Anecdotes, Antidotes, and Anodes

What Is the Electoral College . . . in Twenty-Thousand Words or More

 

 

Land Doesn't Vote . . . People Do . . .


 

Have you ever been in a committee meeting for what felt like forever? Of course you have. Did it possibly end up with the members deciding to agree on something that had a little bit of everyone’s idea, just to get out of the meeting?

It may have resulted in ridiculous projects that were quickly forgotten.

But there was one time it resulted in a system that chose  a president that lasted for more than 200 years.

That’s right — the Electoral College was a last-minute “hydraulic balancing act” by a group of tired people who a history professor says were “puzzled” after working all summer without a model for what they wanted to do.

The winner of the presidential election was determined this way: You really didn't vote for a president, but for a slate of electors from your state (or D.C.) to join the Electoral College, who then go on to vote for a presidential candidate. The size of each state’s slate of electors is based on its congressional representation — how many House members it has, plus two more for the two senators each state (except D.C.) has.

Clear as mud ? It gets muddier. 

The Electoral College goes on to meet December 14 to cast the REAL votes for president, which are counted by Congress January 6, in time for Inauguration Day January 20. And of course, there is plenty time for legal challenges in between each of these steps. Really?

This is, naturally, not the way virtually any other election in the U.S. is run. And as we’ve seen, it can result in a president who got fewer votes than another candidate, which really isn’t the principle most American elections run on. So why is it this way, and why hasn’t it ever been changed?

But, let's first try to figure out why we have the Electoral College in the first place. 

Alex Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the author of  author of “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?” explains it in two words: FATIGUE & HASTE

 When he looked back on the work of the framers of the Constitution, “James Madison, writing in the 1820s, himself, observed that the Electoral College was not the best work that they had done.”

The framers had been working all summer on the Constitution, and it was August in Philadelphia when they decided they needed a break, Keyssar said. So they left the question of how to pick the president, as well as a few others, to the aptly named 'Committee on Postponed Parts.'

The Electoral College was what they eventually came up with, adding two other provisions: If no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College, the election goes to the House of Representatives, with each state getting one vote. It’s also not written in stone anywhere that each state’s electors have to go to the winner of the vote; a state’s legislature can pick the slate.

So who thought that was a good idea?

Keyssar said the framers considered a national popular vote — Madison’s preferred option — as well as having the governors choose the president.

But the leading idea — “the default position” — was that Congress would choose the president. The problem was, that opened up the possibility that the chief executive wouldn’t be truly independent — “you wouldn’t really have separation of powers.”

In the end, they created the Electoral College to reflect the Congress idea: “In effect, the Electoral College is a replica of Congress,” Keyssar said.

It also was in line with their previous thinking. “It imported into the presidential selection process the compromises that they had worked out earlier in the summer with respect to representation in Congress — that’s to say, the compromises between large states and small states, and between slave states and free states,” Keyssar said.

While the effect of the establishment of the Electoral College was a proportional overrepresentation of small states, and that included slave states, Keyssar said, “I’m not as convinced, as some people have been, that slavery was integral to the intentions of the framers when they designed this system. They had already decided to make their peace with it, so to speak, and they used the same system for presidential elections.”

The framers got two things very wrong, Keyssar said: They didn’t realize that political parties would exist, eventually crowding the presidential field into a two-candidate race, so some of them thought the House of Representatives would end up picking the president anyway.

It’s also possible they didn’t realize how much it would matter: “They all knew that George Washington would be the first president,” Keyssar said.

That was in 1787; by 1800, people were already clamoring to change the system after that year’s election took 36 tries to resolve in the House, as well as after the 1824 election, when the House again ended up deciding the election, this time a free-for-all among four candidates from the same party!

Of course, changing or deleting the Electoral College requires an amendment to the Constitution, and that isn’t easy: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress, then three-quarters of the individual states’ legislatures. Hundreds of amendments to eliminate the Electoral College, or basically render it meaningless by ending the winner-take-all system for states to award their electoral votes, were offered in the 19th century, and four times it passed the Senate, Keyssar said.

Efforts to get rid of the Electoral College really took off during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Keyssar said, for several reasons — including the democratizing influence of the civil rights movement.

“There was a series of Supreme Court cases with respect to Congress and state legislatures that say ‘You know, the principle of democracy is one person, one vote,'” Keyssar said. “And then, even though they weren’t talking about the Electoral College, well, people turned around an hour later and said, ‘What about the Electoral College? So that leads to mounting support.”

There were also some crowded elections — four viable presidential candidates in 1948, three in 1968.

