Chewtoy for the bored BJ masses. Things have been so busy over the last couple weeks that I missed posting this earlier, but Kevin Roose at NYMag had fun with a late entry in the 2013 Libertarian “More Money Than Sense” sweeps…
Tim Draper, the third-generation venture capitalist and Silicon Valley money man behind companies like Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla Motors, is no stranger to throwing tons of money behind crazy-sounding ideas. A decade ago, he spent $15 million of his own money trying to pass a school-voucher program in California. When that failed, he launched the Draper University of Heroes, a wacky school for start-up aspirants that I wrote about earlier this year. Now, after leaving DFJ, the venture firm he co-founded, Draper has landed on his newest off-the-wall passion project: a legislative proposal to split California into six pieces, and make Silicon Valley its own state…
Draper’s five-page plan is a little light on details. But among the things it calls for:
Splitting California into Jefferson, North California, Central California, West California (which would include L.A.), South California, and Silicon Valley. A plan to divide up California’s existing debts according to the number of people living in a given region, and assign the state’s assets to each new state based on the companies inside them. Draper himself would get a new title, “agent of the state of California,” which would make him eligible to usurp California’s existing attorney general with a lawyer of his own choosing, for the purposes of defending the Six States plan… .
…[I]t’s a passive-aggressive swipe at the less economically productive regions of California, cloaked in a measure that purports to be good for all citizens of the state. Tim Draper wants the protection afforded by the United States government, without having to submit to the taxes and regulatory slow-footedness coming out of Sacramento. He wants Silicon Valley to be independent enough to play around with drones and genetic engineering, but not so independent that it needs its own military….
**********
Apart from thinking of all the better things you could do with Tim Draper’s money, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
BruceFromOhio
Sounds like the NFL stadium model.
Mary G
Yeah, that’ll happen.
trollhattan
Can’t wait to hear where the water for SiliGaltia is coming from.
Every road a toll road. Freedom!
Baud
Tim Draper should have two Senators just to represent him.
Jay S
I started the New Year by brewing some of Betsy’s lazy hard cider[eta comment 29], but apparently didn’t provide quite enough head room. If foamed up into the air-lock. I see that some cider brewers avoid an airlock for the first few days, so I put my jug in a containment vessel and put the lid on loosely for now.
Does anyone have a good rule of thumb for how much space to leave at the top for foaming?
JPL
@Baud: We could sell Draper Guantanomo. It’s lovely there and the residents would welcome him with open arms.
Baud
That reminds me, I need toilet paper.
ruemara
I’d like to use Mr. Draper’s money to charge 2 million for him to kiss my ass. Ruemara, +3 and mildly blind. Wine really does work different than hard booze
@Jay S: this is all english yet in a configuration that makes no sense. Someone answer this man’s question! And provide diagrams for us confused types..
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
Yeah, OK. Almost short enough for Herman Cain, who might be one of the few bipeds around to think it a good idea.
Hawes
I would like two Californias. That would mean two more Democratic Senators.
Scamp Dog
I’ll be setting up the Raspberry Pi I got for Christmas. For those not up on hardcore nerd technology, it’s a credit-card sized computer that runs Linux. Fun geek times ahead!
Michael Bersin
This sounds like it’s one of those initiative schemes that gets floated by the right wingnut political consultant industrial complex. By proposing these initiatives they con some billionaire into supporting their industry with loads of money. Their motto: “Making billionaires millionaires.”
Violet
This article has a picture with the cities in it so you can see who falls where.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@Violet: In a slightly earlier time, Mr. Draper probably would have seen a great deal of merit in apartheid.
Also, his tie screams “All the money in the universe, and I’ll still be a fucking weenie.”
Jay S
@ruemara: I added some brewers yeast to a bottle of apple juice after pouring out a little juice. Apparently I didn’t pour out enough juice, because the cider foamed up and tried to escape over the top. The bottle now has a tub underneath it to catch any overflow. So the question is how much air space should you leave in a bottle of juice to keep it from overflowing while it brews.
Another Botsplainer
Wow, all these Sillycone Valley “tech” guys are turning out to be real asshats. F*ck this guy.
dmsilev
I suppose it’s a slightly better idea than splitting off a few counties in Colorado to form the state of Guntopia. That’s a pretty low bar to clear however.
BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: That’s easy, water is an asset divided by population. I’m sure everyone in California will be happy with that. We never have fights about water in California.
Violet
As for what’s on the agenda for today, I just had some chips with two kinds of salsa and am contemplating finishing off some mint chocolate ice cream. I think I’ll have cocktail shrimp for dinner. And maybe ham. It’s that kind of day. Did manage to go for a walk today. Gotta keep moving.
Ruckus
Now I see why moms don’t want their kids to eat money. I always thought it was because you didn’t know where it had been. They are right once again about what not to do, but I see the reason is even just having too much can cause insanity.
cmorenc
@Hawes:
That would depend on how the state gets divided up, though there are too many powerful interests against it no matter how the state was divided or whom it favored. We’ve arrived at a point in American history where the red states would never allow any new states to be created which change the demographic balance in favor of a greater number/percentage of democratic-leaning seats in the overall senate, the blue states would never allow any new states which would change the demographic balance in favor of a greater number/percentage of GOP-leaning seats in the overall senate, and the small states (mostly, but not entirely red) would be reluctant, period to dilute their currently disproportionate influence in the senate.
Ain’t going to happen. However you tried
pseudonymous in nc
@Scamp Dog:
I now have an Intel NUC and a HP microserver to replace a desktop tower that explosively retired itself over the holidays. The NUC is pretty astonishing: about 5x5x2in but with more oomph than the old desktop, and really low power requirements. The Raspberry Pi is fun, though, especially if you’re at all into hardware hacking.
As for Tim Draper, can’t he just hand out money to individual Californians in exchange for them telling him that he is a Great Man? That’s how you do ego projects.
? Martin
Great plan to make Texas the most important state rather than California. Sounds like a plan that Rick Perry would advance.
Schlemizel
@cmorenc:
The who battle about states up to and including the BS that allowed Texas to decide it wanted to be divided into a bunch of states revolved around maintaining power for the slave states in the 1800s. This is more prof of the antibellum nature of our current political climate.
I was thinking if we did it right we would end up with 6 more Dems & 2 more goopers so yeah, that’ll never happen
Ruckus
@? Martin:
I thought I recognized that funny smell.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fucking east coaster 1% idiot ever think about the fucking water? El Dumbarse Draper gives all the water in California to Central California in his genius plan. Only a libertarian would be so willfully ignorant as to ignore the history or water in the state of California.
? Martin
@pseudonymous in nc: Yeah, that’s the setup I would go with as well. I’ve got a 4×2.5″ NAS running linux for household storage/backup and a Mac Mini which is a bit bigger than that NUC and it’s really cool setup.
rikyrah
“Imitaition of Life” actress Juanita Moore died.
NEW YORK (AP) — Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner’s black friend in the classic film “Imitation of Life,” has died.
Actor Kirk Kelleykahn, her grandson, said that Moore collapsed and died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99, according to Kelleykahn. Accounts of her age have differed over the years.
Moore was only the fifth black performer to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving the nod for the glossy Douglas Sirk film that became a big hit and later gained a cult following. The 1959 tearjerker, based on a Fannie Hurst novel and a remake of a 1934 film, tells the story of a struggling white actress’ rise to stardom, her friendship with a black woman and how they team up to raise their daughters as single mothers.
It brought supporting actress nominations for both Moore and Susan Kohner, who played Moore’s daughter as a young adult attempting to pass as a white woman. Kohner’s own background is Czech and Mexican. By the end, Turner’s character is a star and her friend is essentially a servant. The death of Moore’s character sets up the sentimental ending.
“The Oscar prestige was fine, but I worked more before I was nominated,” Moore told the Los Angeles Times in 1967. “Casting directors think an Oscar nominee is suddenly in another category. They couldn’t possibly ask you to do one or two days’ work. You wouldn’t accept it. And I’m sure I would.”
Moore also had an active career in the theater, starting at Los Angeles’ Ebony Showcase Theatre in the early 1950s, a leading black-run theater. She also was a member of the celebrated Cambridge Players, with other performers including Esther Rolle and Helen Martin.
http://thegrio.com/2014/01/01/juanita-moore-oscar-nominated-actress-dead-at-99/
jl
I agree with other commenters above, this will totally 100 percent happen.
I clicked through to see whether the nonsense map in the top graphic is for real. It is. Yikes, does this super rich nincompoop know anything about California? The new states make no sense.
