7 posts tagged “politics”

This is something I squirreled away back in November. It's about our new president. I've written about him before. But this is different.

Right after the election, the Telegraph newspaper's website in England printed "50 Facts You Might Not Know" about Barack Obama. I knew a few of these, but not that many.

How about you? Let's see ...

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball.
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini.
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, "Dreams From My Father."
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed.
• He has read every Harry Potter book.
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ail.
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream.
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars.
• He ate dog meat, snake meat and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia.
• He can speak Spanish.
• While on the campaign trail, he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead.
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea.
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't.
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia.
• He can bench press an impressive 200 pounds.
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name.
• His favourite book is "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville.
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived.
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy.
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books.
• His favourite films are "Casablanca" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck.
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
  
• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees.
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film "Do The Right Thing" on their first date.
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker.
• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol.
• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician.
• As a teenager, he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine.
• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7.)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside.
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal.
• His house in Chicago has four fireplaces.
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita.
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry.
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop.
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300.
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits.
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes.
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13).
• His favourite fictional television programmes are "Mash" and "The Wire."
• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers.
• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother.
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds.
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso.
• His speciality as a cook is chili.
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins."
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life.
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government.

Is that 50? I wasn't counting.

I got up this morning and looked out the bedroom window. Time: 7:01 a.m. What a beautiful day!

The sun just peeking above the horizon. The sky was already blue. The crescent moon was hanging in the south, visible between the icicles hanging from the eaves. The thermometer on the front porch may have read 0F, but no matter. This, Jan. 20, 2009, would be a beautiful day.

I went to work as the crowd swelled in Washington, D.C. Our basketball team had won a big game last night, and I had to get caught up on the other scores and write part of the story. The coach from our other team would probably be calling--if he wanted to talk, I would be there.

But I also had the live stream from CNN on my computer, and as the start of the ceremony neared, I was debating whether to go home (just a block away) to watch it there or to watch it in the office.

It was a hard call. I have been looking forward to this day so much and for so long. Back on the day after the 2004 election, I wrote a friend: "I wore black today," I started.

Over two years ago, I saw my first Bush countdown clock, showing how much time remained--900-some days, X hours, X minutes, X seconds at that point--in the Bush presidency. I almost put one on my blog. It seemed like forever.

At about the same time, I did order a black plastic wristband. It read "I did not vote 4 Bush." I put a picture of it on my blog ...
 

I wore it for a while.

The 2008 campaign started fairly early in 2007. It lasted forever and a day. The long journey--about as long as Frodo's in "Lord of the Rings"--ended last Nov. 4.

One wait ended. Another began, the 2 1/2 months to Inauguration Day. That also seemed to last forever, what with the financial crisis and stock market struggles. Why can't it just be over?

On Tuesday, the wait was over, and a new day began. Today is the day. Sure, I wish I was in Washington. But I can't. I'm here. So I'll watch it here.

The thing to remember now is patience. The change most of us have prayed for will not happen right away. But it will come. Our country took the wrong turn eight years ago, and anyone who has missed an exit on the freeway knows how difficult and time-consuming it is to get to where we should have gone in the first place.

Or, think of it like our beastly cold weather we dealt with last week. Several days of 24-hour-a-day subzero weather. It finally ended, Not that spring is here yet. Spring is still a long way off. But we're a little closer to it now.

Patience. Spring will come. Better times will come. Our generation's FDR is moving into the White House, in the midst of a national crisis much like FDR stepped into in 1933, "The only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself," he told our country.

It was a historic day at a crisis point for our nation. Today is another historic day, being watched just as closely all over the world. As someone who rarely takes a day off work, I think it's time to leave, go home and listen closely to what Barack Obama has to tell me.

The BIG change won't be happening for another 2 1/2 months, but it should be in motion after today. After four years of waiting, it's Election Day. Will America get it right this time?

Most of the states had some form of early voting. In Michigan, well, we're a little behind the times. Everyone votes on Election Day in Michigan unless they get an absentee ballot. After discussing it with my wife, we decided to do our voting in the mid morning, just as I was driving her to the church and the quilters' group.

Lovely weather. It's partly cloudy outside, and temperatures are in the mid 60s. Not bad for early November!

So how long did voting take? How long were we in line? It took all of 15 seconds before I got the little slip (signature, address, date of birth) that I had to fill out to get my ballot; I also had to show my driver's license. Then I went into another room with the little voting booths and filled out the ballot. Same with my wife. Studied the ballot proposals: medical marijuana, yes; fewer restrictions on stem cell research, of course. Fed the ballot into the optical scanner. (Our ballots have the ovals that you fill in with a black felt-tip pen.) The whole procedure took five minutes, if that. Then I drove my wife to the quilters and went back to work.