“In both of those circumstances, there was fear that nobody would win a majority of the electoral votes, and that the third candidate in 1968, [the segregationist] George Wallace, would become a kingmaker and would basically be able to trade his electoral votes for concessions in policy.”

A proposed amendment to abolish the Electoral College passed the House easily in 1969, with 83% of the vote, but was filibustered by a group of Southern segregationist senators.

“Southern segregationists have pretty much always been opposed to national popular vote,” Keyssar said, “because of a feature of the Electoral College that we don’t often think about — the Electoral College gives states influence and electoral votes in proportion to its population, not in proportion to the number of voters.”

That feature made its first appearance in the notorious “three-fifths compromise,” which counted a slave as 60% of a human being in terms of congressional seats and electoral votes.

But in the post-slavery, Jim Crow South, the situation was actually worse, Keyssar said — Black people counted fully for representation and electoral votes, but were still kept by law from voting for the people who would fill those seats and cast those votes. He calls it “the five-fifths compromise.”

“Those patterns, those convictions, those ideas, persisted into the late 1960s and contributed strongly to the Southern filibuster,” Keyssar said.

For decades, political observers believed that a “wrong result” electoral vote — one in which the popular-vote loser gained the White House because of a more efficient electoral distribution of his votes — would lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the new president, and an instant groundswell in support for reform.

But after two such results in the last five elections (with only one in history before that), that hasn’t been the case.

It’s sort of self-defeating: “Misfires of the Electoral College produced political crises,” Keyssar said, “but political crises often produce partisan rancor, which then makes it hard to amend the Constitution.”

While advocates of leaving the system alone claim that smaller and rural states would be left out of the presidential electoral process without the Electoral College, Keyssar pointed out that many reform leaders come from smaller and rural states. In reality, the Electoral College prioritizes swing states — states whose popular vote could go either way. In 2016, the group National Popular Vote said two thirds of campaign stops by the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns were in the same six states.

And in 2015, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, said, “The nation as a whole is not going to elect the next president. Twelve states are.”

After the 2000 election, where George W. Bush won the presidency despite getting fewer votes than former Vice President Al Gore, “The Republicans were absolutely firm that they wouldn’t go along with it,” Keyssar said, while “the Democrats were by no means unanimous in favor of Electoral College reform. I think Al Gore was not in favor of Electoral College reform. And people did not want to spend a lot of time and energy trying to promote something that was a sure loser.”

Nowadays, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is seen as the attempt at reform that has the best chance: Under the Constitution, state legislatures decide how to award their electors; since the mid-18th century, they’ve always gone to the state’s popular-vote winner, but they don’t have to. The compact an agreement among states that they will give their electoral votes to the national popular-vote winner, basically obviating the Electoral College. States totaling 270 votes — the majority needed to win — need to sign on; so far, the total is at 196.

“It’s an attempt to try to reform the system without passing a constitutional amendment,” Keyssar said.

Pat Rosenstiel, of National Popular Vote, said his group, begun in 2006, comprises “Democrats, Republicans, independents, conservatives, liberals and moderates who believe we should elect the president by national popular vote.” He said the problem with the Electoral College goes past the possibility that a candidate who gets fewer votes could become president.

“It’s about how every presidential election, there are battleground-state voters who have all the power and the rest of us are mere spectators.” He said that since this year’s presidential nominees in each party were decided, all campaign visits have been concentrated in 15 states and seven-eighths of all campaign spending has happened in 12 states.

“And, you know, if it was just about money and events, that’d be one thing. But it’s clearly a proxy for political influence with the president. And if you don’t believe me, Google ‘Joe Biden’ and ‘President Trump’ and ‘fracking’ and you think we were running a campaign for governor of Pennsylvania and not for president of the United States.”

He dismisses the argument that the Electoral College preserves the power of small states, saying it empowers only certain small states, and points to how governor’s races are conducted nationwide.

“Think about George Pataki, when he was elected and reelected governor in the state of New York,” Rosenstiel said — “he wasn’t doing that by winning the major population centers. He was campaigning all across the state of New York, which is obviously the model in every statewide election in every state. And we believe that will transfer over to a national popular vote election.”

He added, “In a national popular vote election, those smaller states, the rural voters, they represent one-sixth of the voters in this country. And it’s roughly equal to how many Americans live in urban centers. And so under a national popular vote system, it doesn’t matter if you come from a small state, big state, city, rural area, suburban, exurban — every American voter will be valued.”

Rosenstiel said he’s “increasingly optimistic that we’re suffering under the last campaign” with the Electoral College. That remains to be seen. But for now, the Electoral College system — the result of a long, drawn-out committee meeting in the 18th century — continues to influence our politics in the age of smartphones and space travel.

