THIS & THAT #9

Donald Personally Called Me!

How Can I Not Vote for Him?

The voice message light was urgently blinking when I returned home the other day, so I pressed the “play” button, and was surprised to hear, “This is Donald Trump, and I need your help to make America great again.” Donald directly told me that “Time is short and every vote counts,” and he implored me to change my party affiliation to be able to vote for him in the Republican primary on June 7. He concluded his convincing plea with, “I want your vote and I want to make America great again.”

I wondered why the presumptive Republican nominee personally dialed my number. Perhaps he knew that when I attended his December rally at the Las Vegas Westgate Hotel, I had purchased five of his buttons. I had bought them from vendors standing outside of the rally room, and did so I could mail them to some of my far-left leaning, progressive friends on their birthdays. I put a white sticker on the back of each gift button, and wrote their name on it, followed by “Together we can make America great again,” and signed it “Donald J.”

On further discovery, I found that Donald had not called me because I attended his rally, but because my wife is registered as an “independent,” and the “Donald J. Trump for President, Incorporated 6467361779” campaign, sent Robocalls to nearly one million independents in California.

Use to Confuse

I kept a few buttons for myself, and when I visited my tax accountant, I wore my black, Johnny Cash shirt. On the left side was my “Bernie 2016” button, and the right side had a red, white and blue “TRUMP” button. The accountant seemed confused looking to the left and then the right, as he went through my financial papers.

It seems that he is not the only one confused by this election.

Bill Did It for Hillary

In one of the earlier primaries, a CNN television reporter asked a White woman in her fifties whom she planned to vote for, and she replied, “Hillary.”  When she was asked “Why?” she quickly answered, “Because Bill did so much good.”

A Black woman was asked the same initial question, and when asked why she would vote for Hillary, she said, “Because Bill personally called me and asked me to support his wife.”

Was that person so naïve to not realize that she was the recipient of a robocall, sent en masse to many potential voters? However, I know for certain that Donald J. had personally called me because I attended his rally in Las Vegas, but since I hadn’t filled out the form his campaign had handed to me, I wonder how he knew my phone number?

Trying to Out-Fox CNN

In the midst of the Indiana primary, Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced that they would work together to defeat Trump. A Fox News anchor asked the network’s reporter in Columbus, Indiana to follow Cruz, looking for a unique angle to this unusual story. With cameras following Cruz as he entered an ice cream parlor, the anchor asked the reporter the most critical question she could imagine in light of Cruz and Kasich planning to work together against Trump.  “What flavor is Cruz ordering?”

They Also Ran

Do you remember when there were seventeen Republican candidates running for their party’s Presidential nomination?

Aside from the few that stayed in the running for far too long, including John, Ted, Mario, Carly, Ben, Jeb, Jim, Chris, Rick, Rand, Mike and Donald J., name the other pretenders in the order of their withdrawal.

You might not have even remembered who Jim was, but you will find out about him and the five other semi-serious candidates by looking at the closing paragraphs below entitled, “They Threw Their Hats Into the Ring.”

They Threw Their

Hats Into the Ring**

The headline’s expression comes from the early 19^th century, when boxing was popular. Anyone who wanted to challenge a fighter would throw his hat into the boxing ring, which was square and not round. The phrase came to be used first to mean to “enter a contest,” and then a political contest, when in 1912 Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt uttered, “My hat’s in the ring,” when he entered that Presidential race.

Apparently Teddy’s hat was too small, for while he received more votes that Socialist Presidential candidate Eugene Debs and his running mate Emil Seidel, and more than Republican Presidential candidate William Howard Taft and his running mate Nicholas M. Butler, Teddy finished with only 88 electoral votes as the Progressive Party candidate, far behind the electoral 435 votes garnered by the Democratic Party candidate Woodrow Wilson and his running mate Thomas R. Marshall. Teddy’s downfall may have been his party’s selection for vice-president of Hiram Johnson, whose mother was Annie DeMontfredy, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
** Feel free to use the expression in simplified Chinese 宣布参赛, 宣布参选

What About This Year?

The other 2016 GOP candidates who withdrew earlier were George Pataki, Lindsay Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry. All but Lindsay had been a governor of their state, and the missing “Jim” was Governor Gilmore, who led Virginia from 1998 to 2002.

THIS & THAT #8

What Is Democracy In America?

Both the Republican National Committee and its counterpart, the Democratic National Committee, appear to be acting against the precepts of a democracy.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “democracy” is defined as “a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting.”

The RNC Does Not Believe

Apparently the RNC’s leader Reince Priebus and his committee as well as the DNC’s leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her committee, are unaware of the latter part of that definition — “in which people choose leaders by voting.”

The RNC is furiously trying to come up with a campaign to deny Donald Trump the chance of being their nominee for President of the United States. This is despite the fact that he has the most delegates to date based on people’s votes, and they will try to deny him, even if he has the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination.

