On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 14:36:54 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 10/6/18 1:48 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 09:52:20 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 10/6/18 9:20 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 10/6/2018 8:58 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 10/6/18 7:17 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:

On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 20:28:36 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:


Oh, the investigations and revelations about Kavanaugh will continue.



Maybe by a few but once the final vote is taken today and Kavanaugh
is very likely confirmed most Dems will pull in their horns on this
and crank their gunsights onto a new subject .... like Trump's father's
tax returns from 60 years ago.

Mid terms are coming up, don'cha know?



Kavanaugh will always be known as "Beer Kavanaugh," or "Sex Offender
Kavanaugh," or, worse, "Trump's Boy Kavanaugh." At some point, he will
have to pay the piper.


Not directly related (to Kavanaugh) but I suppressed my gag reflexes
last night and watched Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC deliver a lecture
on the structure of our government with particular attention to the
Senate.Â* Citing his vast experience as an aide to Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan he criticized the founding fathers
as being "wrong" in the structure of government.Â* Much
like Hillary, he said the founding fathers assumed the general
population were too "stupid" to vote directly on the issues and there
fore created the representative form of government with the chosen
few ruling.



Speaking of "representative," on the way home from the airport
yesterday, my wife was commenting on the beauty of some few parts of
North and South Dakota and Wyoming, and also how desolate and flat and
ugly some parts of those states were, and on the general scarcity of
population, and thought it was weird for those lightly populated states
each to have two U.S. Senators.

So, I looked up population by state. She has a point in terms of "one
man or woman, one vote." That argument kind of works for the House, but
not the Senate.

North and South Dakota and Wyoming each has a population of less than a
million. Wyoming's is less than 600,000. Yet each of those states is
represented in the Senate with two U.S. Senators. So, each 500,000
persons or less is represented by a U.S. Senator. Same goes for Vermont,
Alaska, Delaware. California also has two U.S. Senators, and a
population of 40 million.

Seems to me that to be more representationally fair, not that fairness
matters, states with less than a million people should only have one
U.S. Senator.

It all had to do with the idea that the rural population should not be
serfs to the people in the castle (cities). Since that was really
still a thing in Europe in recent memory to the framers of the
constitution it was important to them.
We still have the same divide. The people in the cities still want to
impose their will and their cultural standards on people out in the
countryside. Thank god we still have the senate and the electoral
college or the whole country would be like our fetid cities. It is bad
enough that "citiots" move out into the country and bring their big
city ideas with them.
They move out of the city to "get away from it all", then they want to
bring "it all" with them.

I spent years "out there" and traveled extensively in Kansas, Missouri,
Oklahoma, and Iowa, with a few trips to South Dakota and Colorado. As
far as I can recall, the only saving graces in terms of civilization
were the college towns. I suppose if you are a farmer or rancher, the
wide open spaces have appeal. I am damned sure there's nothing I want to
"impose" on those places. The guys I knew hated the college vacation
breaks because they had to return, if just temporarily, to
Nowheresville. I did date a girl in college for a while who was from
Western Kansas, but she was up to speed. Her "daddy" was a rancher who
owned a really big spread, but when I asked her about it, she said he
only raised cattle as a hobby since oil and gas were discovered on his
property. The next semester, she transferred to a university in California.


You are why god made cities. I am still surprised you live in such a
bucolic area. You are a natural for Crystal City or maybe a row house
in the unit blocks of East Capital Street. Too bad you weren't in DC
in the 70s, you could have scooped one up cheap (but it would have
needed work)

My wife also commented that she really didn't know why North and South
Dakota were two separate states. Ironically, that was my comment more
than 50 years ago when I visited both states with a college buddy who
lived in Vermillion, South Dakota. There's nothing on which to
differentiate them.


You could say the same thing about West Virginia, the Carolinas or the
whole Acela corridor.
Is there really any difference between New Jersey, New York, Rhode
Island. Connecticut or Massachusetts?
It sure looks the same to me.

At least South Carolina has nice beaches. I lived in West Virginia.
Blech. Don't like Jersey. Liked New York State, Rhode Island,
Connecticut. Ocean water in Massachusetts was too cold for my taste.

"Back to the east side of the interstate Ben Stone" ;-)
(obscure movie reference)

Actually some say the best beaches and perhaps the best fishing is in
North Carolina. It just costs more to be there.
I am more of a mountain guy when I am tired of the beach ... and that
doesn't take long. I lived in Sanibel for a year and I was pretty much
"beached" out. Down here I prefer back bay cruising in my boat where
the faint hearted fear to go but a nice hike in the mountains, miles
from civilization is really nice too. I just don't want to be there in
the winter.