I have voted Republican for governor. The Democrat was a “it’s her turn” candidate, and i had seen her in small campaign settings and her answers to questions were really dumb. I didn’t feel she’d be a good governor. That may have been a mistake, because the Republican ended up doing a lot of damage to the state’s infrastructure, but he was good in other ways.
I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton the second time he ran, because i believed there were credible accusations of rape against him. I voted for a person who was not on the ballot, as i didn’t want to vote for the Republican, either. I lived in NY State at the time, and didn’t believe my vote would matter. Had i lived in a swing state, i think i would have held my nose and voted for Bill.
I said i usually answer the phone. But that’s predicated on
my landline has both nomorobo and caller ID, and those screen out most of the spam calls
i don’t get many calls at all on my cell phone, and if i don’t recognize the caller, i use the “screen” function, so i generally know who it is and why they are calling before i speak to them.
But legit callers who call from unknown numbers generally will reach me. I suspect that pollsters don’t, as they are probably screened by nomorobo (they probably use robodialing) and i haven’t gotten called by pollsters in quite a while.
Agree with your assesment about McCain. I think he would have possibly won had he selected a different, more serious, mainstream VP choice. The Republicans tried one more time with the sane “wrong, but within normal parameters” candidates in 2012, and lost again. So what’d they do the next time? They said screw it, we need to go harder to the right, and we saw what happened in 2016.
I never answer my phone. People who know me know to text me if they want a reply. I have my phone set to send any caller not in my contacts directly to voicemail without alerting me in any way.
For being a bookworm and unathletic growing up, I got frequent flyer mileage at the local ER for various incident resulting in broken bones or the need for stitches.
I actually went to two ERs on one broken bone. Back in high school, we were water skiing on a lake in the middle of nowhere and I came in too close to shore. The ER of the local hospital was staffed by nurse practitioners who told me to go up to Salt Lake City, six hours away.
Most of the phones on my landline don’t show me who’s calling. If I’m near one of those phones, or if the one at my desk doesn’t tell me it’s spam, I often answer calls from unknown numbers: the caller might be a possible customer or a possible farm market vendor. If I’m not near one of those phones, I only call back if I recognize the number or if the caller left a voice message (and the voice message is about something I want to talk to them about; sometimes people I don’t have dealings with who are trying to sell me stuff I don’t want leave a message, and I usually ignore those.)
I don’t generally talk to pollers because the polls almost always ask questions in a form that I won’t answer them in, because the answers would be misleading and/or are either ‘none’ or ‘both’ and those aren’t options. (Yes, I’m afraid the country’s headed in the wrong direction. But I probably mean by that the exact opposite of what the pollster means.)
I’ve voted third party for POTUS, though not at all recently. I’ve voted Republican for local office, including fairly recently, though I don’t think I will this year – this year the only local office, and both the state legislative for this district, are running unopposed anyway; I’ll either skip them or do a write-in. I can’t remember whether I’ve voted Republican for national or state office other than POTUS, but I’ve considered the R candidates seriously, and I think I may have sometimes voted for one; again not recently. I don’t think I’ve ever voted R for POTUS, but I have considered the candidates. I think I might well have voted for McCain if he’d run ten or twenty years sooner; but by the time McCain did get nominated he didn’t seem to me to be the same person any longer.
My phone will tell me if suspected spam, I can also use a feature that gives them a message and they can tell the phone who they are and what they want- screening…
So, if not suspected spam, I might use screening or I might answer.
I haven’t had a landline in… 20? something like that… years.
My phone is set to send all calls from numbers not in my contact list directly to voicemail. Can’t answer if it don’t ring.
Howard was a bit of a weenie with regards to letting Chuck push him around, but overall he was one of the very few truly good guys in the entire BB/BCS series
One parent is an immigrant. The other one can trace a line of descent from one of the Mayflower passengers. I R America.
And I’m an immigrant because I’ve moved out of America (well, technically I still have a residence in the US but the large majority of my time is in the UK and I now have dual citizenship). So I’m an immigrant, one parent was an immigrant, and one of that parent’s parents was an immigrant to a new country. We are a peripatetic bunch.
I’m also an emigrant, from the US to Sweden 13 years ago. However most my great grandparents moved the other way back in the 1800’s. (Not from Sweden; from Germany and Netherlands.)
My parents are/were both immigrants, though from different countries. My father came to the US, joined the Army, and then was sent to a country where he ended up meeting my mom.
I was young-Republican-ish in college, and that’s pretty much me as well, except I also voted for Phil Gramm, god help me. The thing that turned me was marrying a nice liberal lady, and listening to Republican shock radio (a guy named David Gold), which really changed my opinion in a way they didn’t intend.
My great-grandmother’s parents were immigrants from Prussia in the 19th Century. That’s the most recent I know of.
On my father’s side we can trace back (with one hiccup1) to Jamestown - after the initial colony and famine. Though John Magille was a sailor on the ship that brought the initial colonists, but I don’t think that counts.
1 - Sherman’s march to the sea burnt the records that would have shown whether Benjamin Magill was Caleb’s son or brother.
My dad’s ancestors were from England and Scotland, my mom’s from Poland and Russia. I’ve never been interested in genealogy so I don’t know when this all occured.
I think I have immigrant ancestors in every generation except grandparents for the last ten. Some didn’t stay: went back to Europe or on to Canada. Immigration in the 1960s, 1900s, 1880s, 1830s & 40s, & before independence.
The horse poll also needs a “riding horses was one of my passions in life when I was younger, but I haven’t ridden in quite a while” option.
My father as a child, and all of my grandparents, were immigrants; all Ashkenazi, though my mother’s side and my father’s side from different areas. By the time you get to the generation of my niblings, I think we may have all the continents represented in the family somewhere; including some more recent immigrants.