“There are numerous features of our political system that are imitated elsewhere in the world,” Keyssar said; “the Electoral College is not one of them. And in fact, it bewilders people from abroad — they don’t understand why we have this system.”

Land Doesn't Vote . . . People Do . . . 

 

Why Is There A 'Lame Duck' Period ?

 

   

Lame Duck period = time between Election Day and the presidential inauguration 

While ten weeks may seem like a long wait, past presidents had to contend with a much longer delay before taking up the mantle, historical records show.

Prior to the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1933, every new president was expected to take office on March 4. There were exceptions, such as if a vice president took the oath after the death of a sitting president. 

The Continental Congress initially set the first Wednesday in March to be the date of the first presidential inauguration, in 1789, which happened to be March 4, according to Jim Bendat, author of "Democracy's Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President, 1789-2013" (iUniverse, 2011).

"Back in the early days of the country, it took a long time to travel, particularly from the West Coast to Washington, D.C.," according to Bendat,  "of the need for both Congress members and presidential transition teams to relocate to the capital. "So they needed a long period of time between the election and swearing in of the president to get everything in order.

In fact, that first inauguration, in 1789, did not take place until April 30. Bendat said Congress couldn't get enough of its members to show up for the inauguration of George Washington, so the ceremony was pushed back to the end of April.

Following Washington's inauguration, Congress decided to keep March 4 as the date for all future ceremonies. In research for his book, Bendat said, he found that part of the explanation for this choice of date (beyond the time needed for the transition between presidencies) was that Congress' study of future calendars revealed that this date was least likely to land on a Sunday. The most religious of politicians wanted to avoid official business on Sundays whenever possible, Bendat said.

Today, if the inauguration date falls on a Sunday, there is a private swearing in on Sunday and a public ceremony on Monday — as was the case for Barack Obama's second inauguration.

By the 20th century, advances in technology and transportation meant people could travel around the country more quickly, and there was no reason for the "lame-duck" period between Election Day and the inauguration to be so long. Also, in times of national turbulence, the lame-duck period proved to be too long a wait. 

This long delay was particularly difficult during the middle of the Great Depression, said the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law's  "Exploring Constitutional Law." During President Herbert Hoover's lame-duck period in 1932, Hoover and then-President-elect Franklin Roosevelt barely communicated, leaving the country waiting on the government to take action to curb economic devastation. In response, Congress proposed the 20th Amendment.

"There was a debate on when to change it, because it was decided pretty universally that four months was too long to wait," Bendat said. "The Senate originally wanted to change it to January 15, and the House of Representatives suggested January 24, and January 20 was reached as a compromise."

Therefore, the 20th Amendment dictated that the president's term would begin at noon on Jan. 20.

Historians say that during the Lame Duck period America is extremely vulnerable. 

Margaret Tobin Brown

Ever heard of Margaret Tobin Brown ?

Of course, you have.  I'm probably the only person on the face of the Earth who did not recognize that name. But, just in case you don't either,  just keep reading to see if any of the following hints helps you 'to know' who she is.

There has been much publicity about Margaret Tobin Brown, but what you've heard about her, read about her, or watched about her are probably myths.

She has been portrayed as a bawdy, eccentric social outcast mainly because of the writings of *Gene Fowler and **Caroline Bancroft who freely amplified, exaggerated, and created their own 'person.'

Just because something is written in a book or published in a newspaper, or found in a best-selling tourist booklet does not mean it is necessarily true.  In other words, contemporaneous writing cannot always be trusted.  Imagine that !

But, Hollywood screens and a Broadway stage were instrumental in keeping Margaret Tobin Brown's name alive and famous with heavy doses of romance and flamboyance and sensationalism.

The 'tall-tale' goes something like this: 

Margaret Tobin Brown was rescued as a baby from the Missisisippi River by Mark Twain. After a storm destroyed her home, described as a shanty, her father built another out of 'scantlings and tin cans.'  She grew up to be "high-spirited and bosomy" with very little public school education. She was a tomboy who never learned to read or write, eventually becoming a waitress at the Park Hotel in Hannibal, Missouri.

After overhearing Mark Twain tell of his adventures in the wild West, she decided to to go Leadville, Colorado, carrying the food prepared for her by her mother in a cardboard shoebox.

She found a job in a saloon and married a prospector who hit pay dirt which was worth about  $300,000.  Her husband went to a local cafe that night to celebrate, so "Margaret" hid the bills in a potbellied stove, fearful it might be lost or stolen.

