Current mood:

pleased

While you were out...
Catching up on Paul Krugman's blog, I learn that the nation's top expert on economic inequality received a major award, the torture memo judge basically confessed (though he doesn't seem to understand that what he did is actually a problem), and Iceland elected a lesbian prime minister.

Back on convention news, I forgot to mention that I had met Eric Bauman, the new party Vice-Chair, at the Red to Blue Dinner. I saw him as the dinner was getting over, and went by to congratulate him, and mention that the PYD Endorsements Committee had been very impressed when we interviewed him, but our endorsement had become moot because his opponent dropped out. He apparently actually runs his own Facebook account, because he recognized me from my photo there. In any case, he seems to be pretty dedicated to getting his people down in SoCal active in red counties, along the same lines as the assistance that folks around here gave to Jerry McNerney. Very encouraging.

On the negative side, or maybe just the weird side, California Republicans declared over the weekend that we are not having a drought. In fact, in the print version of the story, there's a banner headline: "McClintock Doubts Drought". Never mind that the pumps that normally pull water into our plumbing are literally high and dry, with the water having withdrawn to several feet below them -- there is no drought! Rejoice! That headline was being passed around the convention floor, for laughs. McClintock is the carpetbagging SoCal career politician who just barely edged out Lt. Col. Charlie Brown -- a decorated Air Force veteran who has served with both the police dep't and the public schools in Roseville -- because apparently the GOP'ers in that district are that scared of "socialism". Perhaps McClintock and his fellow wingnuts will next solve our oil problems by declaring that cars run on fairy dust, and that homes can be heated by thinking warm thoughts.