to go back for more.

The Uncivil Society

Trump was bragging about his dick? Man, they say almost anything on television nowadays! Remember when, if they used a word on TV, you knew it was alright to use it in polite company? Is there even such a thing as polite company anymore? I think my hypothetical wife is right, we did too much stuff in the 60s, and each generation since then thinks they have to top us. We shouldn't have set the bar so high, or so low, depending on your point of view.

I saw on the TV news this evening that Trump held a big rally in Cadillac today at the Wexford Civic Arena which, I understand, is a really big place, but not big enough to hold the estimated crowd of 10,000 that showed up, so they rigged speakers in the parking lot for the overflow. Yesterday they were clearing snow from a normally unused part of the lot because they figured they were going to need all the space they had. The doors opened at 10:00 AM, three hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, and lots of people were standing in line three hours before that. Some anti-Trump protesters were there, but they were vastly out numbered and barely noticed. Other candidates have been holding events in various Michigan towns, but nothing on that scale.

Most of the kids on the bus were more sedate in the morning than they were on the ride home, but not all of them. There were a few kids on every bus that were hyper right out their front doors. I don't think they even saw their parents in the morning, which might be part of the problem. They told us in our training that, with both parents working nowadays, we might be the first adult contact many kids had in the morning. Another thing might have been that they weren't getting enough sleep at night. If I could get a hyper kid to calm down for ten minutes, they would usually fall asleep. I understand that more than a few of them were given regular doses of Ritalin at school each day, but I don't know if they got it at home too. People were arguing about Ritalin in those days, with some swearing by it and others swearing at it. Are they still? 

I hear you about those drunk guys in the bar. When we were kids, guys usually were better behaved when girls were present, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore. I only remember one real fight on the bus in ten years, but there was a lot of what the kids called "play fighting". In our day it was called "horseplay" or "grab ass", and girls didn't do it, but now they do, both with each other and with boys.
It's not allowed on the bus because someone could get hurt, but I also suppressed it because it seemed like a device that they used to work themselves up into a frenzy. I thought there also was sexual component to it, not overt, but subliminal. Maybe it's what they do instead of sex.

I don't drink coffee. I mean, if I'm at somebody's house and they offer it to me, I'll drink it, but I don't make it for myself or order it in restaurants. I don't know why, I just never developed a taste for it. I drink tea in the morning with my breakfast, and then I'll refill my cup and take it into the garage to have with my cigarette, but I generally don't read out there. I drink two beers in the evening before supper, and I used to read the paper while I finished the first one and drank the second one in the garage after watching the evening news. We drink this diet pop from Walmart with out supper, and then I'll have another glass of it while I do my computer stuff. It's called "Twist Up" and it has no calories, no sugar, and no caffeine, I suppose they make it out of chemicals or something. I am curious about what's going on in the world, but not as much as you are. That's okay, if anything important happens, I'm sure you will bring it to my attention.