When her husband came home in the wee morning hours, just a bit intoxicated,  he heated the cabin by lighting the stove,  thus sending the fortune up the flue and into the Leadville morning sky.

(Nevermind the fact that paper money wasn't used in mining camps until decades later.)

The next part of this 'tall-tale' is probably the most famous and where Margaret Tobin Brown earns the name that most everyone on the planet recognizes.  It happens on a boat.  A big boat that hits an iceberg.

Yes, Margaret Tobin Brown is "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

But, Margaret was NEVER called Molly.  That name is "Hollywood," and was invented by Richard Morris, who wrote The Unsinkable Molly Brown. He chose "Molly" because he said it was easier to sing.  Margaret was known as Maggie as a child and young woman; after that she was called Margaret and later Mrs. J.J. Brown.  Never as Molly.

I purchased the book,  Molly Brown Unraveling the Myth by Kristen Iversen,  back in 1999, long before Steve Jobs introduced us to his iPad, only to put in on a bookshelf where it has collected its fair share of dust.

This year, once again, interest in the Titanic is at an all-time high and that book just called out to me the other day.  Plucking it from the shelf where it's been resting for several years, I thumbed through the pages and that wonderful smell of an old book resonated in my nostrils.  You know the smell.  The one when you walk into an old building that houses old books and that cozy, comfy, almost musty fragrance fills your head . . . making you want to curl up in a corner with with a cup of hot tea and read every book there, never to leave.  Don't get me wrong, I love the convenience of reading books on my iPad, but nothing will ever take away the feel of turning those pages with my fingers and that delightful smell of an old book.

OK.  So, I haven't put the book down since Thursday. Every word has captivated me.

Kristen Iversen's research originally began in 1991 as part of her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Denver.

Through letter, journals, court records, newspaper articles, family memoirs, and other authentic documentation, Iversen attempted to accurately reconstruct the life of Margaret Tobin Brown not only to uncover the "real story" but to determine a kind of pattern or order that might suggest why her life was so disguised and diminished.  The book opens and closes with Margaret's Titanic experience, written in narrative style, culled with exacting precision from numerous authentic accounts by the survivors themselves --- including Margaret's own written account --- of EXACTLY what happened that night.  Despite all the other accomplishments of Margaret's life, her experience in Lifeboat Six the night of April 14, 1912, was not only a turning point or catalyst for subsequent events in her life but to some degree a nightmare from which she never completely recovered.  Subsequent chapters in the book trace her life from its beginnings in Hannibal, Missouri, to her important political work in Denver, Colorado, Newport, Rhode Island, and Europe, and finally her death at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City in 1932.   
     --taken from the Preface of Molly Brown Unraveling the Truth

 Notes from Kristen Iversen:

Whenever I talk about the extaraordinary life of Margaret Tobin Brown, the first question I am asked is, "How did the story get so screwd up?"

Anyone who's done any research on "Molly" Brown soon discovers that despite her fame, both now and in the past, almost nothing has been published about her actual life.  What does exist is almost wholly myth and fantasy, begun in the 1930's with writers *Gene Fowler,  a reporter for the Denver Post who fictionalized the life of Molly Brown in a chapter of his book Timberline, and **Caroline Bancroft, a storyteller and historian who wrote a largely fictionalized booklet titled The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown for Colorado tourists. Fowler's and Bancroft's stories culminated in the 1964 MGM movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and nearly everything published or produced about Mrs. Brown since then has been based on this tall tale.

This is just a suggestion, RUN, don't walk to this link: 
Molly Brown Unraveling the Myth
and buy the book by Kristen Iversen.

You will certainly not be disappointed if you have ever had the slightest bit of interest in what really happened on April 14, 1912 (100 years ago today) and knowing who Margaret Tobin Brown really was !

 

 The photo Margaret used to first announce her candidacy for political office.

There are thirty-eight photographs in this book, including the Titanic survivors in Lifeboat Six taken from the deck of the Carpathia on the morning of April 15, 1912.

**********

This post is dedicated to my youngest daughter, who has been mesmerized with the story of the Titanic since she was about eight years old.

Yes, this was YOUR book !

It IS YOUR book !

And even though someone took YOUR book and had Robert Ballard autograph it to 'him,' it is still YOUR book.

And yes, you can use my iTunes account to upload "Molly Brown Unraveling the Myth."

Controversy in Fruita, Colorado

 When I first saw this pink cap on my vanity that theHansman left there, you can imagine my surprise by seeing this logo embroidered across the front.

Then I read the fine print, which you probably can't see. 

It says, "Welcome to Fruita."

