Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Center Of Attention

My home state of Michigan is getting a lot of attention tonight. We're having our presidential primary today, which is a good thing. It means an end to all those political ads and robo calls we've been getting!

Aren't those robo-callers getting clever. They even know and say your name when you answer. "Hi Dave, this is . . . " I was a little skeptical when wife Wendy told me that an automated calling program referred to me by name.

"How do you know it wasn't a real person calling?" I asked.

"Because he called me Dave," she replied.

Oh. Duhh.

Those robo-callers are getting more sophisticated. I got a call this week from someone trying to sell me a health alert pendant and was quite insistent that I hold on the line while they got a specialist to talk to me.

"We're not interested," I responded, at least four times when they kept asking. Only after they relented and said goodbye did I realize I may not have been speaking to a real person at all, but to some voice recognition software program that kept delivering canned responses to my repeated refrain of not interested.

If I would have guessed that sooner, I would have said something completely nonsensical. Or started talking in Spanish just to see if the robo-caller would do the same.

"Como estas, usted?"

Anyway, back to the Michigan primary. Yes I did vote. Not Wendy. She didn't like any of the candidates. But I thought I would vote for Romney, not necessarily because I'm a big Romney fan or even a card-carrying Republican, but because I don't like to see a Michigan guy lose to some guy who spends a lot of time in Ohio wearing a sweater vest, like U of M's arch-nemesis, former OSU football coach Jim Tressel.

That's Santorum who wears the sweater vest. While walking back from the polls, I ecountered a man wearing an Obama sweatshirt who said he was headed himself to the polls to cast his vote for Santorum. Since Michigan has an open primary, all anybody has to do is ask for a Republican or Democrat ballot. Even Obama himself could ask for a Republican ballot, if he lived here in Michigan and wanted to be mischievous.

I just checked and Romney is a few thousand votes up. More importantly, we haven't had a robo-call all night.

9 Comments:

Blogger Lynilu said...

One thing I miss about Missouri is that open primary thing. Out here in NM, you can only get a ballot of the party in which you have registered, If you register as an independent or "undeclared," you can't vote in primaries at all. Stinks.

If I were voting in the Rep primaries, my reasons for selecting a candidate would be a logically focused as yours as stated here. :)

8:08 PM  
Blogger Big Dave T said...

LYNILU--Since the Republicans are in charge of state government right now, I wouldn't be surprised if they change it, particularly if they think Democrats were crossing over in droves yesterday. Governor Rick Snyder and Romney are buddies.

6:34 AM  
Blogger CAROLDEE said...

ROBO calls.. we got at least 6 in one day! So happy they are over for awhile!

7:55 AM  
Blogger Merle said...

Hi Dave ~~ Those calls are a nuisance and usually come at
meal-times.
Glad you enjoyed the jokes and pass them on any time,
I liked the Senior that beat the Lawyer out of $500.00
I am doing quite well, walking a little without my walker but being very careful still. It seems to be the thing to sue somebody
these days. Take care my friend and make that doctor
appointment. Cheers, Merle.

3:40 AM  
Blogger Big Dave T said...

CAROLDEE--I can't figure out why candidates use them. They're so annoying I might just not vote for the candidate who interrupts my dinner the most.

MERLE--So they haved sue-happy lawyers in Australia too? Wonder where we could move to avoid the lawyers. And the robo calls.

5:56 PM  
Blogger Nankin said...

I'd vote for a chimp if I thought it could win against Obama.

2:36 PM  
Blogger Big Dave T said...

NANKIN--They say Obama's looking pretty tough right now. But a lot can change between now and November.

3:30 PM  
Blogger Mrs. Dike said...

Penultimate arch-nemesis, methinks.

10:31 PM  
Blogger B.S. said...

Hah!! I love your Ohio-related reason for choosing Romney!

And I'm wondering why your robo calls are so much more sophisticated than the ones I seem to get.....I actually like robo calls, because I can hang up on them without hurting anyone's feelings. If they call me by name, though, it might be a rad more difficult.

hugs,
Betty

8:02 AM  

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