Total participants from from my precinct: 103.Total votes for Clinton: 31. Total votes for Sanders: 72. Those numbers translate into 2 delegates for Clinton and 3 delegates for Sanders. I didn't think of taking note of how many precincts were assigned to my caucus location, but there were at least six. We have to figure a pretty good turnout from ( Read more... )

Some of the folks who planned to do the Rubicon Trail asked if I would reschedule. So I did. Seven of us, if I counted right, but this was unofficial so I didn't really keep track, and we were all over the trail. Fast hikers, slow hikers and medium paced hikers. I was pretty medium but this hike is getting long. Maybe it's just the trouble with the ( Read more... )

So the last few subject headings have been lines from Mad Men episodes. I'm waiting to see if the show becomes as daring as it claims to be. The third season, when it happens or if it happens (apparently negotiations are still under way), should be the key. Each season covers approximately a year in time, though time has been accelerated a bit. ( Read more... )

I'm really liking the mini-greenhouse. The plants are taking off better than I've ever seen. And it's still somewhat cool. There have been predictions of snow. Next season I have to resist starting seeds so early. I'll wait until mid-March.

( If you could push a button and make the Democratic Party disappear--would you? )

MaryAnn Johanson (1) really doesn't like A Beautiful Mind while Gautaman Bhaskaran (2) does. I'm in the middle. It's a half-good movie. The first half is pretty good, an interesting portrayal of Cold War paranoia. In the second half Russell Crowe's performance is too derivative of Dustin Hoffman's Little Big Man (3) and Rain Man (4).

( Usual suspects keep popping up )

Listening to this (some goofy conspiracism there but some interesting stuff as well) reminded me of The Lieutenant, Gene Roddenberry's short-lived series from 1963-1964. With 29 episodes aired, it didn't quite make it through a whole season, as a whole season was defined back then. I believe a season back then lasted at least 32 episodes, possibly ( Read more... )

In 1984 Mark Crispin Miller offered some musings about 1984, which were printed in The Georgia Review 38:1 (Winter 1984), reprinted in Reflections on America, 1984: An Orwell Symposium edited by Robert Mulvihill (1986) and in his own book Boxed In: The Culture of TV (1988). He offers an interesting take on the subject. I had never heard of that ( Read more... )

The war in Vietnam was lost by the French and then by the Americans because they didn't belong there, and the resistance endeavored to do whatever was necessary to make that point. This is also the situation in Iraq.
--Stan Goff

( A . . . sour, vindictive desire to ransack history and 'make it come out right.' )

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are ( Read more... )

The US government does not see Israel primarily as a political asset (or liability, for that matter). It sees it for what it is: a force multiplier. For a few billion a year, Uncle Sam can maintain a lethal modern surrogate military on the very border of the world's biggest oil patch; one that is hostile in its very essence to the brown people who ( Read more... )