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Nearly a parliamentary system

Massachusetts, generally a Democratic state in recent decades, nevertheless has had a tradition of electing moderate Republicans.

It’s Election Day in the US. At last. Thank whatever deity you believe in! The only people who will be upset about this are the local television stations, who have been raking it in with all the political advertisements. I’ve discovered that a lot of people don’t understand why the candidates often say at the end of the ads, “I’m Joe Blow, and I approve this message.” It’s because there are ads out there, sponsored by the political parties, or political action committees, supposedly (snicker) independent of the (chortle) political candidates.

As is my tradition, I will be voting as soon as the polls open, at 6 a.m. It’s not just that I am anxious to vote or want to get it over with. It’s that, if I cast my ballot early enough, they won’t call me to make sure I get out there. Better get my wife to vote before work, too. I’m voting for an annoyingly large number of incumbents, which is NOT my tradition, historically.

It’s occurred to me that the US has, almost, become a de facto parliamentary system. Someone like Arlen Specter, who died last month, was a fairly moderate-to-conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, who annoyed members of both parties with his actions on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blocking the nomination of Robert Bork, but allowing for the ascent of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court, brutalizing Thomas accuser Anita Hill in the process. When he became a Democrat in 2009, he hadn’t moved to the left; his former party had lurched to the right. I might have voted for him.

If I were living in Massachusetts, and Elizabeth Warren (D) weren’t running, I might have considered selecting Scott Brown for US Senate. As Republicans go these days, he’s relatively moderate. But then again, his re-election would have implications on party control of the Senate, so maybe not. In the olden days, even 20 years ago, bipartisanship and “working across the aisle” weren’t seen as traitorous behaviors.

Massachusetts, generally a Democratic state in recent decades, nevertheless has had a tradition of electing moderate Republicans. Edward Brooke was the first black member of the US Senate since the Reconstruction period after the US Civil War, serving from 1967 to 1979. And moderate Mitt Romney was governor from 2003 to 2007. Whatever happened to THAT guy, anyway?

I heard that 80% of the people voting for Obama or Romney this year will vote for the Senate candidate of the same party. And it’s 90% in House races. We’ve returned to straight-party voting in the US, which I understand, but don’t see as a necessarily good thing.

Here are my predictions: Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., we STILL won’t know who the winner is; might be days. Or weeks. Ultimately, Obama wins, with less than 50% of the popular vote, and the Republicans spend the next four years bemoaning that fact.

Q is for Q&A about FDR

Eleanor Roosevelt was a distant cousin of FDR. She was “given away” by her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt.

The family was in the Mid-Hudson area of New York State back in August. We were on the west side of the river, when we crossed the Mid-Hudson Bridge from Highland to Poughkeepsie.
Q: Wait, it’s now the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge. When did THAT happen?
A: The bridge was renamed… in 1994 though the span is rarely referred to by its official name.
Q: And why is it named for him anyway?
A: “Governor and local resident [FDR] and his wife Eleanor attended the opening ceremony on August 25, 1930.”
Q: And I mention this all because…
A: We needed to cross the bridge to visit Hyde Park, the location of the longtime home of the 32nd President of the US. It’s just five miles north of Poughkeepsie.
Q: So is the town or the FDR estate called Hyde Park?
A: Well, the town is, but the estate was.

“Dr. John Bard had called his estate ‘Hyde Park’ in honor of Edward Hyde, who was Lord Cornbury and Governor of New York.” A tavern owner named his business ‘Hyde Park Inn’, then “applied for a post office to be located at his Inn, which was nothing unusual. The request was granted as the ‘Hyde Park Post office’… the Post Office’s name was ‘Hyde Park’, and thus residents’ mailing address was ‘Hyde Park’…the settlement’s name [was changed] from Stoutenburgh to Hyde Park officially in 1812.”
Q: And the estate of FDR.
A: Springwood is the site of the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service.
Q: What else is there?
A: Usually, the Presidential library – the first one designed by a sitting President – and a museum. The bad news is when we were there, they were under renovation. The good news is if we go back after June 2013, we can visit the refurbished buildings for free with our already purchased tickets.
Q: Why was the place so special to him?
A: It was his boyhood home, and it had (has) a spectacular view of the Hudson River and beyond.