This is another one of those posts where I'll be asking for your opinion, if you choose to keep reading.

You probably already know mine, but let me share a childhood experience which made a big impact on me concerning the use of four-letter words.

It happened when I was eight years old,  playing the marble game, Wahoo, with my mom and dad. 

In Wahoo, with the roll of the dice, marbles move along the board headed 'home.'  But, if someone rolls the correct number and your marble just happens to be in that particular spot, your marble gets knocked off and sent back to the starting gate. 

That happened to one of my marbles. 

To which I blurted out, "That darn marble."  (Referring to the marble that knocked my marble back to the start.)

Well, that word darn immediately caught the attention of both my parents.

In the next few seconds, I learned what Ivory Soap tasted like.

Yup.  They made me wash out my mouth with Ivory Soap.

No tellin' what would have happened had I said, "Damn marble."

So, with that consequence of saying darn, to this very day, I choose my 'potty mouth words' very carefully.

Which leads us back to this:

The City of Fruita is in the process of developing a marketing strategy to attract more tourism to the area, and part of that strategy entails the design and production of promotional materials that will appear in fixed locations such as highway billboards, bumper stickers, and the like.

Here is part of an article  by Laura Bly, USA TODAY

WTF ?
Controversial tourism slogan bites the dust

In the mountain biker magnet of Fruita, Colorado, decals for a sports shop read FU ("Fruita, USA") and an annual festival is dedicated to a headless chicken named Mike.

But that free-wheeling vibe has its limits: After asking for public feedback on a potential marketing campaign incorporating the double-entendre "WTF" (as in "Welcome to Fruita"), city officials discovered that most citizens weren't LOL.

It all started when a local couple printed 500 "WTF" stickers and distributed them free to downtown businesses. While the slogan generated attaboys from as far away as Australia and proved so catchy the couple made up another 1,500 decals, the western Colorado town of 13,000 won't be giving it their stamp of approval.

The edgy campaign "is not dead," says city manager Clint Kinney, who predicts the business community will "pick it up and run with it" despite the lack of municipal support.

But, he adds, "the hard part is, the people you represent and the people you market to don't always agree."

***********************************

So, if you lived in Fruita, Colorado, would you be in favor of this marketing campaign or not ?

And, don't just answer yes or no . . . feel free to voice your opinion, in 50 words, more or less.

How Do You Eat an Oreo ?

OR,  Happy 100th Birthday, Oreo Cookie !

In life, there are those comfort foods that just seem to hug you.  Especially if you're not feeling just great (see post below), whether it's the flu, a cold, a virus, or maybe just feeling a bit lonesome, sad, or blue.

I have several of those comfort foods . . .banana pudding that's still warm with lots of vanilla wafers and very few bananas . . . any kind of  sherbet with 7-Up poured over it served with a straw and large spoon . . .bacon. . . baconbaconbacon, and it must be crispy so that when you hold it by the end of the slice, it stays straight and doesn't bend.

And then there's an Oreo cookie with a glass of cold, cold, cold milk. Well, maybe not just an Oreo cookie but quite possibly a whole row of Oreo cookies.  Served with a knife.  Yes, you see, I'm not a fan of the filling.  It's so sweet, it hurts my teef.   So, I break open the cookie, scrape off the icing and then pop the entire one-half cookie in my mouth, crunch on it, and then get a big gulp of milk.  After savoring that, complete with a rush of adrenaline, I pop the other half in my mouth, and repeat.

And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. 

I would never think of biting into an Oreo as illustrated. See what's happened to that cookie ?   See all those crumbs ?  What a waste.  With my method of inhaling eating the cookie, there is no waste of crumbs. I've always wondered how I could use all that filling in another recipe so that it wouldn't be wasted, but so far I haven't.  My dogs are grateful for that.

Now, I shall digress for a minute and discuss Oreo/Nabisco/Kraft/Nestle.  I realize there are those of you out there who diligently followed my posts concerning Better World Shopper and Nestle.  And that I boycotted Nestle products because of their involvement in child slavery.  Those of you may be wondering, or not, that there may have been some discussion about Nestle purchasing Kraft, who owns Nabisco who owns that cookie up there.  After doing a bit of research, I found this:

On March 1, 2010, Nestle concluded the purchase of Kraft's North American frozen pizza business for $3.7 billion.  This includes DiGiorno, Tombstone, and Jack's brands in the United States and the California Pizza Kitchen trademark license. 

With that bit of information, I decided my Oreos were safe from Nestle, for now.  WHEW !

Now back to the question at hand:

How do YOU eat an Oreo cookie ?