And, if I understand the names correctly, Wine Country, SF Bay Area and Monterey Bay will be subsumed into this Silicon Valley new state. Maybe he wants popular vote weighted by wealth? Otherwise the DFHs will take over his precious Silicon Valley statelet.
Thanks for the New Year’s Day laugh. Let’s have a progress report on April first.
The Dangerman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Also, leaves the only way to make money in Northern North California (North Northern California?) as growing marijuana or cutting down all the redwoods (to grow more marijuana).
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
West California has most of the water and most of the best farmland. I look forward to this asshat begging us for food when he finally realizes you can’t eat computer chips.
Betty Cracker
@Jay S: I don’t bother pouring out any juice; I just put the jug on a kitchen towel to soak up any overflow and rinse the bottle off when I’m ready to pour. I’ve noticed a bit of overflow, but never more than a tablespoon or so.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yeah I liked that. Lower two thirds of western Sierra, and all of eastern Sierra watershed go to Central California. That is my home territory.
Silicon Valley and Western California won’t be rich for long, after we get through charging them.
But probably this dingbat will suddenly realize that is actually obvious to any fool that the rich areas should get rights all the good stuff from the rest of the state that they need. He’ll say any fool should realize that, once it is explained to him, why it is obviously the just thing to do. Implicit property rights, and the rich get them, QED.
The Northern California statelet if effing insane. The GOP will like the idea, will get maybe one or two de facto new southern states out of it.
Villago Delenda Est
Draper is proof positive that libertarians are twits.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It’s what these twits DO!
OzarkHillbilly
No way do ID, MT, WY, ND, SD, NE, KS, CO, UT, NV, AZ, NM, or OK want to allow equal representation to a bunch of liberal Californians. (CO and NM, maybe, but no way on the rest)
BigWoodenSpoon
This has an element of satire, right? The acronym for “Draper University of Heroes” is, uh…
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think San Louis Obispo, Ventura, Santa Barb and LA counties are West California.
The Central Valley and Sierra boonies are Central.
The oil dudes and cowboys (I’m too delicate to say ‘Oakies’) in Bakersfield with revolt if that ever became a state.
Napoleon
@rikyrah:
I had never heard of that film before and just happened upon it on cable in the last couple of months. Needless to say, it took me by surprise that a film of its apparent age had such a prominent AA actress.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Draper Plan Step 2: Claim that Central California has WMDs and invade it for
their waterFREEDOM.Bill D.
Depending on which of Draper’s maps you look at, Kern County is either in Central California or West California. The text of the proposed initiative has the county in Central California. This is a big, big deal for Kern County which is hugely dependent on water from Central California. They probably would much rather be on an equal footing with the rest of the Central California counties, rather than being lumped in with LA and begging for their fair share of imported water.
I think Draper had better clear this up really fast because his organization is not even making the effort to stay coherent and consistent.
? Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
What problem with water? I’m sure they import Kona Nigari into the Port of Oakland.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jl:
Not to mention LA and the farmers when they see their water rights messed with. I suppose that why Draper wants to vote himself in as dictator
Belafon
And then Silicon valley will throw up an electromagnetic shield preventing all communication from entering or leaving the state. After that, in a sudden medical crisis, all citizens will be vaccinated, which will slowly turn them into machines.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My wife was making bloody marys in the kitchen when she screamed, “Oh, shit. Come look at this.” The bottom of the glass completely fell out spilling all over the counter, fridge, and floor. The hound enjoyed licking the floor. I could take this as a bad sign for 2014 but fuck it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill D.:
The plan has no chance in Hell, Heaven, or anyplace in between of becoming a reality, so no need to even worry about it.
Libertarian naif is naive. Film at 11.
jl
@? Martin:
” I’m sure they import Kona Nigari into the Port of Oakland. ”
Excuse me, I think you mean Port of Silicon Valley. Get with the program dude.
I read about this goof’s Draper University of Heroes (or good ol’ DUH) as a commenter above points out. From the description, that is a very appropriate acronym. I can’t believe it didn’t end up in a lawsuit like Trump University.
The guy seems like a jokester. Or maybe he is auditioning as the new Trump style celebrity.
ruemara
@Jay S: Thank you! I am less confused. My answer would be “enough”.
jl
The Silicon Valley statelet would be a hoot, after the IT robber barons tried to take over.