It was, I should mention, my first chance to vote for Obama. Ever. Many of you had the chance to take part in primaries or caucuses early this year, but Michigan held an illegal Democratic primary in January (10 months ago). Knowing the DNC wouldn't accept the results, many candidates, including Obama, took their names off the ballot. It raised a ruckus in the run-up to the convention in August. Eventually, they figured out a solution.

We have a little tradition here on Election Day: Pancake Day. The local Kiwanis Club holds its Pancake Day on Election Day, so normally we vote, and then we get pancakes. Except this time we voted earlier than normal, so I took her to the quilters--they took her to the church where Pancake Day was taking place at 11:30 a.m., and I met her there. Pancakes. Sausages. Milk. Butter. It made for a filling mid-day repast.

We had finished the winter tourism issue (final step: proofreading) this morning. Tonight (at 5 p.m.) I will be covering a district volleyball tourney; I cover one match, then go home for supper and to watch the returns come in.

The volleyball districts continue on Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile, our football teams will both be going for their district titles on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Both teams will be home. Both were home last Friday night for "sub-district" games. The weather was pretty decent: temperatures were in the 40s with no rain.

It wasn't so nice one week earlier, the final week of the regular season. The game I was at Friday night had some interesting weather. For most of the first half, it rained. Things got pretty soggy. Here's a picture of the action on the field during the rain ...

The rain eventually stopped during the second quarter, but during the second half fog started building. It went from soggy to foggy pretty quickly. Foggy conditions are hard for photography, especially action sports like football. Especially in a small, old stadium with poor lighting.

For a while, I tried using my flash like usual. But the light from the flash picks up all the water vapor in the air and you get something like this ...

Playing around with Photoshop can help some ... but it only goes so far ...

What was I to do? I finally tried turning off the flash and using available light. The trouble was, there wasn't much available light. This is what the field looked like from the sidelines with all that fog in the air ...

I wound up using one picture from during the rain and a shot of the reaction on the bench after our team earned a safety--I got the shot of the tackle in the end zone, too, but it was just too dark to use. You don't believe me?

The next day (Saturday afternoon), David and I went to the dome in Marquette for an evening game. It was just cloudy, so photography conditions were much better. Here's what the Superior Dome looks like from the outside ...

And here is what it is like inside ...

If our teams win this weekend, we'll probably by back in the Dome for the regional title games. As the playoffs move on, of course, the U.P.'s weather gets less football-friendly. We have been lucky so far, but good luck lasts only so long.

Everyone else is fine. The cats continue to adjust to each other. David came over last night--it was his birthday, so we had a favorite meal of his, and we watched some football. I bought him something he had wanted for a long time--a DVD recorder and VCR unit with a tuner. The DVD recorder doesn't have a hard drive of its own (like mine does; you just can't get them any more), but he wanted it mainly to copy some of his old videotapes, and the unit I bought will handle that with no problem (according to the box).

I know I haven't been around here much lately. What can I say? The World Seri0us captured my attention. The election, of course--I've been watching CNN and C-SPAN a lot. And I've been pretty busy with night assignments. It should start easing off fairly soon.

I've missed writing. I like to write at night, and there just hasn't been the time lately--because my wife likes it when we sit together and watch something. Or else when I'm upstairs writing, Charlie comes around. She hops up on the computer desk, walks around behind the flast-screen monitor, comes out the other side and climbs down into my lap. That's just the way she does it.

Then she's happy. Purr, purr. And I'm done with writing for a while.

Recently, I was quite amazed/amused to hear about the Canadian election, which is coming up on Oct. 14.

Do you know when they called the election? It was on Sept. 7. So the length of the campaign will be 37 days. Thirty-seven days. Yes, I know there was speculation for a long time that an election would be called this year, but the wheels were only set in motion on Sept. 7. Thirty-seven days.

By contrast, the current U.S. presidential election unofficially started the day after the 2004 election and actively after the 2006 election. I'm sure most of you are getting quite tired of it.

I have been doing my best to keep my opinions to myself, but I made an exception back on Jan. 4, when Vox's question of the day was "What is your reaction to the Iowa caucus?", which had just been held. I commented here. I think Efx2 was taking one of its periodic vacations at the time.

I know many people are still undecided, and many are just plain turned off my the entire drawn-out process. Myself included. But I found an article this week that hit home. It was an open to letter to people who haven't yet decided whom to vote for, whatever the reason, whether they follow politics closely or whether they stay far away from it. You're a diverse group. To quote from the introduction:

It was an interesting read, and I thought maybe you would like to see it, too. If you do, here is the link.

The election is less than six weeks away. The first debate is Friday night.

Geez, I haven't written here for a while. Over a month!

What can I say? Time flies.

May was a busy month, and Efx2 stayed alive for most of it, so I posted routine updates there. Besides, the posts I do at Vox are somewhat more introspective in nature. I'm not dual-posting right now, though I've been thinking about it. One thing in the way of that is the different way you insert photos into the text. When there are just one or two photos, it's no big deal. When I have a bunch, it's some extra work, and sometimes I don't have the time (or inclination).

In real brief, from my last post over there:
--Spring high shool sports season is over. It ended last Saturday. Good.
--Hockey season is over. It ended last night, as the Red Wings finished off the Penguins one last time. I'm happy. And I'm glad it's all over. I've got other things I need/want to do.
--My wife and I are going on a mini vacation late next week, to the Milwaukee area. That's about 250 miles away. We plan to be gone three days and two nights, but that can change.
--Soon, we will take my mom to see the new Indiana Jones movie. She's a big Harrison Ford fan. We will see it as sort of a delayed 86th birthday party for her.
--We have a robin nesting on our front porch. A recent nest inspection with a hand mirror showed four eggs inside the nest.

You don't believe me?

Nest08-4eggs-6-08.jpg

2 comments

In other business ... it appears the Democratic nominating race is finally over, with Barack Obama hitting the magic delegate number. It's over. Finally.

Here is a Washington Post article I saw yesterday that I found interesting: "Democratic primary boosts U.S. image around the world."

So it's done. I supported Obama from the start. It's not that I didn't like Sen. Clinton. But I'm just so tired of partisan splits in Washington--Democrats vs. Republicans, liberals vs. conservatives. Polarized politics equals gridlock in Congress, and we need action to get my country back on the right path.

Sad to say, the Clinton years helped exacerbate those divisions--the neocon Republicans in and out of Congress were very willing participants, of course. For whatever the reason, Hillary Clinton is the Democrat that many Republicans love to hate. No matter what their divisions, the GOP will unite solidly--even behind John McCain--if Sen. Clinton is the opponent.

It may not matter this November. My guess is that Clinton would probably have be elected president, regardless. But what happens after January? Once again, we would have a highly partisan Congress and a highly partisan president. We've been down that wrong road far too often. Needed legislation gets paralyzed because too many lawmakers (on both sides) aren't willing to compromise extreme positions. And so we sit, stuck, and bad problems get worse.

By the way, I have nothing against McCain. Our country--and our world--would be in far better shape today had McCain spent the last eight years in the White House. But that's water under the bridge. People voted as they did in 2000 and '04, and today we find ourselves where we are. I feel the vast majority of people in our country want someone to bring us together and get us going in a new direction. Republicans and Democrats. Liberals and conservatives. Working together and reaching a consensus on some tough problems our country faces. How's that for a revolutionary concept?

Maybe I'm wrong about Obama. Maybe Obama won't be the uniter I have been looking for. Maybe his goals are too lofty, and his solutions aren't practical or realistic enough.

Maybe. But I don't think so. And, in any case, he could hardly be worse than what we have now.

Oh, damn.

With the Wisconsin primary taking place next week, I had been hoping beyond hope that Barack Obama would be making a visit somewhere close to me. I mean, we're 10 miles from the Wisconsin border, and Green Bay is about 2 1/2 hours away. We are even on Wisconsin (Central) time.

Today (Wednesday), I got the notion to search the internet to see where he's going to be in the last days before the primary. And guess what? This Friday, he's going to be in northeastern Wisconsin.

Well, eastern Wisconsin, anyway. He's going to be in Oshkosh for a rally at the university at noon and then will be in Green Bay that evening. How cool is that?

There's just one teensy, weensy problem.

Work.

Duty calls. Thursday night, I've got a district wrestling tournament to cover. I've got more writing to do on Friday and then a basketball game to cover that night. It starts at 7. Up here, of course.

Damn duty!

It's not that I need to hear Obama's speech. I can watch him on C-Span. But I'd really like to get my own picture of him. That would mean a lot to me.

Damn duty!

On top of that, I could visit S while in the area. Unfortunately, she is ill--suffering from vertigo, which came upon her after her recent surgery. She wrote on Tuesday, and she seemed quite down about it. I'd like to cheer her up. Even if just for 10 or 15 minutes.

Damn duty!

The run-up to the Wisconsin primary takes place during a very busy time for me, with a hectic/chaotic sports schedule plus stories for a special edition. (Most of those are finished.) In a few weeks, the high school sports schedule will be much less busy. Of course, by then the Wisconsin primary will be ancient history, with the candidates trooping around elsewhere in this big country.

This unfortunate coincidence of events immediately reminded me of a similar incident some years ago. This time, the event was in Marquette, about 90 miles away. The Detroit Red Wings had won the Stanley Cup that year, and they were bringing the Stanley Cup to Marquette--roughly 500 miles from Detroit. To hockey fans like me, that ugly silver mug is venerated like a religious artifact. And it was only two hours away from me. And it was summer!

