Bookworm Room

Tweet For reasons I’ll explain shortly, I was kvelling to a friend about how wonderful Marin County is.  I then wrapped up by saying the Marin is an outlier, unlike the rest of America.  The moment the words were out of my mouth, it occurred to me that I’m probably wrong.  While Marin is an [...]

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Tweet Approximately every ten years, Marin County floods.  Thinking back, the last big flood year in our neighborhood was around 2002 or 2003.  I remember taking the kids down from the hill on which we live to the marshy flat-lands nearby.  We waded through water that came up past our knees.  This high water was [...]

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Tweet Yesterday, I posted about the result of California’s open primary in Marin:  two Democrats running against each other for the California Assembly.  My post was about the problem that this creates for those people whose party has been shut out of the election.  The net effect of open primaries is that, rather than allowing [...]

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Tweet The theory behind Open Primaries is that it will encourage moderation in districts that are extremely Democrat or extremely Republican.  Without Open Primaries, minority opposition votes are symbolic throwaway votes.  Whoever is the majority candidate wins, regardless of the details of that candidate’s platform.  With Open Primaries, which inevitably result in two majority candidates [...]

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Tweet I do not expect Marin to vote for Romney.  Indeed, if I had to predict the race, I would say that Romney has a snowball’s chance in Hell of taking Marin.  Nevertheless, something interesting is happening in Marin:  No new bumper stickers. Marin-ites do have Obama/Biden bumper stickers, but they’re almost all leftovers from [...]

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Tweet Marin County — blessed by nature and haven to the rich.  It’s where I live.  My house is blessed by nature and my neighborhood is a haven to the Marin middle class (a middle class that works ridiculously hard and pays obscene sums of money for the pleasure of living in a beautiful place, [...]

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Tweet I got this picture while stopped in a traffic jam in Marin County: UPDATE: And on a related note, news you can use from Austin, Texas.

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Tweet ‘Tis the season for local campaign literature.  I usually toss these things in the circular file, unread.  As a minority conservative in a massively Democrat/Progressive county, my votes are invariably wasted anyway.  With Open Primaries, though, I’m starting to pay attention to this unsolicited reading material.  So far, I’ve heard from Michael Allen, Jared [...]

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Tweet George Lucas lives in Marin.  Since he clearly hates to commute, he wanted to create a very beautiful movie studio on abandoned ranch land north of San Rafael.  Both Marin NIMBYs and Marin regulators were up in arms.  How dare George try to sully the pastoral beauty of that area.  George Lucas is apparently [...]

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Tweet I am very, very proud of an old friend of mine.  Like me, he’s a conservative in Marin.  Unlike me, he’s burst out of the political closet.  Tim Amyx will now be blogging on a weekly basis at the Mill Valley Patch, a local Marin online publication that comes out of one of Marin’s [...]

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Tweet Ross, a town in Marin County, is a great place.  The houses are gorgeous (I’ve been to a billionaire’s house there once and it was magnificent), the schools are superb, and the people take good care of themselves:  exercise, healthy diets, good medical care.  In a pre-Obama era, these are boast-worthy things.  Not see [...]

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Tweet One of the things that profoundly changed my thinking about religion and about liberalism was contrasting the belligerent anti-religious atmosphere in Berkeley with the tolerant Christian environment I encountered in Texas.  This is not to say that all non-religious places are belligerently anti-religious, or that all Christian environments are tolerant.  However, it did teach [...]

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Tweet I own (or, rather, the bank and I own) a nice lot here in Marin County.  I’ve got a pretty back yard with views of hills and water.  When the trees at the back of my property get too tall, I hire a reputable tree trimming company to cut them down.  That sounds perfectly [...]

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Tweet No, my post title to the contrary, I don’t actually want to be a Democratic political operative.  Want I want to be is a speaker who can be pleasant, charming, and say nothing at all — and still get paid (at a guess) $30,000 per 90 minute speech.  I can do that.  I’m quite [...]

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Tweet Victor Davis Hanson hits it out of the park with his post explaining why higher taxes are not the answer.  Some of his twelve reasons are better than others, but all are worthy of your consideration.  This is my favorite of the twelve, but I think you’ll like them all: 2) Inequality? Liberals reply [...]

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Tweet A big issue in Marin is low income housing.  Marin liberals feel guilty that they don’t have poor people living near them.  Rather than hauling themselves into a nice slum, what they do is use legislative fiat to put poor people into the middle income neighborhoods of Marin.  (Interesting, none of these low income [...]

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Tweet [To keep things clear, unless I explicitly preface a statement by saying "Bob said" or "Bob pointed out," or something similar, the opinions expressed in this post are mine, and reflect my understanding of Bob Stephen's approach to governance, as well as my view about California's myriad problems.] I went to a party last [...]

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Tweet I live in Marin County, one of the most affluent counties in America.  It is an extremely well-managed community (although budget cuts might have their effect here too).  Crime is low, streets are clean and well-maintained, and lovely flower beds and hanging pots brighten public walkways.  Our libraries are well-stocked and well-staffed, our town [...]

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Tweet The Marin IJ reports that almost $3,000,000 in stimulus money Americans will help the public school district in Ross, California: Ross School has won the federal stimulus fund lottery. School officials learned Friday they would receive a $2.85 million school construction bond tax credit as part of the federal stimulus bill – a credit [...]

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Tweet The Marin IJ is running two polls today, one concerning employing illegal immigrants and the other asking whether “most Marin residents are environmental posers.”  As to the latter, with 375 votes cast, 82% of voters have answered that, yes, Marin residents are environmental posers.  I was vote number 375 in that regard. It’s a [...]

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Tweet In Marin,  9 out of 10 bumperstickers one sees are liberal in context.  Make that 9.9 out of 10. There’s the “Endless This War” sticker; and the still popular “Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot” sticker; and the saccharine, unrealistic and facile “Coexist,” with the symbols of various religions used in [...]

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Tweet That the North Bay region (SF, Marin, etc.) will send a Democrat to the California Senate in November goes without saying. What’s interesting is that North Bay Democrats selected the most extremely Progressive (read: far Left) of the three people vying for that seat (Carole Migden, Joe Nation and Mark Leno). I live in [...]

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Tweet One of Tom Lehrer’s more bizarre songs was an early ditty called “My Home Town,” in which he sang rhapsodically about all the bizarre and criminal behavior exhibited by his town’s denizens: I really have a yen To go back once again, Back to the place where no one wears a frown, To see [...]

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Tweet The other day, I had a delightful lunch with Staff Sargeant Jason Eck, the Army’s recruiter in Marin. I wrote about it here, at Pajamas Media.

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Tweet Greenies are always encouraging people to abandon their cars and opt for alternative, group transportation, such as buses, trains, carpools, etc.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, one of those alternative forms of transportation is the ferry. Up in Marin, if they use the ferry, drivers can avoid endless traffic jams over the Golden [...]

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