This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Washington State Representative Donaghy

Snohomish County Council voted 4-1 tonight to appoint my wife Brandy Donaghy to the vacant Washington State House seat for the 44th legislative district left by John Lovick moving to the State Senate. She was sworn in about an hour later by Judge Okoloko. Congratulations Brandy! I am so proud!

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Played Locally

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner, Brandy joins Sam to talk about earthquakes, preparedness, Congressional investigations, walking in a parade, running for local office, the redistricting SCOTUS case, and finally the census SCOTUS case. Then everything descends into chaos as Jetski (a dog), Miley (a dog), and Alex (a 9-year-old boy), all try to “help” with closing out the show. Enjoy!

Click below to listen and subscribe!

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Show Details:

Recorded 2019-07-06
Length this week – 1:59:16

  • (0:04:54-0:25:43) Brandy: Earthquakes and Preparedness
  • (0:26:53-0:52:09) Sam: Congressional Investigation Slowness
  • (0:52:45-1:05:44) Brandy: Walking in a parade, and running
  • (1:07:28-1:58:56) Sam: Redistricting and Census SCOTUS Cases

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Voters’ Pamphlets and Ballots Dropped – Vote Brandy!

The official voters’ pamphlets dropped a few days ago for the local primary elections on August 1st, two weeks from today. The ballots have been delivered as well. People are already voting.

The above is my wife Brandy’s section of the voter’s pamphlet. I’m very proud of her. She’s been getting lots of very positive reactions at various local events, and we keep hearing from more supporters. Win or lose, this has been a great experience. But of course we want Brandy to win, right? There are five people running for Snohomish County Fire District 1 Commissioner Position 3, and the top two from the primaries move on to the general election.

So if you haven’t yet, it would be great if you took a few minutes to help out by doing a few things… ESPECIALLY if you live in Snohomish County… but even if you don’t.

  • Like and share her Facebook page
  • Visit her website
  • Donate to her campaign!
  • If you have something to say or ask about the campaign, leave a message on her Facebook page as well
  • And finally, of course, if you actually live in Snohomish County Fire District 1 (map below), VOTE for Brandy!

Don’t wait, do it now! :-)

Thanks all!

And here is that map. Fire District 1 is actually three discontinuous pieces. Odd. But there you go. The areas surrounded by blue lines are all in Fire District 1. I think. :-)

Brandy is running for office!

For those who don’t already know… My wife Brandy is running for local office! Specifically, she is running for Snohomish County Fire District 1, Commissioner Position 3. Check out her candidate statement on her temporary campaign website. (She’s working on a more complete site, I quickly threw that one together for her as a starter site to have something up right away.)

This is a non-partisan position. There are five candidates in the primaries. The top two move on to the general election. The incumbent is David Chan, who got into trouble a few months ago for some comments about Mexicans he made during an official meeting.

Ever since the 2016 election… actually before, but it accelerated afterwards… Brandy has been increasingly engaged politically, and looking for places to make a difference. She’s been connecting with all sorts of people locally, and was urged by several to run for this position. It is her first run, but she is learning quickly. Win or lose, I’m pretty sure she intends to be actively engaged in things going forward.

If you are in the local area and want to know more or to help out, let me (or her) know!

I guess this means we’ll be investing in lawn signs and such soon… :-)

electbrandydonaghy.org

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Items in this Mirror are Bigger than they Appear

In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam, Bruce and Ivan talk about:

  • Local Republicans
  • Windows 8
  • Facebook

Recorded on 2 Dec 2012

Length this week – 1:17:44

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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Enter the Doldrums

In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about:

  • Election 2012
  • Snohomish County Republican Convention
  • Car Scratch / RIM Results
  • Megamillions / April Fools

Just click to listen now:

[wpaudio url=”http://www.abulsme.com/CurmudgeonsCorner/cc20120401.mp3″ text=”Recorded 1 Apr 2012″]

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Live Tweeting the Snohomish County Republican Convention #wacaucus #snocorc #ld44

As I did with the Precinct Caucuses on March 3rd, I’ll be attempting to Live Tweet the Snohomish County Republican Convention today.

Follow me @Abulsme.

For those who remember my tweets on March 3rd only three people showed up for my precinct and given there were three delegate slots available to the county convention, all three of us became delegates to the next level. Although it is non-binding, I had expressed my preference for Ron Paul. (The other two supported Santorum.) Last weekend I attended an orientation meeting for the Ron Paul delegates. For those interested, I talked a little about that meeting on the last episode of Curmudgeon’s Corner.

I should have left home already to get all settled at the convention before the crowds arrive. But a few notes before I go…

According to the orientation I had last week, in my legislative district, the 44th, almost half of the delegates are Romney supporters, about 25% are Ron Paul Supporters, 15% or so did not have a stated preference, and Santorum and Paul split the rest. There are a little over 260 delegates expected for our LD (I forget the exact number). For anybody to get elected as a delegate to the next level they need more than 50% of the vote of all of the delegates in the LD. This means that if every body shows up and all the Romney folks just vote for each other (and are disciplined and vote for the SAME Romney people), and just a small number of the uncommitted delegates also vote for Romney’s folks, then Romney will end up with 100% of the delegates to the next level, even though he got just under 50% of the delegates from the first round.

Meanwhile, if all the Ron Paul folks (for instance) just vote for each other, then none of them gets over 50% of the total vote, and they get no delegates to the next level despite the 25% showing in the first round.

Interesting how these things work.

For the non-Romney campaigns, the hope is that basically:

  1. A bunch of the Romney delegates don’t bother showing up (and disproportionately so compared to their own delegates)
  2. Discipline among the Romney delegates to vote for a consistent slate is low, allowing others to sneak in
  3. The three non-Romney’s delegates will vote for each other to stop Romney, even though they don’t necessarily like each other.

It will be fun. Oh, and we’ll get to hear speeches from a ton of local Republican politicians. Woo!

Oh, and for the record once again, I am supporting Ron Paul in the Republican caucus process because I think he is the best of the four Republicans currently running. I completely reserve judgement on who I will support in the fall. I’ll think about that once it is completely clear who all the people are on the ballot (not just the Republican and Democrat, which is pretty clear at this point absent some sort of seismic event).

OK. Off I go…