Good Night, Seattle

Hoquiam?! Excellent, that’s right on the way to the best little beach town in WA state, Ocean Shores! Which is the home of the best little Irish pub in WA state, the Galway Bay! We live in Portland and make it up to Ocean Shores a few times a year. Hey, see ya there, SeattleTammy-n-Dan!

So……will you guys be changing your internet names?

Yo, Vinnie! Wake up!

W’at? Is it time to roll over an’ tan da other side?

No, Pisan. I just got da weirdest phone call - from none udder dan Franco Zefferelli. Ya remember him, don’t ya? “Romeo and Juliet”, “Jane Eyre”, “Tea wit’ Mussolini”? Dem kindsa films? Anyways, dis Franco Zefferelli wants us to return to Rome. Sumt’in’ ’bout bustin’ da Pope outta da slammer. I know it don’t make no sense, but maybe he had a bad cell an’ I misunduhstood him. I did hear a rather large numbuh of Euros was in it fo’ us, if we pull it off. He wants us dere tonite. Come on, Vinnie. We need the dough. Plus I want Franco to explain to me w’at da hell “Tre Fratelli” was all ’bout.

You can always count on Sparky to get to the meat of the issue.

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/05/20/tomo/

S T and SD, I wish you the best in your new location. Myself, I’m a library nut, going each week for a book or two. Our little town has 3? 4? bookstores in town, which is unusual but wonderful. I hope we are not invaded by the big boxes, because we all know what they cause.
I am only a little over fifteen hundred miles away, so I’m sure I’ll head your way on one of my Sunday drives someday soon.

Pat, I’m afraid that those days of happy and aimless motoring on the weekends may be over for Americans.

In other news, I have a theory that I’d like to put before the group before I go to publication. Tell me what you think.

My theory is that crime is evolution’s means of culling truly stupid people from the rest of the herd. For instance, an insurance agency was doing strange things with their books and managed to attract the attention of state auditors. A dedicated and hard working female auditor was dispatched from the capital to the agency here in Charlotte for a complete audit. Somewhere during the several days scheduled for the audit, she disappeared. The police were called to investigate her whereabouts and within hours had arrested the owner of the insurance agency being audited. Her car, which was also missing, was found at a fast food restaurant about a half a mile from the insurance agency’s office. Regrettably, her body has just been found across the state line in South Carolina. The owner of the agency was startled to find out that the police would think he had anything to do with the crime. Of course, the forensic evidence that was splattered all over the office and inside his car and the victim’s car may have tied him to the crime (that’s another theory I’m working on). I guess she found some pretty amazing stuff in his computers and he figured he could get rid of the problem in the time proven method. Drugs and/or gambling are suspected be the prime reasons for spawning the criminal activity. I haven’t come up with a theory on why innocent people often get caught up in the aftermath. So sad.

Okay…and I apologize for diverting this thread temporarily from the true focus, but I’m so astounded/flabbergasted/pissed off/shaking my head that I had to:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/05/21/politics/fromtheroad/entry4116 567.shtml

WTF?????

How is that in anyway comparable or helpful? I agree that it would be frustrating and make me angry if I lived in MI and FL because I would want to have a say. But they knew going in that the delegates had been stripped, and the candidates all agreed and signed on to that (and took their effing names off the ballot for god’s sake…i still can’t believe she thinks that result is the true reflection of the will of the people if they didn’t have the others to vote for). Comparing it to the stolen elections in Africa only serves to further divide the party and weaken the base. I mean really…I”m okay with her continuing in the race (as long as she’s focusing on selling her strengths, not tearing down Obama), but has she no shame?

And continuing to feed/plant the idea that her supporters might (should?) go to McCain is inexcusable. I’m not saying that some of them won’t. I’m just saying that by her repeating it frequently, she’s making it much more likely to occur because it reinforces the idea in people’s head and even somewhat sounds like she approves. She ought to say, the people who voted for me did so because they believe in the things that I fight for and that I believe are important to the health and future of our country. And John McCain doesn’t represent any of that. Instead of being a vote of support for me in my loss, it’s a repudiation of what I believe in if my loss leads to McCain winning.