Entertaining riots and general strikes will be nightly staples on the evening news for the rest of the country and the other new California fiefdoms.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
Oh, great. Just what we need…another idiot with a dead animal on his head mugging constantly for cameras, threatening to run for office, giving the Noisemax target audience boners.
SiubhanDuinne
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
Serious question: I’ve never really been able to (nor, frankly, cared to) read the Sartorial Male. I know that things like number of buttons on jacket sleeves, number of vest or coat buttons fastened vs. unfastened, style of tie knots, etc., speak volumes to the cognoscenti. I am not among them. Truly curious to know, what precisely about his tie screams ATMITUAISBAFW? I see it is red, and very slightly relaxed so as not to strangle him.
Southern Beale
Do cats get Alzheimer’s? One of our cats has just been going nuts meowing and marrawing at this one spot on the floor, for like an hour. Nothing there. I chased her off. And then she went back and took a giant shit on that one spot.
WTF. I know she’s trying to tell me something but I DON’T FUCKING SPEAK CAT, OKAY???!
raven
@Southern Beale: She was telling you she had to shit.
raven
The princess thanks John and the frat for the Filet Mignon and the duck fat sweet taters!
Southern Beale
@raven:
Sigh. She can shit in the litter box, which was perfectly clean. There was no reason for her to shit on my den floor.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Wait, John and frat boys deliver?
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
@Napoleon:
I haven’t seen “Imitation of Life” in many years. Was never much of a Lana Turner fan, and I admit when I watched it was mostly for the two younger actors (Sandra Dee and Susan Kohner). But Juanita Moore was wonderful. Mahalia Jackson has a nice cameo. I’ll have to seek it out again. In the meantime, RIP Ms. Moore.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: It looks like a rather conservative, staid tie. OTOH, I would say that one should either pull the tie tightly to the collar or loosen it and open the top button. He looks like he failed to manage the former which says I wear a tie regularly and am not bothered by it and also managed to avoid the casual, hard-working vibe that a loosened tie conveys.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I won the raffle and got a couple of boxes of Omaha steaks.
The Pale Scot
Charge fifty bucks a bucket, they can all drive to border and carry all they can afford back home.
WereBear
@rikyrah: She was wonderful in a tough role. Wish she could have worked more, too!
raven
@Southern Beale: Reason, for a cat. You are killin me worse than a 99.9 yard Nebraska TD pass!
Bill D.
@Villago Delenda Est:
The point I was attempting to make, and didn’t make clear, is that the proponents are not even smart enough to avoid antagonizing/scaring folks who might have considered voting yes. I don’t know whether Kern County or any other county outside of the proposed “Jefferson” would vote yes overall, but I can see at least some people in the San Joaquin Valley voting “yes” to get out from under the liberal (by their standards) state government, *if* they thought they could keep their access to water from the Delta.
Along those same lines, I expect most of the southern California urban area to vote overwhelmingly “no” on the basis of perceived threat to their imported water.
burnspbesq
@BillinGlendaleCA:
All it would take is one strategically placed bomb at the base of the Hetch Hetchy Dam and his libertard Utopia would become uninhabitable.
John
Speaking as a native Californian and resident of the probable capital of “West California” I would like to invite Draper to eat a bag of decayed dicks. I’d be perfectly satisfied if everyone in the United States who can be described as a “third-generation venture capitalist” suddenly came down with Ebola.
burnspbesq
@jl:
That would require expropriating all of DWP’s assets in the Owens Valley without paying fair market value for them. Think the Supreme Court would allow that?
Jay S
@Betty Cracker: Thanks,
Maybe I got some hyper active champagne yeast, or a generously filled bottle. I took out about 3 oz and it was up to the top of the airlock after 12 hours or so. It appears to have settled down now after I removed the airlock and put the cap on loose. Luckily I caught it before it overflowed since it was sitting in a closet with hardwood flooring.
BD of MN
Jay S: if you decide to do more of this, pick up some “Fermcap-S” from a homebrew store. A couple of drops and no more foaming…
Southern Beale
@raven:
I just don’t get it. She’s our mellowist most low-key cat. This is completely out of character for her.
Baud
Draper will have a better chance at success if he revises his maps to indicate the areas where the orcs, dwarves, and hobbits will live, along with the Misty Mountain and Mordor.
jl
@burnspbesq: They can keep their damn assets, they just have to pay to run water through them after the Great Sovereign State of Central California exists, in all its glory.
