Saturday, March 05, 2016

Rainy day...


24 comments:

  1. Zounds!

    Alan! Check this out. This series will be on TV, and these are usually accessible via Internet.

    Please join us for a reception celebrating a new series and related exhibit devoted to the art of calligraphy on Monday, March 7th, from 5-8pm at MMCTV (35 West Main Street, Richmond, VT). Richmond calligrapher Chris Carfaro is behind the art on display as well as the new 10-part TV series "Inkwell Vermont." Each 15-minute video lesson guides viewers step-by-step on how to take their handwriting to the next level. The exhibit runs through late April. http://www.inkwellvermont.com. The videos will be online at www.vimeo.com/mmctv

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  2. Thanks, listener; that sounds interesting.

    BTW, we are (finally!) beginning another series of rainstorms. February has been dry.

    Alan

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  3. Politico: “Three of the four states voting this weekend are in the Sanders sweet spot: Kansas, Maine, and Nebraska are caucus states with largely white populations. The one state where Sanders figures to perform poorly is Louisiana – which holds a primary election where African-Americans will cast roughly half the vote.”
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    Washington Post: “A year ago, the GOP thought it had a strong field of presidential hopefuls. Now the question is how close the party will come to annihilating itself and what it stands for.”
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    talkingpointsmemo.com: "Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is slated to appear at a Fox News town hall in Detroit on Monday, just one day before the Michigan primary.
    Hillary Clinton was invited to attend the Democratic town hall but declined, citing conflicts with her campaign schedule, according to a Fox News statement provided to TPM.
    Fox News anchor Bret Baier will host the one-hour event, set to begin at 6 p.m. ET. Baier announced Sanders' participation in his 'Special Report' show Thursday night.
    Baier had pressed the Democratic National Committee last month to host a primary debate hosted by Fox News. The network hasn't hosted a Democratic debate since 2004 and Clintonhasn't appeared on the network since 2014."
    ---One does wonder what Ms Clinton's conflict is--I don't know whether to hope it is or is not a private speech to Wall Streeters or some such. If it should be, I expect that will come out during the program; that would just be too rich to pass up.
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    Update from politico.com: Hillary Clinton agrees to participate in Fox News town hall
    By HADAS GOLD 03/04/16 07:56 PM EST
    Hillary Clinton has agreed to participate in a Fox News Democratic town hall on Monday, marking the first time the network has hosted a Democratic candidate event in years.
    Bernie Sanders was initially going to appear on his own with host Bret Baier as Clinton cited a scheduling conflict. But by Friday that had changed.
    It will mark Clinton's first appearance on Fox in two years. Sanders was on Fox News Sunday last month.
    Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace had made it a mission of sorts to get Clinton to appear on his program, going so far as to show photos of two of Clinton's top communication aides in an effort to get them to respond to his emails.
    The town hall will air Monday at 6pm from Detroit, Mich.
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    Memorable Bernie political cartoons [Click] Not all agreeable to my point of view (or current), but many are.

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    Boy, this looks like fun! Something to see in Scotland. [Click]



    P.S.: I have pretty much given up on The Guardian's coverage of the US 2016 elections--it is SO biased toward HRC. The BBC (rather surprisingly to me) does a significantly better job.

    --Alan

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    1. Disappointing about The Guardian, but your finding about the BBC doesn't surprise me. They are rather conservative in some senses of the word, but I've always found their coverage to be fair. You might try The Economist, an excellent paper IMO.

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    2. As I suspected, that is new since I was in Scotland for the 2005 World Science Fiction Convention. I'm sure our tour group would have visited it if we'd had a chance.

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    3. Oh, yes--that would have been a must-see, even if it were a ways down the road. I have fantasized about how I might build a west-coast Stonehenge sort of thing. It's a good sort of idle dream. This seems a good bit more creative, and it being a reclaimed mine is a huge bonus.

      --Alan

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  4. I spent a bit over 3 hours today knocking on doors for Bernie. Unfortunately the print on the walk sheets was too small for me to read easily even with the magnifying lens of my glasses, so I had to walk with someone else. Not the most efficient use of manpower.

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  5. Finally found something about HRC and water polution, though I don't think it's the article that initially caught my attention. Makes sobering reading though.

    Hillary Clinton, Before Spotlighting Crisis In Flint, Michigan, Voted Against Measure To Prevent Groundwater Pollution - Click

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    1. Ah, finally found it...and it turned out to be a blog post directing readers to the article linked above.. Phew! Not being able to find that was really bothering me.

