No legacy is so rich as honesty - William Shakespeare
I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
The counter says that 1943833
have been flummelized, but I
personally think it's all a big lie.
Speaking of lies....
Because most of the world seems to already understand what the heck a super delegate is, I thought it was high time I indulged in a bit of self-edjumacashu.
Apparently the DNC had had enough of dark horse candidates like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter swooping in and getting themselves set up as the democratic candidates for the 1972 and 1976 elections. What with the whole popular vote determining who they wanted it totally stole the control from the party. Who were these delegates to think that they could just tell the party who to place on the ballot? The noive. In response, in 1984, the DNC set up the “at-large” delegates also called super delegates comprised of democratic party elites who, unlike the other flavor of delegates, are free to vote for whichever candidate they choose and free to change their minds right up until they actually cast their final vote at the convention in August.
The whole idea is to avoid surprises like McGovern and Carter and to maintain control of the convention outcome. Since the super delegate system was installed in 1984, there really hasn’t been an issue of their role in the conventions. This bit of history reminded me that except for rare examples, us common folk really have no say in what happens in politics.
Walter Mondale (1984), Michael Dukakis (1988), Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996), Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004) all were clearly voted as the democratic candidate by the both flavors of delegates and the super delegate role was minimized by these agreeable circumstances.
Now we have Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama dueling it out with delegate counts that are achingly close. Never before has it been made more clear to me that the delegate numbers count more than the total number of states each candidate has under her/his belt. This primary season will finally demonstrate the impact these super delegates will bring to the 2008 convention where the winning candidate will need 2,025 delegates to secure the candidacy. That’s at least 2,025 of the 4,049 total delegates including 796 super delegates or “at-large delegates”.
I worry that there will be great numbers of grumbles when they finally do cast those ambiguous votes which will REALLY count. In fact, I am greatly worried that approximately half the democratic voters will be unhappy with the candidate who emerges in late August...and the truth is that because of the large numbers of young, first-time-involved-in-politics Obama voters, I worry more about this effect if Hillary Clinton is selected. Hillary’s support base is more seasoned and will more than likely be able to live with the outcome and step up in support of him.
If the super delegates pick Hillary, then the DNC had better have a plan in place to salvage all those alienated feelings or certainly all will be lost.
How dramatic is that?
I hope they rethink this whole thing. I don’t much like it...not only because of the stuff I wrote above but also because there seems to be a lot of pandering to this very select group. Not that I wouldn’t do it in exactly the same circumstance, but I do wonder, what sort of conversations are going on behind the scenes, what sort of deals are getting brokered. Hmmmmm.
And finally, I am tired of this impending election with the impendingness lasting already one year too long and the longer it continues, the more I fear that no matter who makes it to the ballot, the democrats will suffer a sad and agonozing defeat in November. The saddest thing of all is that they’re doing it to themselves. While Hillary and Obama box each other’s ears, exposing tiny bits of foibles and mis-steps, McJohn sits back and looks all reasonable and electable. He is hand picking his appearances, guiding his media exposure and designing his candidacy to work for him in the best of ways. The democrats are doing the dirty work for him.
By the time we have our candidate in August, s/he’ll only have about 2 1/2 months to repair that damage while at the same time beefing up all the anti-McJohn crap they can. Not a good position to be in at all...not attall.
I hope I’m wrong, but maybe now is a good time for someone to consider stepping down. Hillary Clinton seems to be struggling so maybe Howard Dean can find a carrot that will suit her and entice her to do just that.
Thanks Alan for the link.
Leonard and El Jay are currently in Southern California sitting on Moonlight Beach calculating risk.
A strange activity for surfers you ask?
Well yes, but because about 2 miles down the coast, a swimmer was yesterday’s breakfast , the beaches are closed and life guards with loud speakers are yelling at anyone venturing into the water. The map to the right shows their locale.
Decision making spoiler shared below.
Then in another corner of the US....my friend Loretta and her daughter Sophia miss the El and as they argue the fault in the missing, a big truck smashes into the station just below where they stood just 5 minutes before.
End of argument.
Finally, the disaster trifecta is nearly complete with a return to the west where earthquakes shake and scientists predict a big one just as my friend Susie and her wedding party hit the streets of Reno for what hopefully will be a not so memorable weekend of shake shake shaking. Her man Keith is mortally terrified of this sort of geologic event and I’m thinking that although he’s putting up a brave face, wants to beat feet outta there. Hopefully the impending quake will hold off until Monday as they jet their way to Hawaii.
Oh...the spoiler? The call of the surf was stronger than the warnings of the life guards and the threat of the shark. They surfed and lived to tell the tale. I’m not even coming close to suggesting that the decision was a wise one, but this is proof that surfers are crazy people - don’t you know?
Thanks vapor2020
Lester, of Solonor’s Inkwell, picked me for a previous meme and I didn’t do it. This one seems more fun, so I did it:
This is what you do:
Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday.
1. Find 3 events that happened on that day.
2. Find 2 other people who were born that day.
3. Find 1 holiday that is celebrated on that day.
My birthday is on June 22
3 Events:
1633 - The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.
1941 - Lithuanian 1941 independence begins
1978 - Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered.
2 Shared Birth Days:
1845 - Tom Dula, American folk character (Tom Dooley) (d. 1868)
1903 - John Dillinger, American bank robber (d. 1934)
1 Holiday:
Saint Alban’s Day
I used to know an Austrian man named Alban. He was married to a good friend of mine and was smart and funny and I enjoyed his company very much. Then he decided to join a cult in Eastern Washington, divorced my friend and started hording gold and went pretty much nuts. I wonder what he’s up to now.
Anyway...feel free to do the meme or if you know him, let me know what Alban’s been doing.
Today I ducked into one of Olympia’s jillion office supply stores to get a couple of copies made. There in the copier was an original document which I assume belonged to the previous user.
Yes, I read it and then I made my own copy because it was sort of an amazing read. And I don’t mean amazing in a good way.
I reproduced the thing and then I blacked out the easily identifiable bits in the letter. For your review (if you need to, click it for a larger image):
I have such mixed feelings about this letter to the Cowboy.
First, I intended to completely mock the writer. Then I felt sorry for him...I mean, he really thinks that the president is going to step up for him...or at least he thinks that the Cowboy should step up for him which is a little bit less pathetic.
But still. He thinks that the Cowboy even knows who he is.
I also felt sorry for him that he feels so persecuted...I mean with all those democrats causing him grief and fear.
What other choice did he have but to seek safety in Thurston County (that’s here where I live)? Then I thought, hell, if he was afraid of democrats, why move here where there are more democrats than republicans? Why didn’t he just move to Eastern Washington where republicans rule?
Then I felt sorry that some republicans don’t feel safe here and that he felt like democrats are making he and his wife feel unsafe.
Then I thought...that’s a bunch of crap. If he was attacked for his political beliefs, that surely would have made the papers...especially someone who was so close to the White House.
Then the clincher...he’s running for a statewide office...one that already has a well known republican candidate so pretty much he has no chance of securing the republican nomination or the Cowboy’s endorsement.
Poor guy. Does this man have no friends to clue him in?
I’m not going to attack him physically or otherwise. If I ever meet him, I’ll invite him to dinner and offer up the olive branch and I’ll be his democratic friend.
