Posts from — August 2012

Fluff Goes the Weasel

What’s going on?

[Editor: The Weasel has a fluffy tail. I haven’t seen him in the daylight for a while, so this was a bit of a surprise.]

Friday Ark

Here’s the deal: I live in a specific voting precinct. That precinct is located in specific districts for county, state, and Federal officials. If someone is running in a different district, I don’t get to vote for them. This is why you have to notify the Supervisor of Elections when you move.

The thing is, if you are trying to convince me that you are going to be really careful with public funds, why are you wasting your campaign funds sending flyers to people who can’t vote for you?

When you get the mailing list from the Supervisor of Elections officer I’m certain that the number of the precinct is included, and it is simple to find out what precincts are in the district of the office for which you are running, so why aren’t you limiting your mailing to those precincts?

I have flyers for candidates from every county commission district except the one that represents me. They are all telling be they are small business owners who know the value of money and will fight ‘wasteful’ spending, as they waste money sending me an expensive four-color, glossy card stock flyer.

UK cyclist Bradley Wiggins followed up his win on the Tour de France by taking Olympic gold in the men’s times trial cycling event.

After months of intensive training for Le Tour and the Olympics, Wiggins chose to celebrate by getting rip-roaring drunk with a group of friends and tweeted his pub crawl. Given his commitments to Team Sky, he won’t be able to do that again any time soon.

He created a another bit of controversy in cycling when he was asked about cyclist helmets following the death of cyclist in a traffic accident near the Olympics venue. Wiggins thinks that people should wear helmets, have lights, and concentrate on traffic without iPods when riding around London. If you had been in as many accidents as Wiggins, with the scars and broken bones to prove it, you would favor helmets too. There are a lot of riders who hate helmets, so the matter isn’t easily resolved.

While cyclists occasionally do stupid things, most accidents involving two-wheeled vehicles [with and without engines] are primarily caused by car and truck drivers not seeing the cycles.

On a lighter note, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London has has once again shown the form that makes him the favorite politician among Britain’s comedy writers. To see what I mean, type ‘boris johnson falls’ into a search engine.

Position: 13.4N 58.3W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [275°] near 22 mph [35 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Wind Gusts: 65mph [105 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 115 miles [185 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb ↓.

Currently about 80 miles [ 130 km] East of Barbados.

No major adjustments to the forecast or the track other than an increase in speed of movement which will take the system through the Antilles late Thursday, early Friday as a tropical storm.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Barbados, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Dominica, St Lucia, Martinique, and Guadeloupe.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Grenada and its dependencies.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Since people have given up trying to run for any office if they don’t belong to the Republican Party, the primary election on the 14^th will be the actual election for local offices. The election law was changed several years ago so that when the primary is effectively the election, everyone gets to vote in the primary.

The strangest race, for me, is the one for Public Defender. I just have a hard time dealing with the concept of an elected Public Defender. Given the people who vote in my county, what kind of ‘promises’ do you make to appeal to the whacko voters? Do you tell them that you can guarantee that no guilty person will get off if they elect you as Public Defender? If you are running for re-election, do you tell people that you haven’t won a single trial in 4 years?

I got a mailer from the incumbent and it is a piece of work. He is a proven ‘conservative’ because he cut the budget – well, except that the budget is established by the state legislature, they cut it.

He reduced personnel costs. If people in your organization are suspended while under investigation, I’m not sure you can take credit for not having to pay them.

I’m not really clear on the process for collecting money from people represented by the Public Defender, so I can’t comment on that claim.

Then he uses the back of the mailer to attack his opponent.

The opponent ‘worked for & supported liberal Democratic Senator James Abourezk’. Actually, his opponent was an intern for Mr. Abourezk while still in law school in 1993. Mr. Abourezk served one term in the Senate, from 1973 to 1979. A lot of people who have attended the law school at the University of South Dakota have interned for him.

Mr. Abourezk was the first Arab-American to serve in the Senate. His parents were Lebanese Christians who emigrated to the US early in the twentieth century, before he was born in 1931 in Wood, South Dakota. He served one term in the House followed immediately by one term in the Senate, and then returned to his private law practice. Not much of a politician.

As for not voting in 2008, you would have to check the supervisors of elections in four counties to find out if that was true.

The problem is all of the missteps the incumbent has made in the last four years, not who the challenger worked for in college, or whether he voted locally.

This is really pathetic.

Position: 12.6N 50.6W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 18 mph [30 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

Currently about 700 miles [1130 km] East of the Windward Islands.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Barbados, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Dominica, St Lucia, Martinique, and Guadeloupe.

This was Invest 99. Currently it is forecast to maintain this course, and slowly strengthen.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]