Beau Elliot
As the life turns — but I’m no expert on life or turns. When I was a kid, back when Iowa City had mud streets most of the time and horses and stuck buggies, when I heard the word “turn,” I thought they meant “tern,” the seashore bird that circles and swoops and tries to steal your food.
Of course, when people said “full of gall,” I heard “full of gull,” the seabird that circles and swoops and does steal your food. Full of gull made perfect sense. See Donald Trump.
As the life terns — Puerto Rico, that gem of a U.S. commonwealth in the Caribbean — wait a New York minute, you say. (OK, wait’s over.) Technically, legally, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not a commonwealth. And it’s broke, rare territory for a gem.
Well, yes, but who’s counting at home anymore? Or counting anywhere else, for that matter. Math is so 1970s, and we’ve moved on to the ’90s. (No, not the 1890s; it just seems that way.) It’s a sine of the times.
Anyway, Puerto Rico — gem, commonwealth, territory, whatever — as it terns out, will have more pledged delegates (60) at the Democratic Convention than will Iowa (44). So why isn’t the Puerto Rican primary first in the nation instead of Iowa’s horse-and-buggy-era caucuses?
Good question, but you’re taking us back to the Dark Ages of knowing math and the curves of sines and the parallelograms of cosines and people counting at home. And doing that counting without the help of a smartphone app. Yikes.
In any case, Puerto Rico may get more delegates to the convention than Iowa, but Puerto Ricans living on the island can’t vote in the presidential election. Because they’re living on the island.
But Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, you say. Yes, you’re right. And Puerto Ricans who move to the mainland can vote in the presidential election. Speaking of the Dark Ages.
Oh, well.
Iowans, we’ll note, even though they live on an island in the middle of an ocean of corn, get to vote in the presidential election. For now. Once Donald Trump becomes president, builds a magnificent ballroom addition to the White House, and discovers that Iowa has a large contingent of people of Mexican heritage, Iowa will lose the vote. It is an island, after all, and Trump keeps losing here.
As the life terns: In June 2008, two days after then-Sen. Barack Obama won the California primary and basically sealed his nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Hillary Clinton to end her campaign and not push all the way to the convention. That year, Sanders was a superdelegate.
Hmm. Maybe life does indeed tern.
As the life terns: Trump blames Obama for Orlando massacre (maybe he led it, in his secret Kenyan Muslim persona?). Only a person who’s full of gullible wouldn’t believe it.
Of course, Trump terns and terns so much it’s hard to know what he believes. It’s rather like Yeats’ “terning and terning in the widening gyre.” (Sorry, Willy.)
For instance, as recently as 2009, Trump believed in global climate change; now, that’s a whole bunch of pointy-headed intellectual bunk. No word yet on whether he thinks that should be intellectual bunk beds, but that word is sure to come. No doubt from the mount of one of his palaces.
To use a tern of phrase.