But duty called back here. We had some local celebration or another taking place here. Don't remember the exact details--it was about 10 years ago. But I had some assignment related to covering the event and I got word of the cup's visit late and other people would have been inconvenienced if I tried to back out of it. And in the end, I just let it pass. I didn't have my own camera at the time. I just wanted to see the thing with my own eyes. I had only ever seen it on TV. Same thing today.

The only thing I remember clearly now is how sad/angry I was later--at myself, of course--for letter this golden opportunity slip by. The cup has never returned to Marquette or anywhere else in the area.

As for getting another chance to see Obama ... well, the general election is in November. Maybe he will get the nomination and maybe he won't. But realistically, even if he is the Democrats' pick, they would only probably hit demographically important areas. Northern Wisconsin has such low population density that it isn't considered demographically important, at least not the area north of Green Bay or Wausau. And as for the U.P. of Michigan ... in comparison, northern Wisconsin seems like the Chicago suburbs.

But I know what I can do. I can wait till Obama is on TV some night ...   and take a picture of the TV screen.

Damn duty!

****
Quick update: Nothing to report on cats, unfortunately. Maybe we will return to the shelter later this week, maybe not.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It coincides with that wrestling tournament I mentioned earlier and a major snowstorm expected to hit northern Wisconsin and the U.P.--we're supposed to get about eight inches. So I took my wife out for dinner tonight. I wanted to find some clever/sexy Valentine's Day cards for her, but the card selection up here is pretty tame and banal.

Friday night, I'll cover my basketball game--and at 10 p.m., I'll watch the local news programs from Green Bay to see about Obama's visit.

Damn duty!

You're not going to believe this. You really aren't. But it's true.

I'm popular! Yay, me!!!

You may be asking yourself, "Self, why is this mild-mannered, ordinary, boring writer-type person suddenly so much in demand?" So I will share with you the secret of my success.

I'm popular (short-term) because I live in Michigan, I'm a registered voter, and Michigan holds a presidential primary this Tuesday.

Only thing is, it's just a Republican primary ... and I'm not a Republican. But that doesn't matter. Even if Barack Obama isn't shoveling out my sidewalk or Hillary Clinton isn't carrying in my groceries, I still have all those Republicans eager to do my bidding. If it's OK with them, it's OK with me.

I should explain first about the primary, so I'll quote from the story I wrote in last week's paper.

    State officials decided to move [the primary] up to Jan. 15 this year in hopes that Michigan would be among the first states in the nation to voice their choice in the 2008 nominating process.

    The primary was approved by the Legislature late last August and signed into law by Gov. Granholm on Sept. 4. But it hasn’t gone without challenge.

    On Nov. 9, the primary was struck down by an Ingham County circuit judge. The state Supreme Court reversed that ruling on a 4-3 vote on Nov. 21.

    But neither of the political parties wanted Michigan to leapfrog states like Iowa and New Hampshire. The Republican National Committee decided on Nov. 5 that Michigan will lose 30 of its 60 delegates at the 2008 national convention.

    Not to be outdone, the Democratic National Committee decided on Dec. 1 that the Jan. 15 primary violates party rules—and that Michigan (and Florida, which did the same thing) would be stripped of its entire 156-member delegation to this summer’s convention.

As a result, both Obama and John Edwards (among others) pulled their names off the Michigan ballot, which will only list Clinton, Christopher Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and "uncommitted."

All the Republicans are listed, though, so the media is paying some attention to Michigan. And though I haven't seen a single satellite truck roaming the many backroads of the rural U.P. countryside, some of the candidates are after my vote.

One night last week, while watching a movie with my wife, the phone rang. The (recorded) voice said they wanted me to take a 45-second poll. OK, what do you want to know? It was on behalf of Gov. Mike Huckabee, and even after I identified myself as a Democrat, it said things like "Did you know that you will be able to vote in the Republican primary?"

This "poll" went on to "ask" me if I was aware that Huckabee is the only Republican candidate endorsed by a certain manufacturing group. It went on like that for a while, most questions starting "Are you aware that ...", until I finally said, "Are you aware that we're well over 45 seconds now?" and hung up.

The next day, I was at my home computer in the late afternoon when the phone rang. It was Sen. Sam Brownback from Kansas. The Sen. Sam Brownback from Kansas. Well, his recorded voice, anyway. The senator told me that he wants me to vote for John McCain during the primary on Tuesday. Even though Brownback's opinions on various social issues facing this country are poles apart from mine, I feel flattered that Brownback (or his digitized voice) thinks so highly of my political acumen that he would ask me to do this favor for him on Tuesday.

Not that I'm going to. But it's nice to be popular, don't you think?

Imagine how big my head would be if I lived in Iowa or New Hampshire!