Jam Packed Anchorage Democratic Caucus

[Video in next post.]

I already had a suspicion that the Anchorage Democratic Caucus would be crowded. We've never really had a caucus before that had any impact. But this time we were on the media hyped Super Tuesday. People who would normally vote on a primary would be out. When I turned off Lake Otis onto Debarr, I began to wonder. I'm not usually on the road at 5pm, but things didn't move.



Five minutes later I was only a little further. Were all these people going to Begich Middle School for the Caucus? Then we had four or five more miles like this. No way. I followed the lead of some other cars and turned left before Costco and then got onto Bragaw and then the Glenn. Here things were whizzing along.



Until just after the 1/2 mile to Muldoon sign. Then we were back to a crawl. But I once on Muldoon it was easy to the Fred Meyer parking lot, and I found a spot and walked over a block to the school. .






It was a clear cold night and the mountains were spectacular, even if my photography isn't. It was 6:10pm. This normally 15 minute ride had taken over an hour. The caucus was supposed to start at 5:30pm. Well, they'd have to wait for everyone to get through the traffic.













This is NOT the school parking lot. These are fire lanes.






Finally got to the building and saw into a packed room.





Here are the people in the hallways.








Looking the other way. It was wall to wall people. There were lots of Obama and Hilary signs, but no signs to tell you what to do or where to go. People at the door were handing out registration forms. But I was already registered. I was supposed to get a blue card and then go to my district room. But this was the line to get a blue card. Someone said I could go to my district room without a blue card and sign in there. Where was my room? No one seemed to know. I wandered up and down the halls going into classrooms and asking what district it was. There was one map that showed the rooms and the districts. But it was only the second floor and mine wasn't on it.





Down at the end of the hall was another map that showed the room numbers, but not the districts. No one there had any idea. So I wandered back on the second floor (the first floor was too crowded to move.)







I made it to the gym where there was yet another mass of people. This is where the lines, if you can call them that, were headed. This is where people were getting blue cards and room assignments. But they were giving up. Someone had a mike and was telling us what room to go for what district. Finally. And we didn't need blue cards. When I got back down to the other side of the building, I wrote the name of my district and the room number on the map, but it was on plastic and my pen wasn't very good.



Once inside the room, packed with about 100 people or more, the loud speaker system started working. Here it was easy. We divided into Obama side, Clinton side, and uncommitted. People had also been allowed to write their names down on a Clinton or Obama sheet of paper and go. Not counting the people who signed up, we were 59 for Obama and 20 for Clinton. The uncommitted split 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton. A few more stragglers added to the vote count later. It was about 7:40 now.









They were then going to pick delegates to the May Democratic convention in Alaska. I decided to go home. It was about 8pm.
And on the east end of town, a little chillier than when I'd gotten here. That's in Fahrenheit. It would be minus 21 C.

Despite the chaos, no one seemed at all upset. Everyone was excited. It was an event. I saw so many people with registration forms. You had to be a Democrat to participate. So people were either new voters, or switching from undeclared or Republican, or one of the other possible designations. Obama was clearly the source of lots of excitement, but there wasn't any animosity between the Obama and Clinton supporters that I saw.

Blog Ethics - Sex Sells and so does Victor Lebow

I always find surprises in the google search topics that get people to my site. Dennis at AlaskaReport (by the way check out their story on Don "Corleone" Young while you're there) recently shared that he has an entertainment section because that's what people want - along with stats showing Heath Ledger, Britney Spears, and other celebs being top hits. So I shouldn't be surprised with all the people googling Bambi Tyree. In the last 40 or so site views six were looking for Bambi from:
Sophia, Bulgaria
Miami, Florida
Las Cruces, NM
Cranberry Twp, PA
Philadelphia, PA
Spokane, WA

Do you think if her parents had named her Martha things would have turned outdifferent?

On the other hand 10% of the last 100 were still looking up Victor Lebow, including someone from Ankara, Turkey. If you got here looking up Victor Lebow, go here. While in LA I looked up Victor Lebow I found a Victoria who lived near my mom. I phoned her and after a number of calls to relatives "I hadn't talked to in 55 years" she said that the Victor Lebow who wrote about American Consumerism is not related to her family. But the Victor Lebow from Wichita, KS whose picture I posted is a relative. So that confirms my suspicion they were two different people.

Also had someone from the US House of Representatives look at yesterday's chart of Blacks in Congress, and finally, someone got here googling:

"Carnival cruises send passenger flowers."