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    2. A week or so back I found a column talking about how HRC would be a perfect target for he-who-may-not-be-named-here; how the script would nearly write itself, and how Bernie would be pretty much proof against same. I went looking for it a couple of times, but didn't find it. Oh, well.

      --Alan

      P.S.: Some of the polls back East might be closing about now...

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  6. With 90 per cent. reporting, the Kansas Democratic Party has called it for Bernie; vote totals not available. With 75% reporting, he leads HRC by what looks like an insurmountable margin (55/45) in Nebraska. Louisiana just starting to come in, so far for Hillary about as projected.

    Alan

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  7. Interesting--the only county not reporting in Nebraska is Lancaster--county seat (and state capital) Lincoln, which seems to have about a quarter of the vote for the whole state.

    --Alan

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  8. Kansas 100% reporting, Bernie 68%, HRC 32%.
    Louisiana, 49% reporting, HRC 71%, Bernie 22%.
    Nebraska 70% reporting, Bernie 55%, HRC 49%, still no results from Lincoln.


    --Alan

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  9. "Kansas voters gathered to caucus Saturday for the Republican and Democratic candidates for president, and long lines marked the occasion as interest in the nomination campaigns nears that of the historic 2008 election. This year, the GOP printed 60,000 ballots (compared to 30,000 in 2012) and had to go to a print shop to make more, CNN reports.

    In recent days, Hillary Clinton, Sanders and Rubio each paid a visit to Kansas. The lines at Democratic caucus sites were so long that the venues could not accommodate all the people coming to support a candidate. Voters were forced to "sign in" for their preferred candidate and leave to make room for more people."


    --Alan

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  10. I see that the Lancaster County caucuses didn't start until 6:00 PM local time.

    Alan

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  11. Glad to hear about Nebraska. Earlier this afternoon on the FB Bernie group there was a terrible hubbub about a gross imbalance towards HRC in the absentee ballots and how it was obviously DNC engineered fraud. I'm not terribly impressed by the savvy (or lack thereof) evinced by people who post in that group.

    And that reminds me of something I meant to mention here the other day. Sis was all in a fluster because a friend of hers, a Bernie supporter who Sis finds rather in-your-face and obnoxious about it, posted on FB a photo of her ballot.

    First of all, Sis found this disturbing since she thought photographing a ballot, either blank or filled out, is illegal. I don't know for sure but suspect it probably is. Have seen several on the Bernie group though.

    Second, this friend, who is Sis' age i.e. late thirties/early forties and apparently a new or at least inexperienced voter, was outraged that Bernie's name appeared on her Florida ballot *below* HRC's. According to Sis she claimed vociferously that this was evidence of the DNC's sneaky tactics in favor of HRC.

    Though as flabbergasted and appalled as Sis at this total idiocy, I pointed out to her that computers and iPhones and the like alphabetize names by first name so this young-ish woman might not be familiar with alphabetizing names by surname. She agreed that this was a possibility, but we both remained flummoxed at such ignorance of basic civics, not to say lack of basic commonsense.

    In response to the incident I wrote a post on FB, which got a few likes and a few comments. What took the biscuit was a comment from Holly Johnson who said, and I quote:

    Holly Povlsen Johnson I thought it was done by drawing out of hat. It was done that way on the local level when I ran for Park District commissioner

    Another commenter gently but firmly told her that on the federal level the candidates are listed alphabetically by surname. I was quite shocked that a Deaniac would be so clueless. Guess it's everywhere.

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    1. I believe that in Illinois it's the same for federal as for state office: names are listed in the order in which ballot petitions are filed. If more than one candidate's representative is in line at the time the office opens, the order of those names is determined randomly.

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  12. Can't say as I was ever aware of that, Cat; I think there is some sort of rotation system for various things on the ballot in California, but I forget the details. Perhaps the young person could be gently reminded that she has no US constitutional right to vote? That might serve to introduce some proportionality...

    --Alan

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    1. I wonder how many people today remember when a "long ballot" was literally long--a strip of paper (maybe three or four inches wide), marked with an inked stamp or pen. I can remember ballots that were five or six feet long, maybe on rare occasions longer. They still got counted before sunrise. We never had the lever-type voting machines out here.

      --Alan

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  13. Nebraska 84% reporting, Bernie 57%, HRC 43%, partial results from Lincoln.

    --Alan

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