Oh the Things You Can See on TeeVee

I'm not one who sits and watches TV.

I'm not one who sits, much.

But for the last 8, count them eight, I said E-I-G-H-T days I've pretty much been flat 'o my back.

Now, there's no need to share all the guts and gore of congestion, green snot, possibly coughing up a lung, topped-up sinuth cavities, earache, sore throat, sneezing, and a migraine. 

Not to mention, my taste buds and smell buds have been kidnapped.

So, I won't share all that.

But, when it hurts to even blink, there aren't many activities that are considered fun.

Enter:  Remote Control

I have learned so much this past week.

There's this gal named Tabitha who cusses like a sailor and goes in to these businesses, mainly hair salons, but sometimes yogurt shops and restaurants, and takes over.  This is because the business is on the verge of going out of business, and Tabitha bursts through the door with a plan. She starts with the owner's behind and kicks it.  Then the kicking spree continues with most all of the employees.   It' great.  I think I've seen every episode of Tabitha.  I think I would like to introduce Tabitha to theHansMan.

On to cupcakes.  This show causes much apprehension for me.  Each week on Cupcake Wars, four of the country’s top cupcake bakers face off in three elimination challenges until only one decorator remains. The sweet prize: $10,000 and the opportunity to showcase their cupcakes at the winning gig.

How in the heck can anyone bake, frost, and display ONE-THOUSAND cupcakes in two hours ?  It takes me two hours to find all the ingredients I need to bake ONE DOZEN cupcakes.  Yes, I find myself almost hyperventilating with every countdown of minutes to seconds.  Hurry...Hurry...I keep thinking. 

But my apprehension isn't what concerns me about this show.  It's the fact that I want to reach through the screen, grab the two judges by the throat, and choke them. 

Candace Nelson, owner of Sprinkles Cupcakes,  and Florian Bellanger, French chef and co-owner of online macaroon company MadMac, serve as permanent judges with a third rotating judge each week, and Justin Willman hosts.  Sometimes, I want to choke Justin, too.  Just for the fun of it.

Here's a blip of an episode . . .The contestants are given a list of ingredients that have to be included in the recipe.  For instance, bbq sauce, anchovies, cayenne pepper, molasses, etc.

My thought is, "Are they making cupcakes or Pasta Puttanesca?"

Other ingredients . . . oysters, hot sauce, basil, are you kidding me ?

The contestants have to then concoct three different kinds of cupcakes complete with frosting using a combination of the 'suggested' ingredients.

Once the cupcakes are placed in front of the judges, who by the way, are sitting there steely-face, looking at the contestants as if they are criminals,  taste-test them.

Candace critiques each cupcake and then says, "Your ingredients are a little confusing."

Ya Think ?   How in the world could they not be ?  Look at the ingredients you gave them to incorporate into the batter.

Now it's Florian's turn.  Remember, he's French.

Well, zee cayenne pepper wazforzeemostpart
a leetle beet overwhelming and I'm notzure
that you conseedered zeebarbeeque zaus
vould affectzeeconzeestencee of zeebatter.

WHAT ?  What did you just say ?  The least this show could do is provide sub-titles when he speaks.

By the end of the show, I'm craving cupcakes and wanting to beat someone up.  Since I'm not in any shape to do either, what do I do ?

Eat a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints. Yes, I said sleeve. All of them. 

But, there are more shows that need to be watched.

Have you ever heard of Storage Wars ?

And what's the deal with all these Housewives of Orange County, Atlanta, New Jersey ?  Who are these women ?  Are they for real ?  How do you spell bitchslap ? 

That's enough blogging for now.

So, please excuse me while I go International House Hunting in Melbourne, Australia. 

Stay tuned for Rattlesnake Republic and Hillbilly Handfishin' . . . oh yeah, the things you can see on teevee.

 

Why Do Brooms Stand Up on End ?

Reposted from October 14, 2009.

This topic seems to be quite popular . . . lots of people out there in the universe "Googling" it.

So run, don't walk to see if your broom is standing up in the closet.  Who knows?  It might be.

I found mine standing up in the middle of the floor.   See below . . .

 

Question: How/Why do brooms stand up in the middle of a room ?

First thought: This song comes to mind:

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aqaurius
Aquaruis ! Aquarius ! 

Swampy's Version:
(with apologies to: James Rado, Gerome Ragni, Galt MacDermot and The 5th Dimension)

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And the Earth aligns with Mars
My broom will not sweep the floor
You will find me at the bars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius!  Aquarius! 