Media Ethics Note: Sometimes people do send me links to stories they'd like me to link, like the Corleone story. If I do link to these stories it's because I think they have something worthwhile. And I'm not above critiquing the stories people pass on to me. This doesn't happen a lot, but I mention it here because I think people should see what happens behind the scenes. Is it unethical for me to link to that story? No. Does the fact that AlaskaReport sometimes links to me a problem? It could be if I posted their stories because I thought it would keep them promoting my stories. This is the beginning of ethics creep. It starts out innocent enough, all with good intentions, but if one isn't careful, one's judgment gets lazy. I'm not a politician and I'm not making policy decisions based on favors others do for me. But readers should know if the newspapers, tv shows, or blogs they read are pushing stories or omitting stories because they might affect their advertising.

I say this because a lot of blogging chatter is about how to pump up site views. Trading links among sites is a popular means. I don't think this matters much for personal blogs among friends. But it does for blogs that edge into journalism. At the very least, there should be disclosure. So, let me disclose that last week when Alaska Report linked to my speculations about why Murkowski left the US Senate to be governor of Alaska, my site views for that day more than doubled. But I linked to the Don Young story above because it adds a few tidbits to what we know.

Obama or Clinton?

The US voters are making history with the Democrats virtually assured that either a man with African heritage or a woman will be their candidate for president. Tomorrow night is the Democratic caucus in Alaska. From what I hear, there will be a large turnout in Anchorage, possibly even stretching the capacity at Begich Middle School for the Anchorage caucus. But which candidate is the best? I've boiled this down for me to three criteria.



General Electability in November

Are Americans less racist or less sexist? Or put another way, are they more willing to vote for a man with African heritage or a woman? Blacks, with 9% of the seats in the House of Representatives reflect their 13% of the US population much better than do women with 16.1% in the House. But in the Senate, where whole states, not gerrymandered districts ,vote there is only one African-American - Barrack Obama - for 1%. But women have 16% of the 100 seats. That still means 84% men in the Senate and House.


[2/5/08: Added the missing decimal point Ropi pointed out in the comments. This post was postponed because I had trouble finding reliable numbers for blacks in Congress. That story is in the previous post. A good webstie for information on women in politics is Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.]

David Broder has an interesting article on districts where women win.

The scholars could find no significant differences in terms of geography or social characteristics between those districts that elected African American men and African American women. Almost without exception, they were heavily Democratic, urban and working class.

But the picture is very different for white women running for Congress. "Female Democratic House members tend to win election in districts that are more liberal, more urban, more diverse, more educated and much wealthier than those won by male Democratic members of the House," they write. "They come from much more compact, 'tonier,' upscale districts than their male counterparts."

The fact that a woman and a man of African heritage are the finalists for the Democratic nomination says a lot about the changing demographics of the United States. I we are in a period of flux - the old rules are starting to dissolve, but I don’t know that the new rules are in place yet either. Will enough voters ignore gender and race to elect and man of African heritage or a woman as president?

Stand on Key Issues

I don’t think they are too far off on the issues, though Obama focuses on the fact that he never supported going into Iraq and Clinton did. But it isn't simply the issues we face now, but the issues that the President will face once in office - the 9/11's and Hurricane Katrina's that weren't anticipated. Which candidate has the imagination to find better ways to do things?

Ability to get things done

No matter how great their policies are, without the competence to get them through Congress, they have nothing.

Hillary Clinton surely has learned a lot of lessons in the eight years Bill was President. As a former first lady and second term Senator she knows a lot of people both in the US and overseas. Of all these people, how much does she owe them and how much do they owe her? More particularly, which people does she owe? The Clintons also have a high negative rating among a sizable minority of people. This could cause the kind of constant sniping Bill Clinton faced during his eith years. These are people who will always be trouble. On the other hand, Bush has much higher negatives and has managed to get his way a lot of the time.

Barrack Obama has less experience and presumably fewer connections, and fewer people he owes. He is inspirational, but you also need administrative mechanics to make things happen. His campaign shows that he is able to attract competent people to help. Obama is able to articulate people's hopes for a better way. That can be powerful for a while, but then some tangible things need to be achieved.

Either of the two will have to attract competent teams to develop good policies and to get them passed by Congress. It seems to me that Clinton’s strength and weakness here are her connections to the existing power structure. Obama’s strength and weakness are that he has fewer of the ties and can take us in a new direction.

May the best...candidate... win.

How Many Black Congress Members?

[This info was updated Dec. 21 2012 - How Many Black Members In 113th Congress?] 

[Dec. 2, 2008 Update: Here's an update to the chart and this post.]

The quick answer appears to be 40 voting members and 2 non-voting members in the House of Representatives and 1 US Senator (Obama.). But I'm not completely sure.

You'd think this would be easy to find on the web. Someone should have a quck number. David D. Kirkpatrick wrote in December 2005

The number of blacks in Congress has grown to 43 from just 13 at the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969. But although the 2006 election elevated some caucus members to prominence, it did not add to the group's numbers. Its 43 members still make up less than 10 percent of the House and 1 percent of the Senate. By comparison, blacks make up about 13 percent of the population.