Lawyer that up for us, please.
The Supremes love them State Sovereignty too, you know.
And now it will be one sovereign state stealing back what rich developers stole from dirt farmers, so a totally different situation.
Edit: BTW, before your head gets too explody, the idea is a total joke, and at least some of the comments are jokes too.
Jay S
@Southern Beale: The howling and disorientation was a sign of thyroid trouble for one of our cats.
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: There was another picture, which I can’t find now, that had him sitting in a chair, leaning back at a desk. The tie he wore there was red with a pattern of some sort of things. The front piece had turned and was showing the back of tie and a label. I thought the tie was funny and the type a twit would wear.
Bob In Portland
As I recall, the Draper Family were big into eugenics. You know, the righties have that conflict between no abortions and keeping the race clean and superior, so they generally settle on a way of killing after birth.
BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: There’s just a tad bit of hostility between Owens Valley and LA.
The Pale Scot
@Southern Beale: Obviously your cat is psychic and has detected some sort of portal to another dimension or something, attempted to defend you by dropping the the only thing she had at hand errrr.. you know what I mean, through it.
The Sailor
@jl:
I’ve been there, they’re already pretty revolting.
Southern Beale
Okay thanks, so either my cat has discovered a portal into another dimension or has thyroid trouble. Got it.
jl
@Baud:
“and hobbits will live,”
I guess that would be Marin.
And BTW I read the map wrong first time. Marin and Wine Country will go into the insane crazy statelet of Northern California, with Yolo and Solano and Sacramentao, and all the Sierra hillbilly counties from Sierra through Amador.
I guess that will be the old Yugoslavia of the new CA statelets.
Eff it, let’s make each CA county a state. A lot of counties are bigger than them dinky little states back east anyway. That will be 52, or it is 57? new states. Let’s do this Neuva California thing right.
Bob In Portland
Also, California water rights would screw up Draper’s plan. I agree that it’s a little unfair that Cali senators have to get as many votes as most of the Republican Senators elected in the Rockies combined, but before we start slicing up California we could maybe give DC and Puerto Rico statehood.
The Pale Scot
@Southern Beale: We’re both just trying to help.
raven
@Southern Beale: Poor kitty.
Hungry Joe
There’ve been plans to divide up California at least since statehood, and probably before. The idea is also being tub-thumped by the loons who now run the San Diego paper,* who have seen the city turn blue (barely, but still …) and their mega-development wet dreams thwarted.
*Word just out that they’re eliminating the 3% 401K match for all newspaper employees. Management explanation blames Obamacare.
FourTen
Third gen….Venture Capitalist?
Sounds like a walking argument for the Estate Tax.
C’mon Galt-boy, come up with your own idea for once.
Lawrence
@Baud: I’m sure he has more than two already.
shelly
Well, at least he didn’t throw himself a multi-million dollar Lord Of The Rings themed wedding.
Jasmine Bleach
@jl:
No, it looks from the map as though Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties would be in “North California” (along with Sacramento). So, a large chunk of wealth is there (and a large percentage of the wine).
So, yeah, the Silicon Valley state would have a surplus of hippies compared to the other states with San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley in the mix (it looks like Alameda County is included, which would include Berkeley).
Talk about pissing your money away . . .
Bill D.
@jl: 58 states, the majority of them small, rural, and with two Republican senators by the time the dust settles.
John M. Burt
@burnspbesq: Bombing the Hetch Hetchy dam is an idea which would already find favor with many people, of course.
raven
Ixnay on the ombay talk on the ogblay
The Pale Scot
@Southern Beale: If it’s not a thyroid problem, hopefully, gotta look at what’s left. Like Sherlock said. Do some research watching X-Files episodes. And there is some documentation, Time Cat
Jay S
@Bill D.: @Southern Beale: Seriously, you should talk to your Vet about this. They translate cat for $$.
jl
@Jasmine Bleach: Not sure which map you looked at. The CA county map at TechCrunch has Marine and Wine country lumped in with Sacramento, purple Solano, and red to the bone northern Sierra hillbilly counties into one hellhole of a politically and geographically, and economically nonsense, nightmare, state, whatever you want to call it.
But a commenter above said some of the maps and text are inconsistent, so, who knows?
One thing I do no, this is an original idea that must absolutely happen! /snark.
wasabi gasp
…plus one private Idaho.
Baud
@Southern Beale:
You should try Rosetta Stone. It’s amazing!
Jay S
@Jay S: Well WP says I don’t have permission to edit the comment. Of course it has nothing to do with Bill D, WP just randomly set that up for me.
rikyrah
@Napoleon:
Black folk of certain generations, Imitation of Life is a viewing ritual.
It didn’t matter when it came on tv, Black mothers would get their children up to watch Imitation of Life.
I don’t know a Black woman that doesn’t begin bawling from the death of the mother through the Mahalia Jackson at the funeral and Janie running after the casket.
the lesson Black mothers wanted to send to their children?
DON’T YOU EVER HURT YOUR MAMA LIKE THIS….EVER!
Southern Beale
Thanks, guys.
2 weeks ago I took a different cat to the vet and the tech asked me if I ever thought he spoke to me? I said, how do you mean? She said, “I swear he said “Hello” to me today.”
As an ESL teacher, I consider teaching cats to speak English a high achievement.
watergirl
@Southern Beale: I’m with you, i would be wondering too.
have you ever read werebear’s cat 911 ebook? i swear it saved my kitty’s life because if i hadn’t read her book i would have had no idea that my kitty had a problem.
http://www.amazon.com/Cat-911-Fixing-their-Learn-ebook/dp/B002E19MUW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388625331&sr=8-1&keywords=cat+911
kitty in lap, so fancy formatting not an option.
edit: you can go to wayofcats.com and find ask pammy and send question to werebear.
Steeplejack
I’m grudgingly watching the Rose Bowl to see if I need to go on suicide watch—my winger brother is a Michigan State alum and fanatical fan who is at the game—and I am thinking I need to go on suicide watch for myself, because Brent Musburger and the other announcer cannot stop talking! They have to embellish every single play with an elaborate story, back-story or fake story that firmly embeds it into the awesome narrative tapestry they are weaving about the game. Actually watching the game apparently is optional.
Southern Beale
@rikyrah:
I loved that movie. An interesting homage to director Douglas Sirk was the 2002 film Far From Heaven, which explored issues of race and sexual orientation. Interesting how we have this image of the 1950s as being so puritanical, and lord know Republicans love to recall that era as some kind of “golden age,” but it was really an era of social upheaval. So many culturally important works were produced then — “On The Road,” and such. I think the culture wars were born i the 50s, you have Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best juxtaposed against other works pushing cultural boundaries …..
Ah whatevs, it’s interesting to me, what can I say.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Sounds a lot like why I stopped watching the olympics.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Ugh. It’s finally over, and Michigan State won. So no suicide watch. Now I just have to avoid my brother’s extended crowing about the awesomeness that is Michigan State.
Joel
Six Californias, even with those regions, would tilt the Senate pretty strongly to the Democrats.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
Interesting factoid that you may or may not know: in the 1934 version, the daughter was played by a light-skinned black actress, Fredi Washington, whose career never really took off because she refused to “pass” as white but looked “too white” to play the roles available to black actors of the day.
By the time the 1950s remake was made, the Production Code banned any hint of miscegenation on the screen, which meant the part had to be played by a white (half-Latina) actress, Susan Kohner. You could have a story about a black woman passing as white, but you couldn’t cast a black actress in that part because she would be kissing Troy Donahue.
This is also the reason Ava Gardner played Julie (another “tragic mulatto”) in the 1951 version of “Show Boat” instead of Lena Horne, who desperately wanted the part — you could have a black character romancing a white man, but you couldn’t have an actual black woman play that character because of the ban on showing miscegenation in movies.
And people wonder why American culture is so fucked up …
Ken
The real fun will be the Colorado River water treaty. I suspect Colorado, Arizona and Utah will be joined by Sonora in arguing that since “California” no longer exists, it no longer gets a share. That might almost bring the allocations in line with reality (the treaty was based on a couple of wet years, and allocates something like 120% of the average flow).
Baud
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Did the movies change before or after the famous Kirk-Uhuru kiss?
rikyrah
@Southern Beale:
I loved Far From Heaven.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Joel: Tend to doubt it 2 would be strong Dems(West and Bay Area), 3 GOP(South, east and north) the purple one would be, well, purple.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I’m guessing this isn’t the brother that you frequently spend time with. :-)
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Baud:
Believe it or not, the same year — 1968. That was the year that the Production Code was formally scrapped in favor of our current ratings system.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
No, he isn’t. Fraternal history recently explicated here. Winger brother lives in Las Vegas.
