During our Thursday evening immersion in the Iowa Caucus results, because I’d used the term several times, my wife asked me what, exactly, did I mean by “populist.” I realized that this is one of those terms that I feel I know, but have a hard time explaining in words. (OK, maybe that’s a sign that I don’t really know.) I said that populists were those who distrusted big business […]
As a lapsed Iowan, the results of the Iowa Caucuses last evening did not surprise me. Iowans tend to have a populist streak, which affected both races. On the Republican side, I always figured that Mitt Romney would have trouble in Iowa. Not many Iowans can feel real kinship with an investment fund manager, specially one as preppy and squeaky clean as Mitt Romney. On the other hand, Mike Huckabee’s […]
Interesting results from a poll by Rasmussen Reports. The poll looked at “core” support and opposition for Presidential candidates — how many voters would “definitely” vote for or “definitely” vote against a given candidate. Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton has one of the highest “definitely vote against” figures — 47% of all voters say they would definitely vote against her. Mitt Romney has the same 47% “definitely vote against” figure. And […]
That’s Hillary Clinton’s percentage in the new Rasmussen poll in New Hampshire. Her lead over Barack Obama is 10 percent and her lead over John Edwards is 19%. But what strikes me most about the poll is that thirty-four percent figure. If I were Ms. Clinton, I’d be worried about what happens when the number of Democratic contenders is reduced to, say, two. In that scenario, how likely is it […]
Every time an article like this appears, or like this; and every time left-leaning blogs post stories like this (“the big one”?), or like this; every time a second of media airtime, an inch of print, or an ounce of effort goes into excoriating Alberto Gonzales, George Bush is thrilled. Just like I said four months ago, Democrats are squandering their political capital by continuing to make this such a […]
After my last post, I remembered that we did meet once perfectly charming group of Brewers fans, three lovely and engaging young ladies in the booth next to us at the Perkins off of I-94 in Waukesha (I think), where we had stopped to engage in our last fried-food hurrah of the trip. They were pleasant and nice and interested in the fact that we’d come all the way to […]
After a great experience in Wrigley Field, in which we thoroughly enjoyed almost all our interactions with the Chicago Cub fans, my boys and I attended two Giants-Brewers games in Miller Park in Milwaukee. What I’m going to say is no doubt a gross generalization, based upon a too-small sample size, but as far as we could tell, most Brewers fans were crude, dumb, loud, obnoxious, unfriendly, and xenophobic […]
We are staying with our friends Marcy and Randy Boyd in their home on the east side of Madison, and as usual I’m struck by the differences between the Midwest and California. Most prominent is the fact that there is so much land here; it doesn’t feel like everything is so crowded and pinched together. An example: While Randy and Marcy were at work Friday morning, we took their dog […]
We saw the Giants-Cubs game yesterday at Wrigley Field, a wild game that featured radical weather changes, the Giants giving away runs like a Little League team (at least 4 Cubs runs scored that shouldn’t have, the difference in the ball game), two Barry Bonds homers (one crushed out of the park, the second to almost-dead center against a ferocious wind), but with the same old result, a 9-8 Giants […]
What, you thought I was gone forever? Here is a fascinating article about why it is that most music — in a wide variety of cultures and places, including Western music — is based upon the familiar 12-tone system. According the article, "when the sounds of speech are looked at with a spectrum analyzer, the relationships between the various frequencies that a speaker uses to make vowel sounds correspond neatly […]