During my school teaching years, one phenomenon was that none of my middle school kiddos ever threw one of the eggs we used to stand on end during the Autumnal and Vernal Equinoxes. It was pretty amazing to see two dozen eggs standing on end in my classroom. It was even more amazing that not ONE, no not ONE egg was ever broken. We're talking middle school kids, people ! Even though this feat can be performed on any given day, supposedly, it is easier during these two times of the year.

All I know is that my students loved Egg Day !

But this post is about brooms and just how much time I've wasted on it !

So  now, for the first time I hear about a broom standing straight up in the middle of the room. Please note that the broom pictured above has very "bent" bristles, and I doubted that it would work. Much to my surprise, last night IT DID !  (For those of you wondering, yes, this is the same broom that I travel on.)

One explanation for this is that the Earth aligned with Mars...another explanation...something about gravity...

No where on the Internet could I find an explanation for this...

 

Evidently, not only does the Earth aligning with Mars cause brooms to stand up ! It seems to have the same effect on dogs like Lola Cherry Cola !

H-m-m-m-m...next thought...erectile dysfunction...

  
 

 

Captain Owen P. Honors

 THIS JUST IN as of August 24, 2011: 

 A Navy panel says the former commander of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier who produced  videos aboard the ship can remain in the service.

The board of inquiry issued its UNANIMOUS decision Wednesday. It had been looking at whether to recommend that Capt. Owen P. Honors be dismissed from the Navy.

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This post was published January 5, 2011

Many of you who have read my blog for a while, (why you do, I'm not sure), are aware that I stay away from religion, politics, and the weather.  Not that I'm 'skeered' of what I might stir up, I'm always open to 'conversation from different viewpoints,' it's just that those type of posts require more than just posting cute pictures of grandkids for my family to ooh-and-ahh-over. 

It means that I might have to defend my position, which if it's my opinion and my blog, I don't feel the need to possibly 'argue'   'discuss' with you.

But today I'm going to run the risk of posting something you may be diametrically in opposition to.  I really don't care.

Let's first start with the term "politically correct."

Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, and age-related contexts. In current usage, the term is primarily perjorative while the term politically incorrect has been used as an implicitly positive self-description.  In these cases, the term politically incorrect connotes language, ideas, and behavior unconstrained by a perceived orthodoxy or by concerns about offending or expressing bias regarding various groups of people.

This is Ken's take on PC : "Political Correctness is a mental illness that allows a person to polish a turd and think they do not have crap on their hands."
The CO of CVN-65 is the first(and not the last) act of revenge after the repeal of DADT. The PC-madness games just roll on. It gave us Capt. Hassan, the muslim madman who killed at Fort Hood. It gives us a "equipment check" of Grandma & body scanners manned by the Thousands Standing Around at the airport.
May God bless the United States and continue to guide us with his light through the darkness we are in.

Then, let's bring in the video that was leaked to the media and then to general public, for whom it was not intended.   For sure, there are several things in that video that make me squirm and make me feel uncomfortable.  But, that video was not made for me.  We must understand what the objective was for it to be shown to several thousand personnel on the U.S.S. Enterprise.  Have you ever spent day after day after day on a nuclear carrier under very stressful conditions ?  Neither have I.

Enter the word l.e.v.i.t.y.

Ever heard this, "The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren't in a very good mood."  Maybe these people :   perceived orthodoxy or by concerns about offending or expressing bias regarding various groups of people.

At this point  I will digress . . . going back to my days in the classroom.  There was an unwritten rule that if there was a problem, the first step was to go to that particular person, possibly another teacher, to try to resolve the issue.  If that didn't work, the next step would be to schedule a meeting with the principal to help mediate.  And from there, it could then possibly involve another 'higher-up.'  

Or, if the problem concerned a student, the parent is contacted and a parent-teacher conference is scheduled.  Many times, the student is involved depending on the situation.  Other times, the principal and/or counselor may be included.

I'm not trying to trivialize the situation with Captain Honors and his dismissal by comparing it to a school-house scenario, but in my mind there's not much difference.

If there were those, and evidently there was at least one, who had a problem with the video shown on board The Enterprise, why was it not addressed AT THE TIME, in much the same way as I described above ?   Why, several years later, was this 'leaked' to Corinne Reilly at the Virginia Pilot.  ([email protected]        Phone# 757-446-2949)

In other words, why couldn't the person(s) offended have gone through the chain of command to 'right what they deemed a wrong ?'

Why did it take this covert action, leak it to the media, and let them 'convict' Captain Honors to a general public in a matter of hours and torpedo his career ?

In reading the comments on two Facebook pages (Friends of Captain Owen P. Honors and Support Captain Owen Honors, which at this minute has over 20,000 Friends), it is apparent he is well-respected by thousands. 

Of course, there are several comments explaining why the person agrees with his dismissal.  Most of those by retired Navy Officers.  My guess is that some of them can look back on their careers and be thankful that things they said/did never made it to the public eye.

Every choice we make — including the thoughts we think — has consequences. When we choose the behavior or thought, we choose the consequences.  There's probably not one person reading this who needs to be armed with stones.  We have all built our glass houses.

Remember this story ?  In World War II, HE commanded corps and armies in North Africa and Sicily and the European Theatre of Operations. Near the end of the Sicilian campaign, HE jeopardized his career by slapping a soldier (whom he regarded as a coward) while the soldier was recuperating from battle fatigue at a hospital.  Remember who HE was ?

Wasn't there someone whom we all know that was involved in an incident that had something to do with  a cigar ?  I mean if you want to get raunchy, just go there.

I am also reminded of the movie "Patch Adams."  To this day, I still want to punch that professor in the face who tried to ruin Dr. Adams' career.  And I'm not a violent person.

Yes. My mind does wander.

If you're still trying to follow this sermon on a soap box, go ahead and read this.

The Secretary of Defense's office can be reached at 703-571-3343.
Feel free to call and express your opinion, no matter what it might be.

And now a personal message to Captain Owen P. Honors. 
You are now free to find a job that pays you a decent salary. 
Write your book and know that there are those of us who still respect you.

 

Princess Beatrice: What the Heck is on Her Head ?

Update:  Now I get it.  Beatrice and Eugenie were emulating these two:

OK.  I'll admit it.  I was caught up in all the pomp and extravaganza of the royal wedding.

Was totally zonked today because it was imperative to watch it live.  Do you know what time the wedding aired here in Swampwitch Time ?  The DVR was set to 2:00 a.m., but only because a test of the emergency broadcast system blared two hours later did I awaken just in time to watch the ceremony.

If you watched it, there's no need for me to take the time to give a blow-by-blow account of what we saw.

Except for. . .

.. .what the H#ll is this :

Photo from the Huffington Post.  Used without permission.  Hoping not to get into trouble for snagging this off the Internet. 

I'm talking about what is perched on these girls' heads. 

Princess Eugenie:

Don't look now, but a bird appears to be getting ready to slide down your head.

Lady GaGa is now designing for the Royals.

She was high when trying to hem the skirt.

Local thrift shop reports a blue dress was stolen yesterday.  Suspect was seen with someone wearing a white hat and a lot of bling on his suit.

Don't look now, but the Bluebird of Paradise just pooped all over you.

Princess Beatrice: 

Rudolph called.  He wants his antlers back.

London Times headlines:  Princess Beatrice charged with stealing part of the fence surrounding Kensington Palace and affixing it to her forehead.

Part of the missing grill work from one of the Rolls Royce's located on top of Princess Beatrice's head.

Amazon is selling a new style hat rack fashioned after something spotted on a Princesses' head.

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What was Prince Andrew thinking ?

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I'm sorry.  I just can't help myself.  The sarcastic side of me has shown its ugly head.

BUT, you are welcome to join in . . .

Anyone ?

 

 

 

 

 

Mohamed Bouazizi

Who knew that when a young Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire because his cart was confiscated and a policewoman slapped him that dictators would begin to topple like dominoes ?

Some report it was Bouazizi's scales that were taken, and those scales had been taken from him MANY times.  He would then have to "buy them back" to remain in business.

Regardless, Bouazizi had had enough . . .

My head is set to spinning reading newspaper and magazine articles about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya . . .

Today's post is just a list of words, phrases, and names of people and places that have become everyday vocabulary in our World:

Sidi Bouzid
revolution
political tsunami
tyranny
despotism
cult of power
anarchy
extrajudicial detention
Hama
perdition
Hafez Assad
sectarian revolt
Alawite Regime
rapacious court
ferocious animus
audacious thought
children of adversity:
    Muammar Kaddafi
    Saddam Hussein (I always called him 'Sodamn Insane')
    Hafez Assad
quintessential bureaucrat
dynastic claim
imperious
Sharm al-Sheikh
"Irhall"  =  Be Gone
caliphate
virulent corruption
Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali

 

 

 

 

The tyrannical ruler, with his tacky, dyed, jet-black hair, at Bouazizi's bedside in a false attempt at humility and concern.  

The only thing lacking is his crown.

So, as we go about our day, how many of these words, people, places . . . will enter in to our  own conversations ?

Scary, isn't it ?