Happy Election Day America.
I frequently joked this year: “I have more morbidities than lividity.”
Simply put: Death will come sooner or later. Today I am still alive and kicking.
My Morbidities being the predictable result of me living high on the proverbial hog for a good long bit. Purportedly, the now dreaded Corona Virus feasts upon such Morbidities.
Here in California His Nuisance has declared that I am a now a member of a new privileged class that must be protected at all costs by closing every business in town not owned by a corporation large enough to fund a political election campaign and/or any organization beholden to his preselected non-trade union supporters that deliver the same kind of cash to his like and kind. Huh?
Mind you.
No one asked me if I wanted to join his new protected political class or whether I believe in such hogwash.
The Morbid and Livid Election of 2020
This might be sort of funny if it was not so patently absurd.
A Corona with lime is fine, but frankly I prefer other darker brands consumed in the company of friends including the Most Interesting Man in the World. Eheh.
Back in the day when all this Super Cold thing began, I almost got thrown off a business trip flight for that bad beer brand joke. Certainly, I received a lot of nasty looks from crew and passengers alike. Seriously?
I croaked,
“Folks, my voice is totally shot from five days of teaching.”
The Well-heeled Wives from Wuhan
At the end of that flight I discovered that the masked China ladies in the row behind me on that plane were actually tourists and wives of important Communist Party members from…
[drum roll and cymbal crash] Wuhan, China.
Their Hong Kong translator kindly said she liked the Most Interesting Man in the World beer ads too when she asked if I knew where they might find their tour bus in the empty airport.
My guess. Their planned over-priced, guided tour of Yosemite Valley got cancelled and then again…maybe not. Like I said, this was early in the Wuhan virus days.
The CDC Tracks Such Things
They were understandably at bit puzzled when I cautioned them,
“Ladies. No taking iPhone selfies at the edge of the Yosemite cliffs.”
Is Death by Selfie the leading cause of death at our famous National Parks?
The CDC must track such things.
Want to bet the CDC tracks hits on their webpages via Google?
Then the weighted science, statistical math, and medical billing economics hits us.
Only a small percentage of all listed pandemic deaths are directly attributed to only the virus in the official CDC published reports. Say what?
Our common human Morbidities seem to rule as they always do.
A bad Super Cold can and does make things potentially worse. Dooh.
What’s the famous phrase? “You cannot escape Death and Taxes.”
I won’t vote for either.
Our Chosen Lividity
That Lividity being the pooling that happens to the blood in our bodies when we die, and/or that state of saving face and lack of grace when we are personally overcome by anger.
I voted in the first hour that live voting was allowed in California.
That fact this occurred on Halloween seems appropriate.
I personally fed my ballot into the vote counting machine myself. The actual ballot was printed on demand at the polling place. A separately printed barcode label was also printed on site and was required to make this ballot official. Oooo.
High tech voter fraud security by off-line ink jet printers? Most of my long wait was caused by random printer failures. I can assure you that official tech support tickets were generated. I received no voting stub.
All of the computer related rigamarole was a complete waste of time and money.
How to Make Election Fault Legal
Nothing done would have stopped me from voting for my neighbors (or strangers) alive or dead.
My wife checked. She had 12 different signatures attributed to her in the State controlled signature record books. Really? Some of the versions of her official signature were from sources she had never heard of?
She was assured that any ballots that matched any (or all) of them will be counted. Oh, goody.
In today’s California anymore who wants a mandatory driver’s license or State ID is pretty much automatically registered to vote. The CA DMV (pre-Covid) had already erroneously registered to vote 100’s of thousands of non-citizens by their own admission. No way to fix that for some reason.
Proof of citizenship is not required for much of anything in CA unless you want board a TSA-monitored flight.
Get Out the Vote
If you had registered to vote in CA, claim to live at a known postal address (residential or not), show up, mail in, or drop a ballot in any voter box you can vote. All of those things might obviously not be true and your provisional vote will still count unless that ballot is directly and legally contested. Say What?
I received multiple offers from groups in both political parties (The Republicans came in person) to collect my mail in ballot in the weeks of early voting allowed under this election’s new and improved CA ballot harvesting rules. Note that most of the new election rules in CA were not voted on by the State Legislature. These were made up and approved by His Nuisance and the CA Dept of State.
My polling place was manned by a crew of SEIU government union members all outfitted in official union ware - branded SEIU sweatshirts. This polling place uniform even included official union approved and branded lanyards and voter worker identity badges. I kindly pointed out that such political materials are still against the law inside or around polling places by federal law and for good reason.
The group then sheepishly removed their union sweatshirts. They did not change the lanyards and obviously not their SEIU voter worker identity badges that also included official union branding.
We live in a union run company town in California. Like maybe we didn’t notice?
Outside the Polling Place
Outside the polling place I had an interesting and friendly chat with the local union “shop foreman”.
I guess my SEIU sweatshirt complaint caused a stir and maybe why my ballot took so long to print.
“We don’t want any legal troubles here.”
There is no recognized trade or specialized work associated his work or that or his fellow members. I am not sure calling yourself the shop foreman is appropriate, but never mind.
The local government and public agency folks have been important customers for me for decades. I do understand to world they work in. Many of them are old friends.
I asked the union foreman to reconsider that his union continues to support a political party that has totally messed up the financial and fiscal responsibilities both entrusted and promised to his union’s members over the last 25 years. That’s a fact, Jack.
He agreed. He is not yet retired and wants to collect a healthy pension probably sooner than later.
I pointed out that the State of CA has current pension liabilities even the government union members now recognize can not be paid if the current policies and performance continues. All new union members are now promised a pittance of a pension and benefits in comparison. This makes attracting new members problematic and is probably unsustainable.
He agreed.
I pointed out that without the “Trump Economy” the CA state managed pension funds would have a been in legal bankruptcy proceedings by now. If things go from bad to worse, the teachers are in more trouble than his crew.
He did disagree about whether Trump made the economy better. He agreed things were obviously much better for the pension funds these days. He happily acknowledged that had little to do with the people who were running them.
“You should get into politics.” he told me… Perhaps flattery to make sure I didn’t file an official voter intimidation compliant.
I replied,
“Sir, I just did.
Now you might do us all a favor go find a way to change your vote. I promise you I won’t tell.”
He just grins…
If you turn over any morbid political body where it lies, the lividity is apparent to all.
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