respublica

DNC rules committee decides about Florida and Michigan

Nothing like a confusing Saturday.  The facts are these:

1.  Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat Michigan and Florida delegates with half-votes.

2.  The resolution increased the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination to 2,118, leaving Obama 66 delegates short but still within striking distance after the three final primaries are held in the next three days.

3.  In Michigan Clinton will get 69 delegates and Obama 59.  Each delegate would get half a vote at the convention in Denver this summer.  The Michigan resolution passed 19-8

4.  In Florida the rules committee voted unanimously to seat the Florida delegation based on the outcome of the January primary, with 105 pledged delegates for Clinton and 67 for Obama, but with each delegate getting half a vote as a penalty.

5.  Obama picked up a total of 32 delegates in Michigan, including superdelegates who have already committed, and 36 in Florida. Clinton picked up 38 in Michigan, including superdelegates, and 56.5 in Florida.

Obama's total increased to 2,052, and Clinton's to 1,877.5.

6.  Clinton's representative at the committee,  Harold Ickes told  the rules members that that Clinton had instructed him to reserve her right to appeal the matter to the Democrats' credentials committee.

Via Breitbart News

 

Understand apostrophes or else

A cabbie somewhere in the Bournemouth, England area, has been banned from working as a cab driver because he doesn't know how to use apostrophes.  Yes, one of the questions on the cabbie license test is where to put an apostrophe.

This reminds me of one of the essays on "Stuff White People Like" I posted yesterday.  Grammar.

"White people love rules.....but without a doubt, the rule system white people love the most is grammar.  It is in their blood not only to use perfect grammar, but also to spend significant portions of time pointing out the errors of others."

The war on terror-Something's working

So said John Hinderaker in the New York Post.  He laid out two time lines, one a list of terrorist attacks on the U.S. and U.S. interests abroad before 9-11 and the second is a list of attacks against us and our interests since then.

"IT'S an article of faith on the left that the Bush administra tion has done nothing that has enhanced our security - rather, its alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, something clearly has made us safer since 2001. Successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have not increased, as had been widely predicted, but instead dwindled to virtually nothing."

Turning off the engine

According to the P-D, many area school districts are worried about how the cost of gas will affect their budgets.

With buses getting only 8 to 10 miles per gallon,  there's a scramble on to find ways to cut costs.  Here's one way some districts hope to conserve fuel:  "Many are asking their drivers to turn off their engines when they need to park and wait awhile."

Shouldn't this have been the obvious thing to do even during low fuel prices?  I've never understand the past common practice of buses sitting with their engines idling, sometimes for hours.  I've chaperoned many a bus driven field trip and the parking lots would be filled with buses sitting around with the motors running.  Large tractor trailer trucks do this too, especially while the driver takes a rest or heads into a highway restaurant for a meal. 

Why is this?  Is it so hard to get a truck or bus started again once it's been shut off?

Most ridiculous item out of St. Louis

Seems back in 1996 when St. Louis helped the Rams get a stadium, part of the agreement was that the city would provide the team with a venue (stadium) which ranked in the top 25 of the NFL by 2015.  With so many cities in the process of building their own teams new state of the art stadiums, sports experts around here are making the case that the city and taxpayers must commit to building a new stadium in order to satisfy that agreement.  State of the art for whatever year it will be built in.

Craziness.  The dome is new by most standards.  What a waste.

Stuff white people like

I stumbled upon a blog site which has to be one of the more engaging places on the web.  I seem to be behind the times in finding "Stuff White People Like", but better late than sorry.

Each topic has a number, click and read the witty little essays on anything that interests you, for instance,   Number 30-Wrigley Field.

Number 64-recycling.  "Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

Recycling is fantastic! You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you’re done you just put it in a DIFFERENT bin than where you would throw your other garbage. And boom! Environment saved! Everyone feels great, it’s so easy!"

Like it or not, you'll see yourself in a lot of these.

Hiking to the very top of Luther Tower

We've climbed up Luther Tower before, but only as far as the bottom of the 42 bells.  Today we met three recent graduates on the very top of the tower.  The outside top.  The three guys are getting ready to leave the campus for good and start their time as parish pastors and these same guys did a lot of the digging out of a hillside behind our house this spring in preparation for a waterfall.  So they wanted to do something really outrageous as a last fling at the seminary and invited Dale to join them at the top for cigars and a cooler full of light supper.  I went along just to take some photos. This link shows Luther Tower's size and height with some perspective.

In order to get to the top you have to climb three separate areas of stairs.  The first group leads to the carillon keyboard and is a window filled room with tons of sunlight.  Easy peasy.  The second flight looks like a medieval castle staircase, made of beautiful stone, but narrow and winding.  Not so very easy peasy.  The third flight is an open, iron winding staircase, very narrow, which leads to the roof where there are stone benches afixed all around the perimeter walls. Whew!   If you sit on them, you can't see a thing, but if you stand on them you can see 360 degrees of the St. Louis area.

Ok, let's get the proof before anything else.  As I headed home I called up to get their attention.  As always, click any photo for a better view.

It would have been better for pictures if we'd gone up at 6:30 instead of 5:30, the strong sun would have been less blinding on the lens.

The Arch

The big Amoco, a St. Louis Landmark

Some of the brick buildings off DeMun

Kaldi's

Hillcrest neighborhood-Arundel and Aberdeen streets with Wash U and it's tower (we're taller) in the background..

Luther Statue

Isolation Dorm

Downtown Clayton

The bells from above

Alaska's Sarah Palin

The past few days there have been quite a few visits to this blog coming from people doing google searches on Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin.  Back in February I posted on the possibility of her being a serious choice for vice-president on McCain's ticket, after a story in Alaska Magazine titled, Meet America's Hottest Governor...

Now John McCain's vice president advance man, Arthur Culvahouse has been spotted in Juneau.  Coincidence?  Nah.  It does seem as though the McCain team is vetting just about everyone these days, but I do like the idea of giving Palin a serious look.  She's certainly not as dowdy and dull as so many of the other vetted possibilities have been.

Pat Gauen, the name pops up

During a lunchtime conversation last week, local metro east/Collinsville/Highland Post Dispatch reporter, Pat Gauen's name came up.  His name reminded me that I hadn't noticed his byline in the paper for some time and wondered if he'd retired or taken a buy out or some such.  But as often happens in things like this, I stumbled on Gauen's byline in the P-D today as he gave answers to a quiz on past local events he must have published last week.  So he is still around.

A couple questions caught my eye.

Fairmount Park in Collinsville is the only horse racing track in the region.  Why did it close for a while in the mid-70's?  Answer:  The grandstand burned to the ground.   I didn't know that and have never heard any conversation about it.

A developer planning to build homes on a tract near Caseyville filed a federal lawsuit last year against the previous owner, alleging a failure to disclose the presence of 159,000 tons of what?  Answer:  Manure from Fairmount Park and some farms.  This strikes me funny, farmers have laid their livestock manure on their fields forever.  Why would it be a surprise?

What star of the silent screen was from East St. Louis?  Answer:  Lillian Gish.  Was she the "it girl"?  No, that was Clara Bow. 

News about the news

We see way too many political polls these days.  So for a change of pace, how about seeing the cable news channel ratings for last week in prime time.

For all the blather coming from their nighttime hosts, MSNBC is still lagging way behind the other two major cable new networks.  Fox-292  CNN-271 and MSNBC-167

And, for the 77th straight month, FOX news has finished first in both total day and prime time ratings for the month of May.