Mystery Solved

Democrat's Speaker Mystery Solved

Despite my best efforts, it was Republicans who first guessed the identity of the Iowa Democratic Party's mystery keynote speaker for the October 16 Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.

Spoiler Alerts: Iowasnewzliter was first, followed quickly by Craig Robinson at Iowa Republican.

If you still want to play, here are two (last?) clues:

This person endorsed Hillary Clinton in her bid for President in 2008.

This person is married to a federal judge.

And my hint: think broadly when you think "national office."

The Dem's guessing game got stepped on a bit by the Republicans announcing Sarah Palin as speaker at their Reagan dinner (I goofed and called it a Lincoln dinner). But they did take a shot in tweeting this unofficial clue: "Our special guest served a full term in public office...as opposed to someone else we know." Ouch!

Palin to Keynote Iowa GOP Dinner

Palin to Keynote Iowa GOP Dinner

TheIowaRepublican is reporting that Sarah Palin is keynoting the Iowa GOP's Lincoln silly me - Reagan - Dinner September 17 in Des Moines. Palin in Iowa: sure to be a lamestream media feeding frenzy.

Iowa Democrats, meanwhile, are having their Jefferson-Jackson dinner October 16 and has been dropping hints via Facebook. No, I don't have the scoop; I want to figure it out. Clues so far in order:

This year's JJ speaker was born in New York City in the mid 20th century

This year's speaker has never attended or spoken at our Jefferson Jackson Dinner (which pretty much eliminates all past presidential candidates or Iowa politicians)

This person made a cameo appearance on-screen in a blockbuster hit of the 90s. (I've already eliminated everyone who was in Dave.)

This person has never worked for Saturday Night Live and is not Rudy Giuliani (Al Franken, though born in NYC, had already been eliminated as a past JJ speaker.)

This person is an avid sports fan.

This person served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.

This person is married with one son.

This person has held local, statewide and national office in their public career.

This mystery is not yet solved, but several sources have confirmed that the squash-stealing varmint is in fact a woodchuck. I am unaware of his wood chucking capacity, assuming such a creature could do so.

Bring Your Checkbooks

Bring Your Checkbooks

Couple of fundraisers in town this week:

State Senator Joe Bolkcom will host a Fall Campaign Kick-off Re-election fundraising reception on Tuesday, August 31 from 4:30-6:30 pm at the Sanctuary Restaurant, 405 S. Gilbert, Iowa City.

There will be a reception for Roxanne Conlin Thursday, September 2 from 5:30—7 at the home of Jean Lloyd-Jones, 160 Oakridge Ave.

linux monday

Linux Monday

Problems popping up between Windows 7 and Linux, and Windows software is the bad guy:

At least some occurrences of this are with software which writes a signature to the embedding area which hangs around even after uninstallation, so that you cannot uninstall and reinstall the application to defeat a trial period.

This seems like a fine example of an antifeature, especially given its destructive consequences for free software, and is in general a poor piece of engineering; what happens if multiple such programs want to use the same sector, I wonder? They clearly aren't doing much checking that the sector is unused, not that that's really possible anyway.

We need to defend ourselves against the predatory practices of some companies making us look bad: a relatively small number of people do enough detective work to realise that it's the fault of a particular Windows application, but many more simply blame our operating system because it won't start any more.

What happens if you try to put one billion files onto a Linux filesystem? No, I'm not talking about my music library. Yet. But if you are getting close to that point, you could do some de-duplicating.

Once you do that and free up some space, you can install one of these
100 good open source programs.

For the very geeky, a diagrammed look at the Linux boot process.

And a look ahead at changes coming in Ubuntu 10.10-also known as Maverick Meerkat. (They're gonna ask themselves, "What would a maverick do in this situation?" And then, you know, do that!)

Palin Confuses Beck with Beck

The New Pollution?

I think famous twit Sarah Palin was trying to send traffic to GLENN Beck in this tweet. Instead, she gives a shout out to THIS Beck:



And yes I know Beck has many many more songs than his one hit (is he the Warren Zevon of the 21st century?) but somehow with Palin in the mix, "Loser" is the one to go with.

Smallest Farm Sunday: Gopher Evidence

Smallest Farm Sunday: Gopher Evidence at Last!



The gopher finally stayed still long enough, while he was stealing a baby squash, for me to get a picture. Now maybe someone can tell me what species he actually is, before I have to call in my expert:

A Republican-Free Ballot

A Republican-Free Ballot

With independent Mike Dooley's brief supervisor campaign ending in withdrawing from the ballot, the fall matchups are set in Johnson County. And something's missing: Republicans.

Most Iowa City voters won't see anyone but a Democrat below the statewide and congressional level. Coralville and North Liberty (and the far west side) have a couple of Libertarians running, but again no downballot Republicans.

This was supposed to be the year that the GOP stormed the county courthouse, but instead the five incumbents will get four more years with no challenge in either primary or general election. What happened?

My thought is: the January 19 special election settled it. That was as favorable an alignment of the stars as the GOP could get: a low turnout special election at a weird time of year, with a self-financing candidate with deep (by local election standards) pockets. Yet Janelle Rettig won it by 20 points, and that seems to have scared off all challengers.

So it's all about the state stuff in Iowa City (and by "state stuff" I include hot legislative races in the outlying parts of the county). Except for the bars, of course. If you get your news solely from the Press-Citizen, you would think from the level of coverage that the 21 bar issue was as big a deal as a presidential caucus and that it was next week.