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calimary

calimary's Journal
calimary's Journal
October 1, 2018

Welcome to DU, issuesDemocrats!

Sure looks that way to me, gotta say. He's not acting like an innocent man.

October 1, 2018

Hey! I like that, DFW! "Kavanawful"! Did you make that up?

Sure fits that bastard!

October 1, 2018

Who spends 290 hours having lunch and going to the doctor?

If she had some serious health issues (which it’s OUR RIGHT to know about, since WE are her employers and WE pay her salary and she’s supposed to be “working for US”), then why should she be a Cabinet-level department head? If she has to spend that much time going to the doctor, why can’t we know whether she’s suffering some serious ailment that might disqualify her from full-time employment?

290 hours? I just did the math. Divide 290 by 8 - like an 8-hour work day. And you get 36.25. I think that means 36 8-hour days. 36 work days. Gee whiz. What’s that in work weeks? If you assume FIVE 8-hour work days per work week, five into 36 is seven (with change). Seven weeks. In less than TWO years on the job? SUPPOSEDLY on the job? Sounds like a pretty cushy job to me. That doesn’t count weekends or an assumed two-week vacation for each or two years.

And she hasn’t been on the job for two full years. Her employment didn’t start til January 31st of LAST YEAR. Which means she’s been on the job for 20 months. That’s not even two full years. And already she’s enjoyed 7 weeks “vacation”? I guess you’re entitled to a month off per year when you’re a Cabinet-level Secretary?

October 1, 2018

I've repeatedly heard the now-familiar cliche

about how hard it is to keep up with all the chaos. “It’s like drinking out of a fire hose.” Sure seems accurate to me!

I think if I were still working, I’d be exhausted!

October 1, 2018

The most recent figure I heard was 12-THOUSAND children

separated from their mothers or fathers and kept incarcerated since early summer. It’s October now! Twelve THOUSAND children - now being moved, late at night, under cover of darkness to some drab awful fenced-in “camp” out in the sticks somewhere.

October 1, 2018

Yeah. I get those emails too.

I tend not to want to trust a “former republi-CON. Unless I study up a little about her/him. Have they REALLY seen the light? Or are they a Trojan horse disruptor. As they said in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” - “are you ON the bus, or OFF the bus?”

You just kinda have to do some due diligence and make your best guess. Go to one of those community meetings or some local Democratic club’s candidate events - or a neighborhood thing like the local farmers market on Saturdays. Where I live now, inevitably there some local candidate who has a team of volunteers staffing a booth or a table with flyers and buttons and bumper stickers and stuff. They often include a clipboard for registering people to vote. Sometimes the candidate him/herself is there, too.

And they’ll want to talk! They’ll want you to know what their positions are on the issues. Or their campaign chairperson or some such will be there and he/she will have those answers too. Or they’ll want to know what YOU think the big issues are. If you see something like that, don’t hesitate to walk over and ask a few questions! You never know who you’ll meet and connect with, and where it might lead.

October 1, 2018

You sound like some of the people I've met along the ol' Indivisible trail.

Just went canvassing over the weekend for a state Senate candidate and was partnered with a woman who’d never even imagined she’d be involved in any kind of political activism.

At least, until 2016.

And by Jove, last Saturday, there she was, schlepping through neighborhoods, knocking on doors, talking to people, talking up our candidate - and doing so as a well-informed promoter of that candidate. She was terrific! And she’d never done anything of the kind before, until trump. I had the flyers and the basic spiel, she had the clipboard with our assigned route and the addresses of each house we were supposed to approach, and she made the notes after each encounter, as she threw in the parting words - the invitation to join us volunteers for this particular campaign.

What a great afternoon that was! Only one door slam. And another dude who, when I started in with our candidate’s proposals FOR access to affordable health care for all, started in with that selfish short-sighted crap about us taxpayers paying so other people can get it for free... he soon got to different mumbling about “babykillers...” and we just agreed to disagree and took our leave. But everybody else who was home to answer the doorbell was receptive, undecided because they hadn’t heard about the candidate (WE took care of that!) or were enthusiastic and already kinda knew about him. There was also one additional guy who questioned us... which party were we? Whereupon we said “Democrats” and he eagerly took our flyer and said “good! That’s all I need to know!” We encountered a few who’d already resolved to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, which was most encouraging!

We didn’t have to do much hard selling. We’d describe what our man’s positions were on the issues and we got a lot of validation that those positions were theirs as well.

I’ve done a number of canvassing things since the Hillary campaign. Always a challenge to kick yourself in the backside to get started, but once you do, it gets easier and easier, house by house. And it REALLY helps to have a good partner. Makes all the difference in the world.

We had a STELLAR absolutey kick-ass partner during the canvass for Hillary. We worked a little beach-ish community with a lot of apartments and small houses. There were three of us - a young woman who was a bit introverted so we had her handle the clipboard and the note-taking. The other woman was a local activist who proudly opened every discussion by introducing herself as the person who had pushed the neighborhood council to get a messed up street repaved. That street just happened to be part of our route. That tactic worked like magic! Everybody instantly became favorably predisposed toward whatever any of us had to say!

That’s a handy-dandy little strategy for your back pocket, with things like canvassing, btw. If you’ve ever done something beneficial for the neighborhood, that automatically makes you one of the good guys, and people will be far more receptive to whatever you’re working on now.

October 1, 2018

And it'll keep happening as long as they know there'll be no consequences.

Only once did these bastards ever have to swallow that bitter pill: Nixon. And they’ve been bitter, resentful, aggrieved, and hellbent on settling scores ever since.

Profile Information

Gender: Female
Home country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,220

About calimary

Female. Retired. Wife-Mom-Grandma. Approx. 30 years in broadcasting, at least 20 of those in news biz. Taurus. Loves chocolate - preferably without nuts or cocoanut. Animal lover. Rock-hound from pre-school age. Proud Democrat for life. Ardent environmentalist and pro-choicer. Hoping to use my skills set for the greater good. Still married to the same guy for 40+ years. Probably because he's a proud Democrat, too. Penmanship absolutely stinks, so I'm glad I'm a fast typist! I will always love Hillary and she will always be my President.
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