Above is a small act of vanity I allowed myself at the tail end of my campaign. I blew past the original $2,000 I sort of suggested to my wife would be my personal limit on another likely doomed “campaign” for Congress. Above you see 100 playing card decks and an unopened box of another hundred. They were very generously designed for me by Rick Kollath over the summer. He’s a philosopher as much as an artist and we had a lot of fun chats about the state of the Earth. Rick also put the finishing touches on my self designed campaign business card which became my lawnsigns as well. All Rick asked for from me was to do my best to challenge Pete Stauber. Actually Rick lives a more precarious life than I do. I only take on windmills. Rick climbs and sometimes falls off mountains.
The card deck idea was am improvement on snow sculpture trading cards I made for my last school board campaign. That was the campaign where I was crushed by a tidal wave of unhappy women voters for not having a uterus after Hillary Clinton’s appalling defeat by Donald Trump in 2016. I had several politically well connected women on the Duluth School Board who fanned the flames of distrust against me for my support for Art Johnston, my willingness to sell Central to the Edison schools and my censure for telling Duluth we had a ten million dollar offer on New Central. I even attempted to win over the DFL at one of our new Red Plan Schools. The loud speaker system stymied me I hope by accident as no one beyond a first row of tables at the convention site could hear my speech. I’ve made a lot of DFL women school board members angry with me over the last twenty years. That I had been a Republican only spiked their distrust. To that all I can say is I was right to call the Red Plan into question as it has crippled Duluth’s ISD 709 and will continue to until the bonds paying off its loans are retired over the next ten years. My Republicanism had been reduced to mere fiscal skepticism and I even had one former Republican Senator I much admired once tell me he was talking to an SOB over the phone when he thought he had switched our conversation over to another person calling him. I pretended I had no idea what he had done to spare him embarrassment. But I was right and all of Duluth’s children suffered because I failed to free our school board from a worship of a sociopathic Superintendent who was as charismatic as he was dishonest and financial inept.
I wish there were more Republicans like me in the cesspool that houses ninnies like Pete Stauber in its ranks today. And the biggest ninny of them all may have stolen America’s nuclear secrets to give to the Saudis. Hell, he’s been holding their balls since he got elected. Most recently their golf balls and more spectacularly the big white orb a few years into his presidency.
I have so much to be humble about but courage, honesty and self deprecation to counter my ego are not high on the list of my short comings.
I might find some use for the 200 decks of cards in some future campaign for Congress or an attempt to give the United States back its party of Lincoln from the body snatchers who have corrupted it beyond recognition.
My plan was to offer them for $20.00 contributions. Having barely mentioned this on my multifarious online sites I was pleased when an old school mate sent me $60.00 for three decks. She was so pleased to get them that she pulled one out to inspect it and didn’t notice my thank you note for a couple days. Unlike my trading cards playing cards are actually useful. Although as I’ve been telling people mine may not be very lucky. It took me five days and about 25 games of solitaire before I finally won.
As my campaign failed to raise sufficient money to pay for more mailings I held off on my original scheme to use cards to finance my campaign. But as I hit the four weeks to go mark I spent $1,000 on them and then added another $400.00 to give them rounded edges what wouldn’t turn ragged easily. I was too cheap to pony up another $400.00 for boxes for the cards.
Yesterday as I pulled up the 20 lawnsigns I’d suck up just before Grandma’s marathon. I knew I couldn’t bring myself to landfill them just yet. I haven’t gotten permission from the Schultz campaign to put her name on them but just maybe if she fails to beat Stauber I can pull them out for a fourth go round against our hockey puck in 2024. Pulling her name off of to reuse them would be a real pain. Still, as the fall approaches I’m inclined to start working UMD Students again to get them on the dump-Stauber band wagon. I think my story of Republican betrayal of their futures could and should work them up. The Schultz campaign is in desperate need of my piss and vinegar. She’s too refined to call Stauber a traitor’s dupe which is an apt description.
I have a little mess to clean up. Last Spring I hoped to find an attorney to keep me within the federal campaign laws. In 2018 and 2020 I only spent $300 on a filing fee which I suspected freed me from having to report on myself. I never found the attorney and never printed out the 300 pages of the FEC instructions for managing my campaign. Having spent over $5,000 very piddly dollars I had an obligation to report on myself. I sent in a single-page-form ten days ago about a week late but have not yet followed up with the four pages of forms explaining that I spent $10,000 to $13,000. I did ask someone at the FEC if, and how much, I might be fined for neglecting my reporting. Maybe a couple hundred bucks he told me. I spent a thousand on card decks that can’t get me elected. I’m in no great hurry to read three hundred pages of rules to avoid that modest a fine. I don’t know in what ways the reporting rules have changed. I ran in 1992 but don’t have any memory of what I was required to report then. That was when I first got the idea to sell something to finance a congressional campaign. That was a much bigger financial drain then than the card decks are today. I had to chuck 5,000 unsold books in the landfill although it took me a decade to get up the nerve to abandon such an investment. I can get rid of 200 card decks easy. I gave them to three people who helped me on my campaign mailings yesterday as I gathered up lawnsigns.
After that I read a book I’d bought used a few years ago to do a little research on Rush Limbaugh. It was Al Franken’s pre-Senate book “Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them.” I only got into the lies of the beautiful witch Ann Coulter.
There are a lot more liars for me to read about but I was glad to have the dishonesty of a so called “conservative” explained to me as she misinformed readers about the old south’s complaint that our news media is infested with liberal bias. That was the southern politician’s salve for having the national press keep pointing out how racist the South was when I was growing up. As the southern racists filled the ranks of the GOP they brought that trumped up accusation with them and have been so successful bullshitting the dittoheads that now hardly any “good” Republicans read the extremely valuable news content of some truly excellent newspapers that have survived the mass death of so many US newspapers over the last decade.
If I get dinged in the press for not fulfilling my self reporting role to the FEC at least I’ve informed “my 8 loyal readers” why I have been so detached from my obligation to keep the Federal Elections Commission abreast of my-not-very-useful spending over the summer.
But I’m not feeling a particle of pain today. I listened in on the Peppa the Pig cartoons this morning and was very pleased that I was able to follow a lot of the rapid fire dialogue. That’s something that has been impossible for me since I began listening to the cartoons almost five years ago. After a lot of work I am almost bilingual. That’s two more languages than our ex-president has considering that everything he says in English are the words of a lying liar. You’re welcome to him Pete!
Sorry, Once again I have no inclination to proof read this post. I don’t think the typos and awkward parts really diminish my message. If I take up the Reader column again I’ll put some editing effort in……I think I’ll also change my old columns title from Not Eudora to Not your Usual Republican……I have gotten pretty use to that over the summer.
OK, OK I did a little editing. I know I needed it and probably need to do more. But I got a rude awakening. There were three powerful explosions and then my power went out before I could update this post…….I ran outside and found my neighbor heading to the alley.
We found this crispy critter below a power line. My neighbor saw a huge shower of sparks from a blown transformer.
Last night a neighbor irritated a skunk and it stunk up the neighborhood. I keep lawn chairs in front of my back steps to keep the dear from eating our flowers. All nature is punishing us for heating up their world.
As if this post isn’t already too long let me reiterate:
I will continue accepting donations through the General election as my plan from the beginning has been to remove one Trump supporter from Congress. Win lose or draw in the August 9th primary that effort will continue. Your help would be appreciated:
