A rose by any other name

Some names in America – Kennedy, Du Pont, Barrymore, Manning – carry a certain cachet that invokes positive feelings. Other names – Manson, Oswald, Daley – carry a negative taint. William Daley at Top of Obama List for White House Chief of Staff The Obama White House is considering William Daley as the new chief [...]

My Favorite Moonbeam

Jerry Brown’s third inaugural address, part 1 and 2: As you can see, Jerry never was a smooth talker. Reactions to Gov. Jerry Brown’s inaugural address Monday in Sacramento: “Hopefully the Democrats will listen to him more about spending than they did to me.” – outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “No question, California is far more [...]

The Knitting Diaries: Knitting between the lines

I loved that red scarf with the leaves so much I’m redoing it with an alpaca/silk yarn for my sister in law. That’s one of the fun things about knitting … The same pattern can be a snug muffler-type scarf or a long silky drapey affair. Knitting a familiar lace pattern makes it easy-peasy but, [...]

Freed at last

From SF Gate: DNA clears Texas man who spent 30 years in prison Cornelius Dupree Jr., 51, was paroled out of prison in July after 30 years behind bars for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. DNA test results that came back 10 days after his release excluded him as the person who raped and [...]

Today is the first Monday of the rest of your life

This is kinda scary: Dead birds fall from sky in Arkansas Wildlife experts are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over the town of Beebe in Arkansas. [...] The birds fell over a one-mile area, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds [...]

Today I get an old new governor

SF Gate: California has drastically changed in the 36 years since Jerry Brown first took the oath of office to become governor. The Golden State’s population has swelled by 15.8 million people, the price of a gallon of milk has more than doubled, and the state spends nearly 10 times as much on government services [...]

All work and no play

You may recall my recent post about Obama’s work habits: The president’s “biggest regret” was that because of economic turmoil, “He had to spend almost every waking hour in Washington working on solving that crisis,” senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And what he missed sorely [...]

In case you missed this the first time…

Continuing on a theme of enfranchisement and voting, I’m going to excerpt large swathes of this report from Alegre’s corner from the delegates themselves who were pressured and intimidated in Denver in 2008 to change their votes from Hillary to Obama. And in case you doubt the veracity of these accounts, here is a report [...]

On the horizon in 2011

Happy New Year! I’ve been trying to figure out what the next year should be about.  Should it be the economy?  The war?  Equal rights for women?  But I keep coming back to the same point: protecting our right to vote.  Without that, nothing else you want to accomplish matters.  It is this right that [...]

Sunday News

Good Morning Conflucians!!! Hope you’ve recovered from your Yew Years celebrations. Or at least have an ice pack on your head and ear muffs to keep down the noise. I tend to watch the Rose Bowl Parade despite it being riddled with conservative leanings in numerous aspects of its organization and choices. This year there [...]