A few days ago we finished the biennial reenactment of the Civil War – the 2010 elections. While this is a supposedly bloodless sport, the biennial result is “a house divided” where one side “wins” and the other “loses”. The aim, especially strong today, is to kill the opposing point of view, relevant though it […]
Thursday afternoon I went over to the Tomb, formerly known as the local DFL (Democrat) headquarters in my town. There were several staff and volunteers working to make order out of the chaos that such places become at the end of a long and chaotic campaign. This was a Tomb, not a Nightclub after a […]
I write having only the sketchiest of information about yesterdays total election results. But I don’t write from inside a soundproof booth either. Yesterday I spent 7 1/2 hours on election judge duty in a precinct ten or so miles from home. My assignment was to hand out and explain ballots, so I had eye […]
I’m writing this post on Monday night, November 1. I will click “publish” when I return from being an Election Judge sometime on Tuesday night, November 2. Except for the last sentence, this post was written before the polls opened anywhere in the U.S., or a single vote was officially counted. Late this afternoon I […]
Quite frequently we have an 11-year old house guest – we’re his kid-sitter for, usually, a few hours. He’s a nice kid. Invariably, though, at some early point in his visit he’ll make the declaration, “I’m bored“, with the direct implication that it is our responsibility to un-bore him. I don’t take the bait. Life […]
I am overwhelmed with political information – it has to be like being overrun by a tsunami (without minimizing the latest tragedy in Indonesia). The instinct is not to master or control the incoming data, but how to survive it. I won’t run and hide, but after the election, my guess is that I will […]
I walked away from a TV commentary show a few hours ago. The host is someone I like and respect; his guests were four leaders from a few of the infinite number of different organizations that claim to be of like minds, but really have very narrow, poorly thought out, and often opposing agendas. The […]
I vote absentee as I’m an election judge next Tuesday. This morning I was looking at my absentee ballot for November 2. There are 109 candidates for 42 positions. It is a daunting, impossible task to know everything about everyone. A group of us are collaborating to find out who might know something about some […]
Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, has confirmed that the GOPs major objective is to make President Obama a one-term President. So, if the GOP prevails next week, the gridlock of the first two years of the Obama administration will only intensify. The GOP leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have […]
NOTE: The video of the entire speech by President Obama in Minneapolis on October 23 is accessible at the end of this post. Sometimes I hear talk of Democrats and Republicans being the same: “they’re both alike“; “they’re all liars”; “Democrats are only the lesser of two evils“. This kind of rhetoric comes from both […]