It’s President’s day. I don’t know where to begin about the fact that it is President’s day. What to say, right? Let me start with my recent Facebook post:

“Yesterday I was mocked. Kind of unbelievable, but not unexpected. A simple question of mine was, apparently, offensive enough to warrant such a response. Let me say, for the record, if your political posture is such that it requires you to knock me down (which didn’t happen) with mockery, I’m not impressed with you, your opinion, or the person you support.
Grow up, learn how to have a civil conversation, and then we can revisit the matter at hand.
I am a flawed human admitting my mistakes every day. This is not to say I am perfect – far from the fringes of perfection. We can have vast differences in matters regarding politics. But, I will tolerate only so much of this hatred and divisiveness … Where ARE we? Have we lost the ability to meet somewhere in a place called kind, pleasant, and meaningful where friends pull up chairs to talk with one another? As I posted below in a reply, “Dirty conversational air floating around these days making it so hard to breathe normally anymore” …”

Here are some of the wonderful comments that followed:

Though we agree to disagree everyone is entitled to their own opinions(even though mine is right). Just kidding. 😂😂😂 Hold on to your own beliefs and no one is able to take them from you my friend!😘 – CH

It will only get worse from here on. But to change it will take an enormous effort by us to keep positive no matter what. – MF

Dang, sorry it went that way. Hopefully there will be growing tiredness with dissension and we will more and more seek common ground. – KE

Remember that those who hate really only hate themselves. But they have to deflect that hatred on others because they lack the ability to effect a change or accept responsibility for their own actions. – BP

Our glorious earth spins about 1,000 miles per hour. We don’t feel this motion because the speed is constant. If we lived on a herky-jerky ball of rock instead of an enormous, smooth moving river stone floating through space, “feel it we would” in Yoda speak. So fortunate are we to colonize a still, calm world … well, the perception of such from space, anyway.. Did I mention today is President’s day?

Our collective heads are spinning faster than 1,000 miles per hour. We feel it because the motion isn’t constant. It’s one side pulling against the other in an adult playground game of who-can-be-the-less-adult tug of war. We expect to see a principal – an overseer of rules – monitoring activity over near the edge of the grass, but notice no one. Who we see are all the elected from an elementary school of privilege where we, the uninvited, must sit idly by and watch through a fence erected through years of our indifference.

This is where we choose to take our stand these days and I don’t see it improving. Shouting through the holes in the fence, but not at the ones who deserve the wrath. We go to social media .. and yell at each other, apparently. I say we, politely so, because I will never, ever call out someone personally. Above is as close as I will ever come to a personal attack on anyone. That was a bad day for the other gentleman – I am glad to grant him a “bad day”.

Facebook, especially, is full of you-are-wrong-and-I am-right political memes, commentaries, opinions, jokes, stats, pictures, and insults. More friends are lost than found. This isn’t the fault of Facebook. Mark Zukerberg invented a format for us to share ideas, loves, and dog pictures. Sure, he’s made a-gazillion dollars and probably has his political leanings – agree with or not – however, he has no culpability in our decisions to click the “post now” or “like” thumb icons.

We stand in solidarity behind the fence, yet argue with each other. What good is it to stand in the mud outside a wire fence, screaming insults among ourselves, when imps are playing unending, monotonous, irresponsible, rather expensive games on a field tilted, unfortunately for all of us, in their financial favor?

Yet, we have this day, President’s Day. A day set aside to honor George Washington’s birthday. The day became known as Presidents Day when it became part of the 1971 Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Pretty much an act to give federal employees a three day weekend. Way to go, George! Up to Me? Just give all guys named George the day off, and all the residents in the state of Washington, too.

The Presidency. Just don’t see us celebrating that office the way we used to, regardless who is sitting in that beautiful oval room. There will always be a narrow, focused segment of our wonderful fence claspers heaping unfounded praises upon the person duly elected to this great honor. As well, detractors dug in a few feet away, holding on just as tight, will immediately dispell those claims of praise and establish their own imaginary parameters of truth.

This is where we are. We can do better. I say let’s shut down the school. That way the playground swings, teeter-totter, and tug rope are all ka-put. No more games. No more fences. All of us on the same level, less-expensive playing field where we play by the same rules. We can learn how to have winners and losers again. Rich people and poor people (who can be cared for and looked after) hugging each other with no animosity or disdain. We can be less angry with each other and quit trying to decide who always right or wrong.

I decided recently that I like coconut and scallops. Way off topic; however, if I can do that, President’s day, 2020 can go a lot smoother for all of us if we decide to calm down a bit from our need to be right all the time politically. The earth will still spin. We won’t feel a thing because it is constant … as our calm spirit should be all the time.

