March 29th, 2008
I am attending the Travis County Nomination Convention this morning. It is expected to be the largest convention of its type in Texas. It covers two State Senate districts and more than 12,000 elected delegates are expected to register betweeen 7AM and 10AM CDT. There are expected to be over a thousand alternates, although since all the alternates in my district have to go to work, either number might be a bit of a misnomer.
I will try to Twitter updates at http://twitter.com/pmcg
I am an elected delegate from Precinct 109. My precinct will elect 1 delegate to the State Convention and 1 Alternate (low by most precincts’ standards, some have up to 10).
I intend to photograph the proceedings in the Travis County Exposition Center.
If the cell network survives, I will upload pictures at http://gallery.mac.com/pmcgrane#100116.
The county conventions are a, let’s be frank, ridiculous process where those elected by their neighbors elect other more popular neighbors to go to the State Convention in June.
This said, the narrative could be that Obama gains delegates beyond what he got on March 4th. This seems likely since the rules of attendance are bizarre and interesting.
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March 29th, 2008
You heard it here first.
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March 19th, 2008
If you are, like me, attending a County Convention in Texas, then the Obama campaign has quite a web site for you.
And if you haven’t yet watched his recent speech in Philadelphia, I recommend it. I’m not yet aware of any online reproductions except on YouTube where they split it up and that’s BS. So I’ll work on that.
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March 1st, 2008
If you’re not sure who to vote for in the Democratic primary, you might watch this ad and vote for the other person.
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February 23rd, 2008
I enjoyed seeing Barack in person, and even saw the motorcade race by shortly afterward on Guadalupe. (Jeez they go fast; no wonder that cop bit it in Dallas)
On the downside, standing in a crowd, trying to hold your place for 3 hours is not much fun. I did get fairly close, though. There were tons of people all down 11th Street and Congress Ave. The crowd was incredibly diverse by race, age, even type of person. Nearly everyone had cell phones and cameras. Soooo many iPhones!
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February 5th, 2008
Austin is a strange town and if you were asked to find a city less representative of Texas as a whole, then you really ought to consider the State Capital.
Still, I’ve never been Behind Red State Lines during a major election so this is what I see now regarding signs and stickers for Presidential Candidates.
In my walks around my neighborhood in North Austin I’ve seen only two bumper stickers. One, weeks ago, was for Huckabee (I assume it might still be on that vehicle although I’ve passed that house several times lately and not seen it again). Another showed up just a few days ago for Romney. The Huckabee sticker was on a “working” pickup truck with one of those tops over the bed in the back. The Romney sticker was on a luxury 2-door import. These two people are just around the corner from each other although Tobin likes to poop in the latter’s yard.
Considering I walk my dog between 1.5 and 4 miles every day through many neighborhoods, this is a shocking level of political indifference. If there were any more stickers or signs I would definitely notice.
No one in my apartment complex has any stickers. Except a red Civic and a blue Maxima that Obama tagged. I happen to know the drivers very well.
Driving up and down MoPac you’ll see some Ron Paul signs, although since they’re in someone’s yard a bit of a distance off the highway. And I have a feeling they’re getting less prevalent since early December.
All of a sudden last week I saw an Obama sticker to match the one on my car. Today I saw two more!
I also saw a sticker promoting Will Wynn, the Democrat mayor of Austin. It was on a car containing two heavily tattooed and pierced girls who were making out during the stop-and-go traffic. Among all the other stickers on the car, my attention fixed on the large serif W. Must be for a college.
Even in my recent drives up through Round Rock (for nefarious purposes, I assure you) I have never seen any Hillary or McCain signs or stickers. I don’t even know what they look like. The Texas primary isn’t for another month but it might matter in the Democratic race, at least. I’ll keep updating ‘em as I see ‘em. So far, an amazing bit of apathy.
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January 4th, 2008
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January 1st, 2008
Hot Damn, indeed. The New York Times neatly sums up what’s gone wrong these past 7 years, and what it will take to right it.
… the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.
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