Wisconsin Post-Election Spin ~ Part I

Photo credit: Edible Planet

The Yard Signs and The Neighbors ~  Personally, I have many post-election reliefs the 2012 elections are a completed process. One of my biggest reliefs is very tiny and important enough for me to blog about.  It's about the senior couple that live a block away, particularly the husband and their Obama yard signs.

In approximately 14-16 neighborhood blocks, there were only three Obama yard signs. The Romney yard signs heavily outnumbered the Obama yard signs. To be perfectly honest, there certainly were not yard signs in each and every yard as I have seen in past Presidential elections.

The senior husband (the couple are in their late seventies) put out his original Obama yard sign way back when.  It was taken. He got more. They were taken. He continued to get more.  I learned of this happening through my daughter.

Much to this man's delight, my daughter sometimes seeks him out, specifically he is her advisor on the 'tinkerings' of our snow blower, because she knows he 'tinkers' and 'repairs' snow blowers and lawn mowers. (My daughter does our own maintenance and repairs. He advises her on the troubleshooting.)

When she approached him, he was out in the yard putting in another Obama yard sign. This is how the conversation turned to these events. She asked him could she run and get some Quikrete  (easy fast drying cement product) to help him permanently affix that yard sign in his yard.  She said she would come and help him dig it out after the elections.  He thanked her as he declined her sweet offer. He said he didn't think using concrete was lawful.  He said he would now manually bring the sign in when they left their home and at night before it got dark.  He said he would be picking up a couple of spare Obama signs and have them waiting in the garage, just in case.

My daughter asked him if he had called the police about this. He said, "No, the police have far more important things to worry about."  Sadly, that's is probably the truth as we know it in today's USA society and I'm sure the police department would agree with him.

To be very clear this neighbor was only putting out one yard sign for his entire front yard, not a yard full of signs.  This couple are seniors, the wife having survived two bouts of breast cancer and a double mastectomy in the past seven years. These are our senior neighbors who maintain a clean home and yard, are blessed to still have each other as a married couple and live a quiet, modest, basic, everyday simple life the same as we do.

And yet, someone who disagreed did not want them to have their say in their own front yard, while all the other yards having signs agreed with got to have their say. You may very well think this not important enough to warrant a blog post.  In fact, it illustrates a basic premise of what is currently happening and wrong in our country ~ blatant disrespect  of others. To you it may be simply just a yard sign, to me it was actively targeting people, in this case vulnerable seniors.

By the way, I don't want to see in my reply column ....''some kids did it" ~ I don't believe that for a minute.  It's a very small sampling, but the ten high school kids (ages 14, 15) that hang around with my Grand ~ pre-election..... six of them said their parents were probably going to vote Romney/Ryan, five of them said they thought their parents would vote Obama/Biden, but all 11 total (includes Grand) said  IF they could vote, they would probably vote Obama/Biden because they think ~ "President Obama cares more about us" to paraphrase the majority sum of their responses as to why they would vote Obama/Biden.  Hopefully, this will be the truth in the coming four years for ALL citizens.

Another by the way, if the taken yard signs had been Romney signs and not Obama signs, this story still would have been told. To the very best of my knowledge, my immediate neighbors that had Romney yard signs remained untouched and in their yards.

I give my neighbors that went through the Obama yard signs ordeals a lot of credit for their gumption, their determination, their "stick to it ness".  They deserve our respect, my respect.  

I'm @grammakaye  on twitter. Please feel free to leave a reply or comment. .