“Caucus”: A meeting at which local members of a political party register their preference among candidates running for office or select delegates to attend a convention.

NBC news writers Carrie Dann and Mark Murray posted the following wonderful online article yesterday … to add clarity to the above definition I found on Google. I’ll see you on the other side – thirteen paragraphs, two aspirin, and one hand to the forehead down from here.

“There are a total of 1,679 precincts that will meet to caucus. The Democratic Party in Iowa will also hold a number of “satellite” caucuses (60 in state, 24 out of state and three international — in Tbilisi, Georgia; Glasgow, Scotland; and Paris, France) for those who are unable to travel to a caucus location.

There are 41 pledged delegates up for grabs in the Democratic race, plus an additional eight unpledged (superdelegates) from Iowa. (Whenever we refer to delegates for the Feb. 3 precinct caucuses, we actually mean precinct delegates to county caucuses. After county conventions are congressional district and state conventions, at which the real national convention delegates are selected

Democrats and Republicans hold their caucuses differently.

Democrats move around the caucus site — for example, supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden will gather in one corner and backers of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts others. At most Democratic caucus locations, a candidate must get support from at least 15 percent of attendees to achieve viability. If that threshold isn’t met, a candidate’s supporters must realign to a different viable candidate or join with other nonviable groups to form a viable preference group. (One of those preference groups could be “uncommitted.”) And the number of delegates awarded at each caucus site is determined by a mathematical formula. So get out your calculators!

In a change from past Democratic caucuses, the party will release three sets of results: “the first expression of preference” before the realignment, the “final expression of preference” after realignment and state delegate equivalents (the number used to determine the “winner” in past results). The final expression number — rather than the first expression — is used to determine who gets delegates and who doesn’t.

All of the numbers will be released at the same time.

Another change: Only members of nonviable groups will be allowed to realign. In the past, candidates who had initially hit 15 percent could lose supporters in the realignment. But for this cycle, the initial 15 percent support gets locked in.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans select their candidate via a simple secret ballot. There is no shuffling from one corner of the caucus site to the other. There is no 15 percent viability or realignment. And there’s no mathematical formula to determine delegates awarded at each caucus site.

With President Donald Trump receiving nominal GOP opposition, however, the Republican process in Iowa isn’t as important to follow this presidential cycle.

(This had been controversial in the past, right?) Yes. The last two election cycles in Iowa have resulted in controversy on caucus night. On the Republican side in 2012, Mitt Romney was named the early winner, but a closer — and later — examination revealed that Rick Santorum had won by a mere 34 votes.

And on the Democratic side in 2016, Hillary Clinton edged Sanders by just 0.3 percentage points, with Sanders supporters citing counting and reporting irregularities.

The activity on caucus night is electing delegates in each of Iowa’s 1,679 precincts to the county convention. But the Democratic “winner” is the candidate who accrues the most state delegate equivalents after the realignment process.

The Iowa Democratic Party says there will be more than 2,000 delegates to the district and state convention. So if you see that Joe Biden gets 35 percent on caucus night, that means he won 35 percent of these state delegate equivalents.“

I want to meet Carrie and Mark. I really, really do. Buy them a beer, soda, or whatever would calm their nerves a bit after attempting to explain the baffling beyond repair universe that is the Iowa Caucus. In thirteen paragraphs they tried, admirably, to teach me – a college educated, unapologetic, apolitical, motivated writer – the process by which 1,679 precincts delicately, and quite deliberately, decide delegates. Delicious, isn’t it?

Their article is well written and precise. No complaints from me at all. None. I’m not writing this blog from Tbilisi, Glasgow, or Paris so absolutely no complaints at all! Let’s look at what we’ve got here …

According to the article, “Democrats and Republicans hold their caucuses differently.” … Why is this important enough to mention, separately, in a stand alone sentence?. Hmm. First, I don’t have a clear definition of what a caucus actually is. The word sounds way too familiar to me, … a once – and possibly still – immature dude. Second, for what reason are they holding it? Third, do they know each are holding their own cauci differently? And last, what purpose does said cauci have when they’re done with it?

Moving on. We have the words, “viable” and “uncommitted” in the same paragraph. Two words one always likes to hear figuratively attached at the hip – explicitly when two people are attached at the hip. “Honey, my love, I’m so viable right now, but I’m uncommitted”. This duality of certain provocation might work well in politics; The certainty of one’s cauci is in doubt, however, seconds after stupidly saying that phrase in the throws of a Barry White moment.

