If only I'd voted

I woke up on that Wednesday in November a couple of years ago on my parents couch in the basement, depressed as usual by my $200,000 student loan obligations, and did my nails. My next job interview wasn't for weeks but it makes me feel better.

I checked my I-Phone to see if I had any new texts but what I saw was that DJT was the next president of the United States. What? Hillary was a lock to win, so I figured yesterday why go to vote when I was watching seasons two and three of Games of Thorns. Why bother? Oh well, it doesn't matter, I've got a good, long life in front of me with future children down the road, daughters, and I can't wait to meet my granddaughters who will have a perfect life as the country marches forward as always.

Two years later! What, my granddaughter, and her daughter and her daughter might be denied personal rights such as controlling her own body, like, if she was raped and couldn't abort the result, or have an abortion if her life was at risk from the pregnancy? My working class progeny can't have the protection of unions and its collective bargaining ability to break through the 25-year wage stagnation for workers because of 2018 Supreme Court rulings? And if a child has a pre-existing condition she can't get health care ever? She should just die? 

And what will happen to me in a year when I'm cycled off my parents' policy if I get into a bad accident or get sick?  I've never lived anywhere all my life where I couldn't choose to do what I wished to with my own body if I was in an abusive relationship or something.  Babies torn from their mother's breasts and separated from their parents by thousands of miles by the authorities, children put into in cages, Moslems banned from the country, our president throwing our allies away that my grandad fought alongside of, and fought against but then we won the peace and the cold war and made them our lifelong friends, or so it seemed for all my life till now, so that our dear leader could make a fool of himself and coddle and praise murderous dictators and have cabinet members swear fealty to him on national TV with the treasury emptied out so that the rich could get richer and corporations could pay far less than their fair share, I really wish I'd have voted that day

A cracked license.

The sickening, unbelievable diminution of America's greatness that I woke up to on November 9, 2016, a wound inflicted upon our great republic by a selfish, short-sided minority of our very own people, enthralled voters chasing a chimera, which hopefully will not ultimately prove to be fatal to our democracy, spurred me to activism.  That extended to voting this week in the primaries in my city where the incumbent Democratic congressman and senator are in absolutely no danger of losing their seats in November, so long as the Russians don't intrude into the process even worse than they did two years ago in aid of our current president, the Kremlin's puppet.

I walked into the polling place and had to spend five minutes in the practically vacant gymnasium while the voter officials scrutinized my driver's license.  In the first forty years of my voting life, I would just announce my name, and vote.  But the current vogue of voter suppression requires a photo ID to vote.   Don't you remember George Washington getting carded at the voting booth?

My OL was cracked right across its bar code.  The official looked at my license, asked me my name and address which I confirmed verbally, the address on it was proper for the precinct and matched their rolls, it wasn't expired and had my picture on it (no smiling!), and then she put it in her optical scanner.  I was not comfortable with having my license scanned but these are the gymnastics our elected officials have foisted upon us in order to exercise our right to vote.  The machine failed to recognize my OL.  The crack, remember?

They took it out and re-inserted it at least half a dozen times.  They puzzled over it.  I suggested the crack across the bar code, from normal usage, but which didn't invalidate my driver's license so far as I know, was preventing the machine from registering the license.  They were literally scratching their heads over what to do.  They finally got a reading on about the sixth try, seating it just so, I guess, and allowed me to cast a ballot.  I foresee lots of problems coming up in November with this system.  They could see who I was from my photo ID which was the preferred one, a driver's license, and the information it bespoke of which I verbally confirmed, yet I had to wait for long minutes while they took this extra step with their little scanning gizmo.  I hope I remember to bring my passport as backup in November.

I Love Canadians

There's a special place in hell for the Canadian prime minister said Peter Navarro, a key Trump advisor and special sycophant.  Trudeau stood up to Trump against the president imposing consumer-wrecking tariffs against Canadian steel and aluminum, even as he warned that American consumers would pay the price of the new taxes, perhaps even more so than Canadians would, at the G-7 summit in Canada to which Trump wanted to bring his discredited Russian master, Putin, to be the special spoiler of the party.

Navarro has apologized, sort of, for his choice of words because, he said, it diminished the force of his message. A leader of our friends to the north whose military watches over our undefended border from any approach of a threat to us over the top of the world, and whose sons stormed ashore alongside our boys against Hitler's Fortress Europa on D-Day, perhaps ensuring our success in that risky venture, and now Trump condemns our closest allies through his despicable surrogates.

Recently I encountered a car full of Canadians which was stopped at the lowered crossbar of a Metro parking lot after a Capitals hockey game, trying to pay with their Canadian currency the fare at the automated kiosk which only accepted a Metro fare card for payment.  As I walked past they asked if I could release their car from its detention at the gate, and I applied my fare card to the payment box so they could exit the lot and return to the home they were visiting.

They tried to bestow me with Canadian dollars for my deed and my minor expense but I turned them down and said, "I have done you a small favor and I want only for you to return the favor someday to an American who needs help."  I am sure they will somehow, and I love Canadians.