So it's April 1st, and Uncle Shelley has pinched all the cheeks of his Republican nephews this past weekend. Since he has more money than sense, well, I suggested a variation on the theme: bribing middle-age white Democratic men to vote his way, especially if they were Jewish.
So, follow me past the orange warp-drive intercooler for my crazy thoughts...
It was expected to be a tight race between Rauner and Quinn, since our beleagured Democratic governor had made what some considered bad deals, especially with regard to State pensions. And people were expecting Pat Quinn to founder and fail in the onslaught of Bruce Rauner's self-funded media steamroller, but in hindsight all that was accomplished there was a massive exceeding of Illinoisan's threshold of annoyance.
So, it was a bit disconcerting when I received a heavy Priority Mail flat-rate box, with the mailing date of April 1st, that was packed with $100 bills. Some new, some old, and all apparently unmarked, according to my little UV LED flashlight. One million dollars, and what looked like a handwritten note.
From "Uncle Shelley", urging me to vote for Rauner, and to convince my "meshugina shikse" to do the same.
Well, I sat down with Calamity Jean and we discussed what to do. While the note said taxes had been paid, we set aside enough to cover that, then did some serious thinking about what to do with the remainder. Just depositing it into the bank would get us more scrutiny by the Feds, and the same would go for my buying a new Via PHEV SUV. We settled on using it as a source for our spending cash, and occasionally putting small amounts in the bank. It was very helpful in the long run on getting the new dome house finished, and the second dome started, along with all the other things we needed to get done on the farm.
And, in November, we voted for Pat Quinn. We are Democrats, y`know!
So did a lot of other people, and Bruce Rauner became another version of Jim Oberweis, who also didn't do as well as he had hoped.
Quinn was back in. He had ridden in on Medicaid expansion and the minimum wage, not to mention Rauner annoying the hell out of the bulk of the population.
Time passed. We moved into the new house, and the second dome and two conventional steel buildings went up soon after, one a barn, the other a storage shed, and both supporting ranks of photovoltaic panels to work in conjunction with our new wind turbine. Fences went up, first along the eastern border of our farm, then an internal one to delineate the pasture, and since we had a windfall, we even replaced the west fence along the road. And it turned out that taxes indeed had been paid on our "gift", so we had the rest of that to work with.
And the Presidential race heated up, particularly on the Republican side. They had many retreads, a few new faces, and Uncle Shelley had his favorite among the latter, Jeb Bush. And Uncle Shelley was hedging his bets, again. After all, Mitt Romney was in it "to win it", spending his own money to try and swamp the primaries.
Again, another flat-rate box, with another million dollars worth of $100 bills, and another note, exhorting us to vote for Bush. This time, things got very interesting.
First, there were so many candidates, it got very contentious in the primaries. Then, when Jeb did manage to get the nod at the convention, he teamed up with Ted Cruz, who ended up being a male version of She Who™? Is An Idiot. Cruz went off half-cocked with the VP position, spewing all of his craziness, and generally adding to the baggage attendant with the Bush family name. And Romney made a halting attempt at a write-in candidate, which failed spectacularly.
Hillary Clinton won handily. We voted Democratic, of course.
And Adelson's woes weren't over. In addition to his previous problems with the Feds, and losing for a third time, big-time, some of the recipients of his "gifts" actually squawked about being bribed this time. He ended up paying a ginormous fine, just to avoid jail time (they considered his age and health), and it made a significant dent in his estate, when he died suddenly two years later.
Some said he died of a broken heart. Dunno.