Back to it. We then have three sets of results, or “expressions”. Well, we don’t. Iowans do, I guess. The final expression number, rather than the first expression, is used to determine who gets the delegates. Oh, yeah, the delegates. Delegates have expressions. At first read, I figured some guy wearing a seed-corn cap stood up and said, “I want this dude for President!” while others clapped in agreement. Nope. There are numbers involved. Numbers are expressions in Iowa. Not just any expressions. FINAL expressions. Kinda like, “I DID IT!”, but with numbers.

Reading on, Simple, secretive ballot on the right. Yeah. Ok. Secret. Got it. Republicans don’t do any of this math shit, apparently. One of two ways here. Either they’re too, er, crackbrained to puzzle out the figures involved, or too intelligent to unravel the nuances of the system. I don’t know. Don’t reckon I’ll ever care too much. There’s no opposition to the apparent GOP ticket holder, anyway.

The second to last paragraph is one of those I had to read, re-read, and … then … read again. I’m rethinking a lot of things in my life right now. Am I actually a guy? Did I just blow my nose and wash my hands before typing in this sentence? Why does my Wendy’s hamburger always slide out the backside of the bun after the second, not first, bite? What is the true singular spelling of caucus? Why is Schitt’s Creek so damn funny? on and on… This paragraph prompts my inner questioning. A winner wins, but possibly loses? I could be broken-brained. Very possible. My good friends, the “state delegate equivalents after the realignment process“, are most likely so much better equipped to be who they are without my understanding. My chakras align with political realities in other ways, I guess.

I’ll never run for political office or live in Iowa. Ever. On the extreme outside chance “ever” changes and I do, please – dear friend, please – remind me of my complete lack of understanding in this matter. I do understand simplicity in all its weird forms. Complexity, even when simplified down into an article well-written, can be an enigma to me.

Life stands on my pedestal of limited information. I’m fifty-ish years experienced in being wonderfully 10% immature and 90% happy I’m not holding my cauci differently, All of this adds up, even in Iowan weird math, to a great life.

As with anything in life, look at it. Study it. Say, “What the f*ck is this?” Try to get hold of it. If it makes no sense to you, move on … The math gets too complicated and you may just find you’re holding your cauci wrong, anyway.

Seldom will I post,
Write, discuss, or host
The parties of hate - of disdain.
For there is no gain
In such a discourse 
Which leads to remorse

I've learned in my life
To avoid such a strife.
But, just on this day
I feel I must say:
To:
The parties of hate in Washington - on both sides - please grow up.

Yes, you! to whom I refer
(And shall not deter)
Why the divisive intent?
You're waywardly bent...
 Pro "against one another"
Not "brother for brother"

You see only race
As a way to keep pace
Of the political views
(i.e. voting block news)
Loud insanity shouts
Silent majority doubts

 Do you think we are done?
THE America as one.
You see us as dum-dums.
One-and-done bums.
I hope not to be
See, we're all family.

 You speak not for me
Electorally, probably.
But, not from my heart where honesty starts...
Left, Center, or Right
Dark skin, medium, or light

I'm not just one who casts an occasional vote.
I'm not just a few words in one innocent quote.
I'm an American among millions who loves all in our land
I'm one who will be fearless to take a brotherly stand.
Against all that you do to divide what we became:
A country of equality
Where we are all the same.







 

“Bonded Stories, Forever”

“It was the convergence of almost three-thousand individual stories with our own. Ours continued forward from that day. Theirs did not.

Tears, remembrances, memorials, new buildings, flags, ribbons, blogs (including this one), draped with honorable intentions, can’t mask the horror all of us experienced. Horror that most certainly – most assuredly – pales in comparison to the terror felt..

…Deep within the towers of the ill-fated….making desperate pleas for help, final calls to loved ones, and prayers for salvation.

…Deep within the hearts of men, high above in the big blue deciding when to make a life-ending decision for all aboard. Taking on the monumental charge forward, through the cockpit door, into the hands of fate, finally coming to rest in among the peaceful fields of Shanksville, Pa.

….Deep within another plane headed for the Pentagon. A five-sided fortress of military symbolism fated to be target practice for radical warriors destined to complete a mission of misguided justice. A plane. A building. Both nurturing innocence – innocence unaware of what was to come.

…Deep within the hearts of all the first responders who gave their life that day doing their job….who pushed forward in their heroism.

And then the day ended.

Our individual stories continued forward from that day. Theirs did not.

It was on that day when our moments came together, our rivers of dissent merged into one ocean of tears, and we said good-bye to almost three-thousand souls who didn’t deserve to die on that calm, sunny, beautiful September Tuesday in 2001.

We remember them. All of them. In our forward moving lives, each step we take should be a small remembrance of the steps they were not given. Each small glance to stars a reminder of the children they did not see grow up.

And each – and every – moment we feel something deep within, it is a bond forever felt with a day, a moment, a convergence of three-thousand stories with our own.”

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