Category Archives: Uncategorized

If you’ve seen the movie Sideways, you’ve seen the Santa Ynez Valley, a picture-postcard place about 40 miles north of Santa Barbara that is, yes, full of vineyards and now, since the movie, people going to wine tastings. I spent most of Saturday picking blueberries, raspberries and strawberries thereabouts, and then went to Los Olivos, a picture postcard kind of small town where everything costs about $1,000, just to start. Even so, it was a picture postcard kind of California day, and although I do not favor blog posts that just tell everyone where you went today, as if they should care, this day trip was special enough that I thought you might get a contact high — or at least a serene smile — out of some of the pictures my cell phone took along the way. The blueberry fields and flowers explain themselves, I think. The miniature donkey was just too cute to leave out of the mix; he was at a place that offers miniature donkey rides but was, to my kids’ dismay, closed Saturday. The barrel and sign advertising garlic and lavender hail from Los Olivos. Yes, it’s the kind of place where lavender is sold; there’s a lavender farm in the vicinity.

Yesterday, this almost brand spanking new blog drew nearly 5,000 page views, thanks in large part to a link from slashdot.org to a data mining in the public interest post. So thanks, slashdot folks; you continue to curate a fascinating site for a huge audience. Also, thanks to Jim Romenesko, the best journalistic blogger in the country, who linked to the Huffington Post Union Bloggers item today. Then again, thanks to the WordPress operation, which put this humble blog on its fastest-growing and best-post lists recently, also helping to spin the digital turnstyles. But mostly, thanks to all of you gentle readers, who accelerate those turnstyles every time you click over here, or tell a friend he or she might want to.

When you have a David Brooks column that is not as obvious as a cloudless sky is blue — a column that even puts forward a reasonable and original thought — you must go with it.

When you run up against irrefutable proof that you have been tying your shoes the wrong way your whole life, what do you do with that proof? You go with it. And then you go with it again.

In the latest turn in the incipient Rick Perry for president campaign, two of the Texas governor’s former associates have left Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, Slate’s excellent blogger Dave Weigel reports. And the significance of this? A Wall Street Journal piece from a day ago explains:

Should he run, Mr. Perry would first have to overcome an organizational hurdle. Assured that he wasn’t running, his two top campaign aides, Mr. Carney and former campaign manager Rob Johnson, both signed up with Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker. … Members of Mr. Perry’s still-extant group of campaign consultants say there is little chance he would embark on a 2012 campaign without Messrs. Carney and Johnson at his side.

The die appears cast. A born-again Republican governor from Texas seeks the White House. I’ll be interested to see the next poll from Iowa. Because of his Christian, Tea Party and anti-intellectual bonafides, I suspect Governor Good-Hair will immediately rate ahead of all the other GOP candidates. Pawlenty, Romney and that other Mormon must be gnashing their teeth. Obama’s folks, meanwhile, sharpen knives in a Chicago diner, remembering the last time they sliced and diced a Texas governor on the way to the White House.

Many Politico stories can be aptly described as meretricious. They promise revelation and insight; they deliver commonplaces and common wisdom, presented in breathless, can-you-believe-this tones. But this Politico piece on overall strategy for the Obama reelection effort seems both solid and interesting to me. It also acknowledges a reality that I’ve been throwing in the faces of friends for many months now: Yes, Obama will have a tough reelection fight, given the economic situation of the country. But incumbent presidents have enormous natural advantages — in fundraising, organization and visibility — and this president also has a seasoned and inventive political team. That team surprised the world in 2008, and 2012 will not be a simple reprise of that campaign. The Obama team will look to surprise again next year, and this Politico article looks at one way such a surprise might go — an expansion of states put in play. Republicans tut-tut such a strategy, but the common wisdom in late 2007 and early 2008 was that a black man couldn’t win the White House, and Obama should wait his turn, and Hillary had a lock on the nomination. The economy will not be great in 2012, but presidents have a lot of levers to pull when they want a better economy in an election year (look back to Nixon ’72, if you don’t believe me). The economy will be significantly better then than it is now, and it is likelier than not that Obama will win reelection. And if the economy does improve, and the Republicans don’t nominate someone more substantial and believable than Mitt Romney, there is a real chance that Barack Obama will win reelection by a margin that approaches landslide. When he does, remember that you read it here in June of 2011.

When you have an amazing and frightening hat trick like this, you go with it. But you stay far, far away from the guy, who, I hope, gets the long-term treatment program he clearly needs. (h/t Matt Palmquist)

I wasn’t going to post anything else this weekend, but when you have a remote controlled miniature SR-71 with real jet engines, you just have to go with it. (h/t Ira Flatow)

When you have an abalone farm in your own town, I guess you have to go with it. Besides, I’ve been there, and it is one fascinating operation.

I’ll be out of Internet range over most of the long weekend but will then be full of postings about the strange and terrible land known as … Fresno.