Curmudgeon's Radio Interview

To listen to the podcast of the Curmudgeon's radio interview on hurricanetrack.com (re Landstrike), go to: http://www.hurricanetrack.com/newstalk/july15.mp3

Curmudgeon On Radio

Next Wednesday (July 15) the Curmudgeon will be on radio, in his alter ego state as Ken Bass, author of Landstrike. We'll be on the internet radio/podcast of Hurricanetrack.com, at 9:00 pm, talking about--what else--Landstrike.

For more details, go to hurricanetrack.com. We hope you'll give us a listen, or catch the podcast later!

UPDATE: To listen to the podcast, go HERE.

Independence Day In Telluride

One reason you haven't seen much here in the past few days is that we were off in Telluride, Colorado most of last week, having far too much fun to blog.

It was our second consecutive Independence Day in the quaint mountain town, and there's much to be said of it.

Telluride sits at the end of a box canyon, at an elevation of 8750 feet. It's a liberal town with a strong outdoors orientation. As best we can tell, the economy is based on festivals in the summer, skiing in the winter, and famine in between.

The red hot real estate market has cooled off a bit, which may be just as well. One of the floats in the Independence Day parade--indeed the winning float--was an ode to the financial excess of yore, proclaiming "Party Like It's 2006."

Our Telluride favorites? The local newspaper, The Daily Planet. Not only an interesting spin on the local news, but sufficient national news to keep you in touch with the world.

Also, Baked in Telluride, the local bakery, which has everything from fresh bagels to pizza and burritos, and the perfect hangover-busting breakfast sandwich--the bacon, egg & cheese croissant (nicknamed, by us, the "greasy bloater").

We liked the hike up to Bear Creek Falls, on a gentle grade. Well worth the trip, and with the thin air and our beating heart, like making a walk into a hard jog's worth of exercise.

On the 4th of July, the kids loved the fish catch. The local fire department, which runs the entire day's activities, sets up a couple large tanks of water in the town park, fills them with trout, then lets 20-25 kids in at a time to chase the trout around with their bare hands. Catch a trout and you get $1.

At the end of the day, the fireworks rival those in D.C., only they're a lot LOUDER by virtue of echoing endlessly off the walls of the box canyon. (A quick thunderstorm right before the fireworks doused many watchers in the park with a cold rain while supplying nature's own fireworks, but it was still worth the show.)

We also tried some fly-fishing. Fun, but expensive, unless you have your own gear--probably cost us more than $80 per fish caught, so you might want to sneak in with the kids on the 4th and try catching one with your hands.

Last year, we spied Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and little Suri gnoshing on ice cream in the town, but alas, this year there were no celebrity sightings. Perhaps when the Telluride airport re-opens with its new, longer runway (at the highest altitude of any commercial airport in the nation), the celebs will return.

Sanford Stays While Palin Goes

Oftentimes, politics doesn't make much sense, at least on the surface.

In South Carolina, Gov. Sanford--who abandoned the state for a few days to be with his paramour, lied to his staff about it and then gave a practically incoherent press conference to explain his actions--will probably stay in office.

Why? Because the Republicans who control the state would rather have him, crazy as he is, than the Lt. Governor in office. There are a couple reasons for that. First, the Lt. Governor, Andre Bauer, has his own problems and is a political enemy of Sanford. Bauer could easily do something just as strange as Sanford, and the GOP could ill afford the double whammy. (Bauer is rumored to be gay, but he denies it, which of course is meaningless.)

Second, if Bauer moves up, then Glenn McConnell, who is the powerful President Pro Tem of the state senate, would have to move into the Lt. Governor's office. That would be horrid exchange for him--the real power is in leading the Senate, not in the largely ceremonial Lt. Governor's office.

McConnell would probably decline to move, setting off a constitutional crisis and perhaps a scramble for power, all looking quite unseemly.

Can Democrats take advantage of the GOP's woes in the Palmetto State? While we'd like to think so, we doubt it. More likely, the mess will help scramble the Republicans and bring some new faces to the fore.

Maybe it's time for our old friend Oscar Lovelace--who scored nearly 40% of the votes in a primary contest against Sanford two years ago--to jump back in. We bet a lot of SC Republicans now wish they'd cast their lot with Lovelace back then, rather than giving Sanford a second term.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin says she's stepping down. Her press conference to explain why was about as incoherent as Sanford's. She says she's resigning because she isn't seeking a second term--she doesn't want to subject Alaska's voters to a lame-duck governor.

That, of course, is complete nonsense. Instead, she'll subject them to a special election and deprive them of the governor they elected for four years (not three). She could easily be a "good" lame duck governor if she wanted, but instead she's resigning.

Will Palin still pursue the GOP presidential nomination? Hard to tell. We certainly thought it was a mistake when NC Sen. John Edwards left his seat to run for President full-time. Without being governor, Palin loses her platform of legitimacy and simply becomes someone whose sole ambition is to be President. (Ok, so that's a lot like Huckabee and Romney, but that's really the point--don't the Republicans have anyone they'd like to elevate on the basis of merit, rather than raw ambition?)

How about this for the GOP: a family values ticket, with Palin at the top, Sanford as VP, Ensign for Sec. of State, Vitter at Treasury, and Larry "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Craig at Defense.

PPP Poll: McDonnell Has Small Lead Over Deeds

Now that we're in the doldrums of summer (politics-wise; we love this part of summer otherwise), we have our first post-primary bounce poll in the Va. governors race, from PPP, which gives Bob McDonnell a small lead over Creigh Deeds, 49%-43%.