Becca I have an answer to your question (I realize it was rhetorical) - …but has she no shame? Well…..no……she’s a politician.

Thanks, guys, and thanks Adam for the swell send-off!
We will continue to sell books. We’re just doing it from Hoquiam. And our internets names will remain the same. HoquiamDan and Hoquiam Tammy just don’t have the right pizzaz.

Now to get to Hoquiam from Seattle, take 1-5 south to Olympia and make a right (waving to Just Jay) and follow the roads to Ocean Beaches, get to Aberdeen, make a right on 101 and follow it up for a mile or two. We’re right there, a block north of 109. Remember that when you come to visit, there is an all hours bar and grill across the street!

This is what she said then:
“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process. And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar.

This is what she says now:
“I’ve heard some say that counting Florida and Michigan would be changing the rules,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I say that not counting Florida and Michigan is changing a central governing rule of this country.”

Gee – wonder what changed between September and May?

So….if Dee is so easily able to find those quotes, how come we don’t have Obama’s campaign or the DNC itself calling her on her statements and publicizing what she said then to point out the hypocrisy or desperation ploy? Someone needs to counteract the damage she’s doing in suggesting that the election has been “stolen” from those voters.

(Again and for the record: I didn’t think their delegate should have been stripped at the beginning. I think who FL and MI would have preferred is actually relevant. But I DEFINITELY don’t think you can come back and count them w/out an actual campaign in the states or a complete ballot for them to use)

Off target again. For those cheerful tax payers out there, take heart. Haliburton and Blackwater have not sucked all of your hard earned tax dollars out of the treasury. NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft is about to place a new lander on Mars - Sunday afternoon. This time the lander will be in the north polar region where it will dig into the permafrost, analyze the ice and investigate what the Mars climate used to be like. And, of course look for evidence of life. Well, anyway, I found it interesting. Oh, and does anyone out there want to trade a JPL pocket protector for one from NORAD, circa 1965?

cooper — still got that TI SR-10 around?

And you’re not the only one crossing your fingers about the Phoenix. Interesting thing about this landing — they’re not using cushions. This is the first one in a long time to use deceleration to land. Very dicey.

Hillary is following the “all’s fair in war and electoral politics” mantra at this point, is desperate to win, and might very well believe that she can win and Obama can’t. Beliefs are interesting things.

However, more important are what I think are a couple of realities. One is that enough superdelegates will declare for Obama after the final primaries are over for Obama to have a majority of all delegates, and that would be true even with the inclusion of Florida and Michigan (which is in one sense impossible, but will fortunately be a moot point when they are included). The other is that the final three primaries need to matter, especially Montana, because they energize Democrats in those states, increase Democratic registration, and produce new Democratic voters for the general election. At this point, it is about bringing Montana into the D column.

And however desperate and ruthless, and even disengenuous, Hillary is at this point, and however angry Clinton supporters might be, that anger will abate if the primary season is allowed to play out and Hillary works hard for the nominee once the nominee is declared.

Victory in November hinges on three things: the superdelegates stepping forward as soon as the primaries are over; Hillary giving everything she’s got to bringing her supporters back into the D column for the nominee; and Obama being a better campaigner than McCain in the general election. I think all of those things will occur, and I will be celebrating the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States. I’ve even read some analysts who see it this way, but they are not where I got my ideas from. My take came from paying pretty intense attention to presidential electoral politics beginning with my enrollment as a freshman at the University of Florida in 1960. I could be wrong - that goes without saying - and watching for a long time does not insure clarity of vision. In fact, it can have the opposite effect if one just stares. But I don’t think I’m wrong this time. That’s why I was heartened to find some analysts who have far more creds than do I offering these views.

Onward throught the fog, gang, and remember to forget any anger at Hillary once the nominee is chosen. We have a war to win for our country, and it ain’t the misbegotten one in Iraq.

Thanx you guys! and we’ll leave a light on for ya!

Come as You Are!