Anne Laurie
@Southern Beale: You’d have noticed if the misdirected turds were… unusual, right? No visible foreign bodies? Not an unusual color (black means blood)?
Keep an eye on the cat; is she drinking? Eating? Peeing (not straining, or peeing pink)? Are the other cats hassling her more than usual?
If you have the space (or a dedicated cat condo big enough for a litter box & food & water dishes) you may want to separate the offender for a day or so. Odds are, especially with an older cat, she just had a sore tummy she was looking for someone to blame on, but if she’s not drinking, you want to get her into the vet before the weekend…
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Interesting! Your mom and other bro’ are no doubt watching fox news with my sister.
SteveGravelle
Anyone wants to secede, I say cool. Also, let the airstrikes begin.
Southern Beale
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks, she is in every other regard behaving normally … the turd was normal too and I checked the litter box and it was clean so … I have NO idea. I’m thinking maybe she needs bloodwork.
One thing tho: after The Incident she ran out of the den and spent the next 2 hours in another room. Normally the den is her place. So it’s like she was embarrassed or something.
Fucking cats. Who the hell knows.
AnonPhenom
If they do it for California, everyone gets to do it. Redraw the whole country according to population. But only on the condition that congressional districts and voter registration & election law are fixed at the Federal level.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: my first thought is that she’s sick.
Jamey
“State of Jefferson”? Not only is this guy an entitled fuckwit, he also steals ideas from bad Thomas Pynchon novels…
Jamey
@Steeplejack: I love it when Stanford is in the news and I get to call them, “The Cardinals” just to trigger socially retarded Palo Altans’ eye tic…
WaterGirl
@Southern Beale: If the litter box is too clean, might she not be peeing?
The ONLY time my kitty poops outside the litter box is if he has a UTI problem. It’s like he is saying “notice me, something’s wrong”.
I would definitely take her to the vet tomorrow. My two cents.
Bill D.
@Jamey: No, the idea for a State of Jefferson goes back to at least 1941, and there actually was an effort at that time to form this state. Look it up.
billB
If Cali wants to break up, fine, that is more fair representation. But we need an IQ test for proposed elected representatives. There will be math and sciency questions, plus a bit about that ol rag, the Constitution.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I think you’re confusing cause and effect, there.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
More like “chicken and egg,” IMO. The time period our current conservatives say they want to go back to is the time period they only have a highly censored view of. The movies (and later TV) were literally showing a world that never existed. I do think that if popular culture had not spent 50 years lying about America and Americans, we might be more able to honestly deal with the problems we have instead of retreating to a fantasy world.
Hollywood of that period was rightly called a “dream factory,” and it’s not until you start delving into history that you realize just how strongly regulated those dreams were.
Hey, maybe there’s a blog you can read about that linked in my name above! ;-)
James E Powell
@burnspbesq:
There are four votes on the court for “anything that pisses liberals off” so you never know.
J R in WV
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
I once poured bubbly into a wine glass, and the wine poured out through the etched flower stem on the glass, which evidently had turned into an opening when I washed the glass out, just before pouring the wine.
The glass was so thin that the cuts in the cut glass just pulled apart while I washed it. Amazing I didn’t cut my hand to ribbons. But the other one held up just fine. We now have two glasses we call wine bubbles, almost too fragile to wash with a rag.
I thought I was the only one, thanks for saving me from that~!
Snarki, child of Loki
@Ken: “Forget it Ken, it’s Chinatown”
A bit of CA history: in the mid 80’s there was a referendum on the peripheral canal, that would bring water flowing into the SF bay down to SoCal.
Night before, Indy TV stations put on the movie “Chinatown” (IMdb link). Yes, it’s a crime drama, but completely tied up with the early 20th century theft of water rights to benefit LA.
The referendum went down in flames.
Also, too: Wikipedia: California Water Wars
Hey, why *not* restart a nasty, vicious war? What could possibly go wrong?
Paul in KY
@Hawes: That’s why it will never happen.
NonyNony
When your plan sounds like a movie pitch for a bad knock-off version of the Hunger Games, you should probably quit while you’re behind.