Trego's Mountain Ear

My vote for President makes no difference – my state is going for Trump.  I’ve marked my ballot alongside his name twice – in 2016, I knew what to expect from Hillary Clinton and had hopes that Trump would be better.  He was . . . but then came Biden.  Now that was a low hurdle – Slow Joe has always reminded me of Warren G. Harding – who described his own presidency with the words: “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”   E. E. Cummings memorialized Harding with this poem:

the first president to be loved by his
bitterest enemies ” is dead

the only man woman or child who wrote
a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical
errors ” is dead “
beautiful Warren Gamaliel Harding
” is ” dead
he’s
” dead “
if he wouldn’t have eaten them Yapanese Craps

somebody might hardly never not have been unsorry, perhaps.

Remember, cummings did some interesting things with capitalization and punctuation – but he did immortalize Harding’s grammatical failings.  It’s a pity that he isn’t around to describe Joe Biden. 

At the state level, I have one incumbent candidate to cheerfully vote against – Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen.  The Secretary of State is in charge of our elections, and I have seen Christi twice indulge her inner fascist to make our elections less democratic.  This last time, the District Court judge found that she was infringing on our constitutional rights.  Christi is running against Jesse Mullen and John Lamb.  I’d vote for a Chacma baboon over Christi. 

The other vote is more of a problem – I suspect that if I met Jon Tester, I’d like him.  The problem is, Jon has a long record of supporting the government spending that has devalued our dollar and made interest on the national debt the largest entry in our nation’s budget.  Gold was about $640 an ounce when he was elected in 2006.  Today’s spot price is $2397.45.  If Jon could see that balancing the budget is as important in Washington DC as in Big Sandy, I might not have the dilemma.  I am hoping that Tim Sheehy keeps his word on bringing government spending down.  It is not a strong hope – I know how easy it is for elected officials to spend other people’s money.

Locally, I’ll be voting against Neil Durum.  In 2018, Neil was elected state representative unopposed.  This last year he voted against Trego school’s best interests.  So far, he has opposition in the Democrat column.  I haven’t met his opponent – but I believe in voting against people who have a record of voting against my interests.  Sorry, Neil – but when you vote for something your party wants that screws over your constituents, you move into the vote against category.