I wasn’t really sure which of two topics I wanted to write about tonight so I decided to combine them both into one diary. Follow me below to read about how things have changed for me since September.
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Back in September, things were on a real down swing. We were 9 months into the current tire fire of an administration in Washington, my town and county were run by criminals, one of whom was heading to trial on federal corruption charges, and my hockey team was continuing its epic mismanagement by the then general manager. Simply put, there weren’t a whole lot of positives in my life.
Things started looking up in early November when I finally got the call that I would be working the polls on Election Day. I was so excited as I had wanted to do that for a long time. While I wasn’t working in my place of residence, I wasn’t so far away that I there would be no chance to see people I know voting. In fact when I looked at the list I had, I noticed two people in the book that I knew. Both Republicans (it was a lean Republican precinct.) and both came into vote. That was cool. We had a pretty good turn out in our precinct for off-off-year elections which feature mostly county and municipal level elections. The fact that the every 20 year referendum on a Constitutional Convention was on the ballot likely caused a heavier than normal turnout for an odd year election.
Where I live, we use optical scanner ballots and the machines that count them are not connected to the internet at any time, so I feel pretty confident they are hard to manipulate. We did have one issue that caused people to have to place their ballots in a separate box because the scanner wasn’t working. It got fixed before the end of voting and my group (4 people 2 from each party), scanned them after the polls closed so that no one would have to wait.
At the end of the night, the machine prints out the results from our precinct, so I got to see that. The Democrat running for County Executive won the precinct by a pretty good margin which gave me a good feeling as to how that race would and the Democrat running for Town Supervisor won by one vote. While I pumped about that, I figure the Town’s overwhelming Republican tilt at that level would still mean my corrupt, but not indicted, Supervisor would still win.
Imagine my shock when I got home, turned on the news and saw The Democrat had won both the County Executive’s race and the Town Supervisor’s race. The fact that a Democrat won the Town Supervisor’s race is nothing short of a political 9.0 earthquake. Ever since the Supervisor position was created in 1862, A Republican has always held the position. Not only that, but my Town is essentially the power center of the County Republican Party. By losing this position, they lost all the patronage jobs the corrupt politicians here love to hand out. Of course, the former Supervisor couldn’t leave office without finding a way to ensure his people wouldn’t be fired once the new administration took over. That case is now in court and we are hoping those contracts will be vacated.
On the other front, my hockey team was spending the season wallowing in disrepair and abject awfulness. After announcing that the team would be moving to a brand new building back on Long Island in December, the team wasted that awesomely good news by melting down on the ice. Things were getting so bad that in January a group of fans had raised over $10,000 to erect two billboards (they originally planned to only erect one) calling for the firing of the general manager. After missing the playoffs by 17 points in the walk year of our captain, and face of the franchise, everyone assumed he would be fired the first business day after the season ended and most people wanted the coach gone as well. Personally, I had wanted the general manager fired at the end of the 2013-2014 season, so I had long been past my peak hatred for him. When that didn’t happen, an even more open revolt began to form.
At the end of the locker room clean out days, one of the owners held a press conference that was attended by both the general manager and coach. To call it a bizarre press conference would be a huge understatement. The owner read some ridiculously vague statement and took no questions. This is an owner, who when things were going well, couldn’t pass up a chance to get in front of microphone. But starting in February, refused to ever give an interview to any member of the press. The general manager showed up looking like he hadn’t left the house in three weeks. The entire hockey media had also been writing scathing articles about the team for months and this press conference only caused those articles to ramp up. In short, we were truly the laughingstock of the league.
As the calendar turned towards May, nothing had changed and no one was talking. Apathy and anger were only growing. Meanwhile, speculation was growing that the then general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs was likely going to be moved to a mostly ceremonial position. This led to massive speculation that he would be looking to go somewhere where he could once again have control over hockey operations. It had happened a few years ago when he went to Toronto. Lo and be hold, it happened and our owners hired him. Talk about changing the culture and perception of our team on a dime. We instantly became a credible organization. And a couple of weeks later, both the coach and GM were fired. Hey things are really looking up here.
Fast forward to last week when negotiations broke down between the coach and the GM of the current Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals. After winning the Cup, their coach wanted to renegotiate his contract which had had an automatic option for a small raise upon winning the Stanley Cup. He, rightly, felt he deserved to be paid more than the modest raise would give him and opted to resign from the team. Well, there was only one open head coaching spot, us. Wouldn’t you know the day before the draft, my team signed him. This is the first time we have a GM-head coach combo with that kind of pedigree since the years we were winning multiple Stanley Cups. It was almost too good to believe. Add in a terrific draft over this weekend and it probably the quickest and biggest 180 I have ever known in professional sports.
I don’t know where things will go from here. Will the November elections continue my good streak of luck? Will our captain re-sign with us before Sunday? Will Cynthia Nixon beat Cuomo next week? Who knows? But it has been a really good 10 months for me.
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TOP COMMENTS FOR 6/24/18
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I am nominating this comment from Court Jester in Murfster's diary, “On the issue of Trump and his "base." Something. Doesn't. Add. Up.,” because it really speaks to the mission of this site. It's not about telling everyone about how bad the Dotard is; it's about creating more and better Democrats!
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I submitted this comment from Black Knight solely for The Hogan Family reference but it’s about how The Conners might address the departure of their matriarch.
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[ed comment: I don’t know how often it happens, but the top picture from yesterday was also at the top of the mojo list.]