Q: He got married to his cousin?
A: Eleanor Roosevelt was a distant cousin. She was “given away” by her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt on March 17, 1905, after which he went to attend a St. Patrick’s Day parade, taking about a third of the guests with him.
Q: Did Eleanor like Hyde Park?
A: Springwood was still her mother-in-law Sara’s home. And Franklin was very devoted to his mother. She preferred her own place, Val Kill, a couple miles away.
Q: Franklin had an affair with Lucy Mercer, and Eleanor offered Franklin a divorce. Why didn’t they split?
A: From here: “Sara… said that if he left his wife she would cut him off without a cent. Louis Howe, Franklin’s trusted adviser, said that a divorce would mean the end of his political career. So Franklin agreed to stay in the marriage under two conditions set down by Eleanor: he had to break off with Lucy Mercer immediately and for good, and he could never again share his wife’s bed. Franklin observed the second part of the agreement. How long he kept the first has been a matter of some scholarly debate.”
Q: When did FDR develop polio?
From here: “In 1921, when he was 39 years of age, [FDR] contracted an illness…. The symptoms gradually resolved except for paralysis of the lower extremities. The diagnosis at the onset of the illness and thereafter was paralytic poliomyelitis. Yet his age and many features of the illness are more consistent with a diagnosis of Guillain–Barre´ syndrome, an autoimmune polyneuritis.”
Q: How did he able to hide his ailment?
A: When he had to stand, he would, literally, lean on his son. He used leg braces to try to strengthen his legs. But mostly, he hid the fact that he could not walk, with collusion by politicians and the news media. It was said that his affliction made him a much more compassionate man.

Learn more about FDR HERE and HERE, among other places.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

These are the people in your neighborhood…

I come back from choir last Thursday night and find Shopping Cart Man asleep on their front porch.

There used to be owner-occupied houses on both sides of our abode when we first moved in a dozen years ago. On one side, there still is – different people – though, he also rents out to a number of other people. On the other side, it’s three rental units, absentee landlord, with a relatively large turnover of mostly college students. This is especially frustrating to me because I’m really lousy with names. On either side, there are possibly more people than what the properties are zoned for, though I couldn’t prove it.

Anyway, we had some issues with one neighbor’s dog, specifically where one neighbor’s dog did her business. The front lawn over there now looks like the surface of Mars, where it once was absolutely beautiful, and we didn’t want ours to appear likewise. Words were spoken, mostly between my usually mild-mannered wife and them, and it created a bit of tension between the couples.

Then Shopping Cart Man started showing up. Some of the other neighbors in the building found him rather entertaining, as he’d park his chariot in their yard and start drumming for them on their sidewalk with sticks for 30 to 60 minutes at a time; really annoying to us, even inside our residence. Further, they’d save returnable cans and bottles for him, which naturally encouraged him to come back.

Things got more interesting when Dog Owner Man found Shopping Cart Man sleeping in his hallway a couple of weeks ago, in a stairwell that was supposed to be locked; apparently, one or more of the other neighbors let him in.

I come back from choir last Thursday night and find Shopping Cart Man asleep on their front porch. This was unacceptable to me, and after I put away my bicycle, I figured I’d call the non-emergency police number. Before I get a chance, a police car, fire truck, and an ambulance all arrive, with the EMTs trying, with a great deal of difficulty, to awaken Shopping Cart Man from his drunken stupor. He eventually staggers down the street. Dog Owner Man had already made the call.

So now Dog Owner Couple and we are united by this common issue; Shopping Cart Man ought not to loiter on their property, or ours, though he never has. It also helps that the dog has stopped barking at me every time I ride through our common walkway. I still often go inside when I see Dog Owner Couple, but that more because of their cigarette habits; it’s amazing what I can smell from 30 feet away…

Tabula rasa

The downside to all this moving stuff around is that, sometimes, I don’t know what I’ve posted for a given morning; I’m as surprised as you.