Encarta and Wikipedia both have tables of all the Black congress members ever. You have to go through the lists and separate out those whose dates of service (for Wikipedia) end in -present or (for Encarta) - . EthnicMajority has 42, but two are non-voting and one is dead.

But the two lists don't match. Wikipedia has five more people than Encarta. The Congressional Black Caucus website lists 43 people in the Black Caucus, but that includes Senator Obama (the only black Senator), two non-voting members (DC and Virgin Islands), and one deceased whose seat apparently won't be filled until the November 2008 election.

Going through the three lists (Encarta, Wikipedia, Black Caucus) I've come up with a total of 40 black voting members members of Congress. (DC and the Virgin Islands each have one non-voting black member. ) It's quite possible I missed one or added one. I'm not sure quite what it means that this number is not readily available. Below is the chart I came up with.

[August 20, 2008 - Stephanie Tubbs Jones suffered an aneurism and passed away today]

Mauer's Thorough Piece On Allen Rumors

I'm leaving for Thailand Friday and I've got to let go of some of this compulsive blogging, but I did mention the Hopfinger/Coyne article in the Press the other day. It was first. But Rich Mauer's piece in today's ADN is a much more solid and informative report. Mauer did find a Fed who could say that they had asked the APD to drop the investigation.

[US Attorney Frank] Russo acknowledged "there were allegations along the lines of his (Allen's) involvement with Bambi Tyree," but said he asked Vandegriff to suspend the Allen investigation for purely practical reasons: The Boehm case was complex, with dozens of witnesses, and Boehm himself had a high-powered, three-attorney defense team that fought at every opportunity. Nearly 1,000 documents were filed, and that was in a case that never went to trial.

"We said, 'Hey, why don't we put this aside until later. We have enough to focus on,' " Russo said. That was his only concern, he said.

I realize that people's sexual behavior is an ever surprising revelation and that we should never dismiss things as impossible (how long did people not believe stories about priests?), but if I had to bet, I'd put my money on the story that says Allen was Tyree's friend and he felt obligated to watch over Tyree's kids after Tyree died. That's consistent with with the man I saw testify in the Kott and Kohring trials.

I could be wrong here, but I think this story line isn't going anywhere. But the article is important in that it fills in a lot of gaps that people were filling in with all sorts of speculation.

10 Below

I was all ready to run early this morning. The sun wasn't over the mountain yet, but it was light. But I foolishly checked the thermometer. And the storm door was covered in ice crystals. Maybe if it gets up to five I might go run. After three days in a row in LA, I'm itching to be out moving again.

[The details are better if you click on the picture.]

The Noodle Shop is now Yak and Yeti

[UPDATE June 2012:  Yak and Yeti now has a satellite fast food like place in the REI/Title Wave Mall. The Spenard store is still open too.]

The Spenard building that housed the old Korean Noodle Shop, a wonderful place to go, that closed a year or two ago now hosts Yak and Yeti, a new Himalayan restaurant that the ADN has already reviewed. Last night some of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in Anchorage met there for dinner. It's been nicely redecorated, the service was cordial, and the food good. We were warned to get there early (5pm). Good advice because by 6pm there were ten or 15 people waiting to be seated. Since we were taking up that much room ourselves, we left a little earlier than we would have.

Evening Sky Out of LA

A couple of views out the window before it got dark Friday.

Mom's January flowers

LA may have looked so ungreen when I flew in because it is ...January and lots of the trees are pretty naked. One forgets that about LA because there are so many other trees and bushes that don't lose their leaves. here's a sample or what's blooming in my mother's yard right now

Eating Indian and Bosnian in LA

I've meshed two pictures of my mom at Pradeep's Indian restaurant in a two story strip mall on Washington near Marina Del Rey. It was nice to sit out in the sun, though even with the glass shield, the breeze was a little chilly by the end of lunch. That was Wednesday.

Friday, on the way to the airport, we went to a Bosnian restaurant in another strip mall, this time on Overland near Pico. I'd found it on a blog that highlights good, interesting, little restaurants in LA.




I don't recall ever eating at a Bosnian restaurant call Aroma and it wasn't until last night at SeaTac with eating with my daughter and telling her about the Bosnian immigrant picture I'd posted that I began to wonder whether my brain had perked up at "Bosnian" because of the picture and description I'd read and posted. Any way, it was very good. And we were snuggled into a little corner with nice warming sun as a group of men nearby had a very animated conversation in what I assumed was one of Bosnia's languages. I had the Burek, sort of like a calzone made of phylo dough. Mine had spinach inside. I took one to go for my daughter.



And this doesn't really fit anywhere better than it does here. But at the 99¢ Store, they've kept all the prices at 99¢. But now instead of a dozen eggs for 99¢, you get half a dozen according to my mom.