We'd expect PPP, and perhaps a couple other pollsters, to start doing polling at regular intervals from here on out, giving us a good trendline as the race heats up after Labor Day.

Both Deeds and McDonnell enjoy solid favorability ratings, so we guess it won't be too long before they both begin tearing each other down!

We don't expect much movement in the polls until the campaign gets underway in earnest come September.

Landstrike Available On Kindle

Alright--those of you with your fancy new Kindle readers from Amazon can now download "Landstrike" and read it to your e-delight! Click HERE.

We've gotten a lot of feedback on Landstrike and the consensus is that it's a perfect vacation/beach read--a real page-turner that's like "Tom Clancy meets the Weather Channel."

If you don't have the Kindle, it's available in good old-fashioned book form--hard and soft cover--at Amazon, BN.com and other online sellers (and a few bookstores).

Should Superdelegates Stay, Or Go?

Democratic leaders and "grassroots activists" (shout out to Roseanne from MN) have begun a series of meetings to determine whether, and if so how, to reform the delegate selection process for nominating a presidential candidate.

A prime reason for these meetings is to re-examine the role of so-called "superdelegates" in the nominating process. Team Obama, of course, was worried throughout much of 2008 that superdelegates--Democratic party insiders who are uncommitted and free to vote for whomever they choose, regardless of how their state's voters came out--would tilt the field in favor of Hillary, "stealing" the election despite Obama's wins.

Obama has little to worry about now since he IS the quintessential Democratic insider and party officials presumably will support him in 2012 absent some horrendous misstep.

Nonetheless, many Obamites are uncomfortable with the current structure and want it changed.

So, should the Dems eliminate superdelegates, or at least modify the structure? To begin with, party officials will always be able to attend the convention and vote. Before the superdelegate structure was put in place, many of the regular delegates were party officials, who are good at getting themselves nominated as delegates. So don't worry that they somehow will miss the party.

Instead, the question is whether they should be allowed to uncommitted, or should instead be allocated to candidates like other delegates.

The theory behind superdelegates was that they can prevent the party from making some terrible mistake--something like nominating a Georgia peanut farmer for President. Superdelegates are supposed to bring their superior political skills to the table to prevent disaster.

It hasn't worked out that way, however. Before we had superdelegates, the party nominated Jimmy Carter for President. That was no mistake--he won. The mistake was in how he governed thereafter, which superdelegates have little control over.

After Carter, in the superdelegate era, we got the likes of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry--party liberals who did poorly with independent voters. The problem with superdelegates is that they are super-Democrats, whereas the general populace may not be all that wild about super-Democrats.

Democrats win the presidency when they select candidates with broad appeal to independents. They get those candidates by opening up the nomination process to independents--in states with open primaries this last cycle, Obama did quite well.

We'd like to see the party eliminate, or vastly scale back, the superdelegates. As we said, those folks will still go to the conventions, but they ought to be bound by the will of the voters and caucus attendees.

The party needs to look at other issues as well. It makes a difference--in terms of which candidate has the edge--whether a state nominating contest is by closed primary (favors insiders), caucus (favors insiders more) or open primary (helps outsiders). There needs to be some balance there.

Another issue is proportional assignment of delegates. In the Democratic primaries and caucuses, delegates are assigned pretty closely based on the proportion of votes they get. A candidate may get trounced in a state, losing 60-40 (that's a trouncing in electoral politics) and still come out with nearly 40% of the delegates. On the Republican side, the winner in a state sometime gets ALL the delegates, and usually gets most.

We think the Dems should be less proportional, but avoid the "winner-take-all" approach. One way to do this is to have about 70% of the delegates be assigned proportionally, but allow the winner of a state to take the other 30% (the percentages could be changed, but the overall state winner should get a delegate "bonus").

It will be an interesting to see what the party comes up with.

A Different Perspective On Michael Jackson

With the sudden passing of Michael Jackson, the Curmudgeon was waxing nostalgic as strands of "ABC" and "Thriller" played on the radio in commemoration.

In the back seat of the car, however, where three 11-year-olds sat, being ferried to their next fun summer activity, the sentiment was different.

They were actually pretty vitriolic, especially for happy pre-teens. "I'm glad he's gone," said one. Another said, "Yeah, he had an amusement park at his house and he'd get boys to come there and then rape them." The third said, "I don't know why they're playing his music; he was a rapist."

All we can say is, good for them. In these boys' minds, Michael Jackson was just a predator who went after boys like them; not someone to be honored.

Michael Jackson was an extremely talented individual. As is so often the case, however, talent like that comes at a price, and is often associated with serious flaws. Michael Jackson won't be preying on any more young boys.

Sanford Implodes

Wow, the GOP presidential field for 2012 is weeding itself out rapidly. First, Sen. John Ensign admits to an affair with a staffer, after the staffer's husband tries to blackmail him. Goodbye Ensign.

Then South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford goes AWOL, has his staff first say they don't know where he is, then lie about where he is, while his wife says she neither knows nor cares where he is. Then it turns out he's been in Argentina having an affair. The rest of the details are just bizarre!

[And here we thought Gov. Sanford was just off reading Landstrike in a quiet place.]

So goodbye Sanford.

Also, goodbye party of so-called "family values." The GOP has always been hugely hypocritical on the issue, but the veil is peeling away as if in a hurricane. Meanwhile, the Democratic President has a wife--his first and only one--and two seemingly adorable, well-adjusted kids. Maybe the GOP should just become the party of the sleazy--that fits a lot of voters!

At this rate, George "Macacca" Allen may decide he has nothing to lose getting into the 2012 picture.

Good thing the Republicans still have Sarah P.