Donald Trump stood on a stage flanked by six Medal of Honor winners and announced …
“They’re so much braver than me. I wouldn’t have done what they did,” Trump said. “I’m brave in other ways. I’m financially brave.”
Trump was so financially brave that he lost $1 billion of other people’s money and then made you pay his taxes. Give him a damn medal, a cape, and a batmobile.
From now on, my shopping trips shall be referred to as Financial Bravery!
I have survive a week on the ballot board and only two more days to go. I’ve only gotten into one fight.
The Republicans have a new voter suppression plan: We have a retired Republican judge who wants to disallow every ballot where the signature doesn’t exactly – dammit, exactly – on the back of the ballot envelope to the application. Okay, 98% of people who get a mail ballot are either over 65 or disabled. They requested these ballots back in January.
I am over 65. If I go from January to the end of October without falling down, smacking my head against the top of the car door, having my shoulder go out on me, forgetting where I put the damn ballot when it arrived and having to fish through the garbage to find it, or can find the same pen in October that I used in January, then y’all throw flowers on me because I am dead.
Sometimes I use my birth name as my middle name, sometimes I don’t. He hates that so I will continue to do it forever in his damn honor. If you sign one with a felt tip and the other with a ball point, you have forsaken your right to vote. If your T isn’t crossed at exactly the same level or your I isn’t dotted in the exact same place you put it January, he will defend his right to void your right to vote.
Sumbitch needs to get a damn life. I am going to sign him up on every liberal email list I can find and make donations in his name to every damn Democrat in Texas. He’ll be so swamped with mail and email that we’ll have to get professional spelunkers to come find him.
That’s how liberals do things.
There was a man tapping on our front storm door yesterday, and usually I shoo them away. daMrs likes to keep the front door open all the time, 10 feet from the couch, which is a point of contention: it makes it harder to pretend to be not at home to Jehovah’s Witnesses, but she likes the light and – happy wife…
Mikey, Captain of Team Fierce
Thus, with Mikey, Marshall, J-Jay and Jack all barking at the intruder, I got up to shoo him away, until I saw all the Hillary bling. So I pointed my finger down and rotated it in a half circle, the universal sign for “Go to the Back Door.”
This gentleman looked like a short, grizzled version of Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. He was canvassing the neighborhood doing GOTV (get out the vote) activities for Hillary and the Ohio Democratic Party. Looking at his phone, he confirmed that My Legal Name III, and daMrs indeed lived in the household. Were we still supporting Democrats? I showed him the tat.
I don’t shave on Saturday
“Oh, HELLO!” he beamed. daMrs and I got matching tattoos of the Obama rising “O” symbol exactly 8 years ago Monday, which was a few days after Barack Obama was elected President. We met on the campaign. I was running two counties for Obama here in Ohio. She came in to volunteer. Which is why this Cubs fan now lives in Ohio.
“Are you going to vote early, or vote on Tuesday?” he continued after loving the story. I always vote on Election Day, except 8 years ago, when I was so busy winning Ohio single-handedly and falling in love that I forgot to vote absentee back in Illinois.
He tapped our info into the app on his phone. ON HIS PHONE. I was about to relate how, 8 years ago, we had to print out all these maps and… “This isn’t 8 years ago, the man has a job to do. Let him go do it!” the non-nostalgic part of my brain yelled through the fog of self-important reminiscence.
I thanked him for all his hard work, we fist-bumped, and I encouraged him that we’re gonna win. And I believe we are going to win Ohio, because the GOP has nothing like this guy in Ohio, not in any great numbers, and not so fired up: those OH GOPsters who are in the field don’t all like the OH Trumpsters, and vice versa.
When these folks come to your door, answer it and let them know when you’re intending to vote. It will help them to know whom they have to bug and when, in case they haven’t voted yet. Thank them profusely, it’s all the pay most of them get. Then send them on their way to get the job done; time is short and every 3 minutes spent with you is one less door they can knock. But when a Republican canvasser comes to your door, still answer it; but then do this:
“Lemme tell ya ’bout 8 years ago…”
Picture it: Defiance, Ohio, 2008…
I have alluded to this many times over the years, but I need to come right out and confess, because it’s important as setup. I used to be a RINO – a Republican In Name Only – because I was a young man in a hurry, and the GOP was the only game in town.
In Illinois, my State Rep was the IL House GOP Leader (sometimes, Speaker). My GOP State Senator was President of the Senate. My Congressman was Henry Hyde – yes, THAT Henry Hyde. Most of my local allies were Republican (we had other parties within our city elections that did not align with the Dems or GOP) and the local Democrats were a Gang of Eight septuagenarians who sat around polishing their “McGovernment” buttons and wringing their hands.
It really was a thing.
I was a young man. In a hurry. So once I had won local office and was hungry for more, I made bad choices. Regardless of other regrets, one positive outcome from my ambitious weakness was that almost everything I know about winning elections comes from being a very attentive cog in the DuPage County Republican Machine.
One fine summer day in 2004, it was my duty to babysit an aging, ailing Henry Hyde at our annual County GOP golf fundraiser. He was a nice guy, a man of honor, sometimes misplaced, sometimes misused, but oh! did he get a twinkle in his eyes around the young ladies. They, and many older ones, fawned over Henry in his wheelchair like a favored grandfather at a summer picnic. He was harmless, now: twinkle was all he could do anymore.
Later in the afternoon, after Henry had gone home, the honored guest/keynote speaker arrived – Alan Keyes (R – Carpetbag) who moved from Maryland to Calumet City to run in the US Senate Race against a skinny black kid with big ears and a funny name. Keyes is a Conservative nutjob, a true-believer in everything that is wrong about the Right. He worked the outdoor crowd in a grey suit (no tie) and gym shoes, almost disappearing from view at times, not because he was mobbed, but because he is tiny.
I parked myself under the overhang of a refreshment stand on a small hill. Not only was I closer to the beer there, I also had a very good panoramic view of a few hundred folding chairs in front of the small trailer/stage set up for his speech. Slowly the seats filled up with an entire generation of white-flight suburbanites, ready to be wowed by the Conservative firebrand with the right skin color to maybe take the Senate fight to Brock O’Whozits. Lighting a cigar, I leaned against the wall to watch the speech.
Like so many other God-smacked true-believers, Keyes absolutely loses his shit over a woman’s right to control her own body. After doing a stanza on his biography and a stanza on the race, Keyes started in on abortion, with inconsiderate sideswipes at the whole concept of women’s issues. He was hardly three sentences into that, however, when it happened: a woman about three quarters of the way back got up and left.
Then another. And another. And another one. Then several at a time. All women. All Republicans. All getting up and leaving in silent protest. By the time the speech was over, half the women in the audience had drifted away. I already knew Barack Obama would win the Senate seat. That fine summer day, I learned Obama would win big. He did, by the biggest margin in Illinois history.
Now four days before Election Day, twelve years later, as President Obama is finishing his second term, I also know that Hillary Clinton will win big to succeed him in the White House. When did I learn that?
One fine summer day. In 2004.
Cub fans are born, not made. It just takes a little bit to realize you are one.
My father loves to tell the story: I was ensconced in my seat at Wrigley, paging through comic books. It was not yet 1969, and 1945 was still not impossibly far away. Cub legends like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ron Santo strode the field. Dad was watching the game, wishing his son was more of a baseball fan. An older Italian gentlemen, observing all this, leaned over and asked, “Whatsa matter, little boy? Don’t you like-a da baseball?”
In the bottom of the ninth, Ernie Banks hit a walk-off home run. As of that magical moment, and ever since, I DO like-a da baseball. And I love-a my Cubs. Like my father before me and his father before him.
I never met my grandfather, who died a few years after the Cubs lost the ’45 series. He was a plumber throughout the Depression in Chicago although, at one point, he had bigger dreams. A talented semi-pro catcher, he was scouted by the Yankees and invited to a try-out. His mother convinced him playing a child’s game was no way to make a living. If he had become a Yankee… I can’t even complete the thought, nor contemplate the disastrous chain of events which would have then ensued.
But he stayed, and struggled, and provided, and root, root, rooted for the Cubs, and had a couple of sons, both of whom are still alive. He died when Dad was 19, at Mass, in the arms of a priest. Sure, he went straight to Heaven.
And last night, he sent some Heaven back down on his namesakes, three additional generations’ worth.
My father was born in the Depression, and was a talented athlete in his own right, although golf was his game. Still is. In his childhood, the Cubs were in the middle of a string of triennial World Series appearances – ’29, ’32, ’35, ’38 – all of which were, obviously, lost. But the clock-like regularity of Cub National League dominance, briefly regained in 1945, belied the decades of absolute futility that were to follow.
Via Catholic Charities, I was adopted into that futility in 1962. Despite my South Side Sox Fan Mom (whose family is the template for the Hachecristo clan) it was inevitable that I become a Cub fan – I was even born on the North Side. Until that magical Ernie Banks home run, though, I hadn’t realized it. Little did I know the great joy and great pain that would follow.
Little, too, did I know that my family fandom of futility was part of a much bigger family. Years and years and years and years of loving a sports team despite their failures has created a much larger family of millions, across the country and across the globe, whose shared last name is “Cubs Fan.” Yesterday, in the middle of a Kroger in the middle of Ohio, I shared a fist-bump with another brother in a Cubs tee shirt.
Yesterday, too, I called my Dad back in the Chicago ‘burbs, still in the same house I grew up in. Yes, it was Game 7, but I would have called anyway, given the significance of the date: November 2.
You see, the Cubs won their World Series on my Dad’s 86th birthday.
We did it, Ernie. We made it, Dad.
“There are 108 stitches in a baseball. There are 108 beads on the Catholic Rosary.” (Bull Durham) There are 108 years in a Cubs drought. And not one more.
Happy Birthday, Dad. Many happy returns. From the entire Cubs family. And your son.
By Deb Twyman
As a high school government teacher and Department Chair, I’ve run more than my fair share of school wide elections in presidential election years. One thing was always consistent – however the kids voted, they appeared to be following their parents example. Granted, the percentages were not always the same, but the winner of the student election inevitably mirrored the actual election results.
I’m getting old and I wanted to make certain that my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me so I went back and looked it up. The gold standard for student elections has always been the venerable Scholastic Student Mock Election. Scholastic’s first election was held back in 1940, and since then student voters have only picked a different candidate from the one who won the general election twice: in 1948 and 1960. As polling goes, this is a pretty darned good track record.
That’s why these most recent results bode well for Clinton. In Scholastic’s student election, which included 153,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Clinton won that vote, coming in with 52% of the vote to Trump’s 35%.
The EveryKidVotes! mock election, which includes more than 700,000 students across the US and runs through November 4th is showing, as of this writing, Hillary winning with 68% of the votes and Trump at 31%.
The latest results released today from Newsela also showed similar results. In this case, more than 380,000 students in grades 2 through 12 voted overwhelmingly to elect Hillary Clinton. When the votes were counted, Clinton took 57% to Donald Trump’s 32%. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson split the remainder.
Kids, particularly little kids tend to vote the way their parents do, and if that holds true in this election it bodes well for Hillary.