I was reading this post from Cheri at Idle Chatter, which begins: “Here it is, 11:15 pm, and I’m just now sitting down to write today’s post. Somebody make me feel better and assure me that I’m not the only one who’s ever found themselves staring at a keyboard as the day dwindles away, the ‘publish’ key impertinently mocking, waiting for a flash of inspiration.”

Two things came to mind:
1) I really enjoyed the post, but
2) I almost never write that way

I find that I need to write things when they enter my mind. The post about my mother’s birthday, which you will read on November 17, i.e., my mother’s birthday, I wrote on September 15. It just came to me, and if the muse says, “WRITE THIS,” I write it. The muse can be rather insistent.

I would hate to get to November 16, think, “Geez, I ought to write something about Mom’s birthday,” and stare at a blank computer screen, so the muse does me a favor.

I find it easier to write when I know what I’m going to write about, which I suppose is obvious. For instance, if I know for an ABC Wednesday post X is for X-Rays (it won’t be, at least not this time around), it puts me to mind to think about all the X-rays I’ve had. The brain will percolate in the background while I’m doing something else, such as showering or bicycling, then, suddenly, a theme emerges.

After I have written it, I might change it, but it’s easier to change something than nothing. If it isn’t tied to a specific date, I might even move it to another day because I need to say THIS more right now. THIS is usually for some national or world event, or perhaps a noteworthy death. When Hal David died, I wrote a piece, but I had had something else scheduled for that day which was, fortunately, movable to a day or three later.

The downside to all this moving stuff around is that, sometimes, I don’t know what I’ve posted for a given morning; I’m as surprised as you. The upside is that I get to read it, well, semi-freshly. “Oh, yeah, I remember this one.”

I tend to write in spurts. I’ve created as many as four posts in a day, and often two. Then I might go four or five days without writing anything, because the muse is on strike, demanding higher wages. Or I’m sick and/or tired; spent nearly a week in mid-September with stomach flu that was not helpful to the creative process. Or I’m busy, often with the Daughter.

I like to read other blogs, not just so I can steal ideas (e.g., this post), and create my end-of-the-month summary, but because it makes me feel connected to the rest of the world. Otherwise, it’s just navel-gazing.

Today, not incidentally, marks exactly 7.5 years of blogging, every day. It is better to post once a day than three times in one day, then nothing for three days, in my hardly humble opinion.

Anyway, I hadn’t written a blog post about blogging in nearly six months, so this is my semiannual contribution to that much-maligned body of work.

VOTE Tuesday, America…even if it’s for Blutarsky

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, even in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed.

I am always feeling a bit conflicted around Election Day. From a partisan point of view, I want people to vote for MY candidates, which means I’d prefer that supporters of opposing candidates would stay home.

On the other hand, I truly believe that the right to vote is far too precious not to exercise. After the Bill of Rights, there are only 17 amendments to the Constitution, and two of them, regarding Prohibition, cancel each other out. This means at least 1/3 of these amendments specifically address voting.

I know a lot of folks who have said to me that they don’t vote because it doesn’t matter, or because it encourages “them”, i.e., the politicians. Or worse, they don’t vote, because “they” will see it as a protest vote. Please allow me to set you straight; “they” don’t care. “They” see your uncast ballot as a sign of laziness or indifference.

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, ~~even~~ especially in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed. Ever since we’ve gotten our new ballot machines in this part of upstate New York, I have realized that it is MUCH easier to cast a write-in vote.

Consider if you will, John “Bluto” Blutarsky. He had the lowest grade point average at his Faber College fraternity, Delta House, with a 0.0. Yet he went on to become a U.S. Senator. He is no more lamebrained than that Republican state representative from Arkansas who asserted that slavery was a “blessing in disguise”.

So vote. Vote in all races. Vote for my candidates if you would. Vote for third party candidates, if you must. And if you have some folks running unopposed, write in someone. Even Bluto Blutarsky, who you can see in this classic (NSFW) video.
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OH, the FUN Elections can Occupy in Classrooms: Overview of Awesome Ideas and Websites

Religious Freedom and the Presidential Election

An odd Quora question: 2012 U.S. Presidential Election: Do you think President Obama truly wants a second term, or is he just running because he feels like it’s his duty to keep the presidency in Democratic hands?