Happy Holidays and taking a short break

 I'm going to take Xmas Eve and Xmas Day off from this blog. I will also take New Years Eve and New Years Day off from this blog. As I tweeted last nite, sometimes you just have to unplug. Of course I won't entirely unplug things are still going on around the world.

Perhaps you may be paying attention to my long running blog, I'm thinking Xmas is a good time for a holiday there. You got to unplug sometimes.

— Levois J (@levois) December 23, 2020

2020 has been the wildest year in the world in memory, I think only 2001 was wild. However the events that took place just about 20 years ago doesn't compare to the weirdness of '20. The pandemic, the unrest, and unfortunately this election.

I had predicted to a college classmate in '16 that whoever won that race would lose in '20. And while I'm just not happy about it, that seems to have come to pass this year. My frame of reference for that was the mudslinging between Hillary Clinton and Trump. With the situations that have come to pass this year I'm pretty sure Clinton wouldn't have gotten a second term even with help from the media, the same media who's continually attacked Trump and he in turn attacked them.

On the other hand things were humming along until coronavirus and these lockdowns and I knew Trump would have a harder time. Of course there were other things I factored in including the riots over the summer and the measures taken for the election owing to the pandemic. So I should've anticipated how weird things were going to be in November and we're still processing.

BTW, I just need to share this with you now I'm seeing something about Georgia legislators attempting to decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election there. While its hope for those who don't want Biden to take office next month, I don't know if this gambit will take off. I think there are a few moving parts that won't cooperate in that. However, time will tell as the US Congress will still count all electoral votes on January 6, '21.

So, I just wanted to add that I had been planning on writing a post about the 2006 election. If '20 was rough on voters or even '16, '06 was rough on me. Probably in those latter elections a foregone conclusion went sideways and likely due to some intervening events.

In '06 I didn't really recognize this at the time, but it was a wave year. The Iraqi war wasn't going very well and that went down the ballot and voters decided to vote Democrat. Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the early 1990s. Nancy Pelosi made history as the first woman Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

For me in that year I paid attention to two races. I wanted Rod Blagojevich out of the governor's office and thought perhaps Illinois would elect the late Judy Baar Topinka in his stead. They didn't, if I recall that race was called very early that evening on election day. Topinka then the state treasurer didn't have a chance, was it because of the wave year? Yeah I do think so, Blago as a great campaigner though a terrible governor likely took advantage of this.

Another race locally that I kept an eye on was for Cook County Board President well the choices there weren't as clear cut. Basically the incumbent was named John Stroger and a short time before the '06 primary he suffered a health issue and was incapacitated. There was some Weekend at Bernie's type things going on around him but ultimately he needed to be taken off the ballot and in his stead was his son Todd Stroger.

I'm sure the argument at the time to justify this nepotism was the white folks were getting away with this type of thing so why shouldn't we do it. Stroger - probably similarly to other attempts at handing off an elected office to a close relative - was simply not a remarkable public servant. He had served in the Illinois House of Representatives and as a Chicago Alderman and I don't recall much from him. He wasn't visible though perhaps for some politicos that was perfect because it's not always good to make waves in that world.

Well his opponent was Republican Tony Peraica - who was a suburban Cook County Commissioner. I was all in on him, but as it turned out '06 was a bad year. And I will bet that Black voters went all in on Stroger handing him his legendary father's old office which he would hold for only one term. Todd was often lauded for his finance acumen, however, unlike Blago he just didn't have great political skill.

We all know what happened with Blago he gets re-elected and perhaps two years after his re-election he would be arrested by the FBI, impeached and removed from office. Then he went to trial twice as the first trial resulted in a mistrial and the second trial resulted in him getting a long sentence. That sentence was commuted earlier this year and you might find him on Newsmax talking about Democrat politics.

I just gave you a taste of what I wanted to write about but never got it down to my satisfaction.

Meanwhile I hope you all enjoy your holidays. In these trying times I hope you make it a good one.