Neither Does the DNC

The Democrats seem to be even more adamant in trying to eliminate any pretense that their race for the nomination is anything more than a giant sham, with the odds stacked against anyone not named Clinton.

The Democrat nominee has to garner 2,383 delegate votes, and as of today, Hillary has 1,243 pledged delegates, and Bernie Sanders has 980. But the Democratic Party also has made sure that Clinton has 469 “superdelegates,” while Sanders has only 31.

This gives Clinton a total of 1,712 delegates, while Sanders has 1,011. Even with the conniving DNC working overtime to make her the nominee, there are still  2.042 delegates available.

Why “conniving,” you may ask. The DNC knew that both Billary and Hillary had worked the Black scene during the years, so they were quite pleased that many early primaries took place in Southern states, or states with heavily Black populations.  Hillary took an early lead when she won more delegates in South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. 

It is estimated that the 712 “superdelegates” represent 15 percent of the total. They include President Obama, Joe Biden, 239 Democratic members of the House and Senate, 21 sitting governors,  437 DNC members, and a questionable category known as “distinguished party leaders.”

The voters in primaries or caucuses do not choose these delegates, but “superdelegates” have an opportunity to elect the party’s nominee only because they are members of the elite upper echelon of Democrats.

The RNC and DNC Together

Finally, with all of the acrimony shown now and will be shown during the general election campaign, there is a movement that both parties are working on in obtuse harmony. Sadly, that is to obliterate Webster’s definition of “democracy.”

The Voices of the People

One woman said that although she doesn’t like Trump’s attitude towards women and minorities, she will vote for him because he was a good businessman.

Another voter told a television reporter that she’s voting for Hillary because Bill called her, not understanding that it was a Robocall. Another woman echoed her choice of Hillary, because she remembers what good Bill did while in office.

A Site To Make Eyes Sore

Picture President Hillary sleeping with Bill as he whispers policy in her ears, but only on nights when he isn’t sleeping with a female or male intern.

THIS & THAT #7

Super Sunday

At 5:30 AM, the San Jose Mercury News landed on our doorstep. Since every section had stories devoted to an activity taking place fifty miles away in Santa Clara, we devoted a minimal amount of tine to the newspaper.

As usual, the only worthwhile stories I read summarized the basketball game I saw the night before. They described how our Golden State Warriors beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, bringing their record to 46-4. They had knocked off another NBA pretender to the Golden State throne. It’s a blessing to live in Santa Cruz, and view all of the home and away games on television.

Early On

 I went to the hot tub outside our kitchen door, and was greeted by the thundering sounds of the ocean, and then by the chirping of the early birds, who regularly visit our feeders and us. I left the hot tub, as dawn was delightfully breaking.

After breakfast, while Carmen tended her garden, I continued to trim our eight-foot tall pine tree, creatively shaping it to resemble a miniature bonsai.

The temperature in Santa Cruz slowly rose beneath a warm sun, and settled comfortably at seventy-three degrees, while the temperature in Miami rese to a comfortable high of sixty-six degrees.

Ador-Ab-Lay

After lunch, we drove downtown and saw a most interesting movie “Lady in the Van,” about an eighty-year-old homeless woman in London As usual, Carmen and I walked hand in hand toward our car. At the first crosswalk, a car stopped and waved us across. All of the car’s windows were opened, and we could see the smiling faces of the four twenty-five year-old men inside. The driver, whose arms were bedecked with tattoos, warmly shouted, “You are fucking adorable,” and I replied, “So are you.” Carmen beamed, since no one had ever said that to her, except for me. But when I say it, I interject a Spanish pronunciation and say, “Carmen, you are ador-ab-lay.”

While strolling to our car, we stopped at Logo’s huge used and new bookstore, and after I found the paperback Ukulele Heroes for a mere $7.98. I prevailed with Carmen that insisted that we have to get a book for her, and she selected the hardcover book, European Cookies for Every Occasion, for the same price.

We did a bit of window-shopping at the Santa Cruz Warrior’s downtown store on Pacific Avenue, for it was closed, and continued walking to our car.

Sand and See

We drove down to the Boardwalk, and it and the nearby beach was crowded with people far from Santa Clara. It was the same story at other beaches in the area. Who would want to be anywhere else?

We did, and so we went to a nearby park, and walked through the woods and fields on un-crowded trails. Then we stopped at a health club near our house, for our new insurance plan provided us with a free Silver Sneakers membership. Less than ten people occupied the two-story, three-building structure. Perhaps the others were still enjoying the marvelous weather elsewhere.  

When we came home, while I waited for salmon being cooked on our grill at the end of our Super Sunday, I remember that there was some activity taking place that day in Santa Clara. When I turned on my computer, I discovered that a team from Denver had beaten a team from North Carolina.

Why Fly Away?

Today, on this marvelous Monday, the temperature in Miami climbed to sixty-six degrees. At 3:30 PM, it’s now eighty degrees in Santa Cruz.