the irish lass

Orange County Tea Party

I am going to be in OC this weekend for the Irish Tenor cousin's wedding (you should hear him sing - and play the piano) and my sister and I want to host a baby shower for my biological niece at a cute tea house, cafe, garden spot, dessert diner or something similar in Cypress or very close. My sister gave her up for adoption 30 years ago or so, and my niece found my sister about 10 years ago. On the birth certificate, my sister had listed our last name and the fact that she went to Sac State. My niece came to the Sac State library and looked at the yearbooks and tracked my sister down. She's delightful, and grew up with a businessman dad and artist mom in Beverly Hills.

So, not being a southern californian, I really need some good ideas about where I might be able to host a casual event. There will only be 6 - 10 of us and we're going to do this between the wedding at 2pm and dinner at 6pm.

Please come through with some ideas.

Sometimes I Think Like A Man

I followed the Calblog's link to the Gender Genie to get analyzed.

When I posted about Arnold making nice with McC, they were 62% positive I was a woman (Female Score 261/Male Score - 154)

When I posted about Steve Samuelian, the Genie was 100% positive I was a man (Female Score 0 - Male Score 127)

But Big Schock-o ...When I postd the 100 Things You Should Do In California - The Genie things I'm a man. That Genie can't read. Only women could do that many fun things. Men are too serious.

Ted Costa is Brilliant

The Insider reports that Ted has got quite a plan to fix our disastrous reapportionment problem.

New district lines for 2006?

Ted Costa and Peoples Advocate, sponsors of the Davis Recall, today unveiled a proposed ballot measure to change the way political district lines are drawn. Costa's plan would allow legislative leaders to appoint 20 Californians to a pool from which the Judicial Council would select three special masters to make the decision. The masters would choose a plan from among those submitted by lawmakers and citizens groups. The choice would then go back to the Legislature for ratification and, finally, to a vote of the people. Costa hopes to qualify the measure for the November, 2004 ballot. If approved by the voters, the plan would take effect immediately, meaning that new districts would go into effect for the 2006 elections, even as voters had before them the question of whether they approve of those districts.


Posted by dweintraub at 01:42 PM

I think this means that after the voters approve the initiative, the masters select a plan and the legislature votes to ratify the plan. When the campaigns for the legislature and congress start, voters will choose who they're going to support in the primaries, and when they go to the polls they'll vote for their candidate and yes on the district lines. Seems like it will be easy to get a yes vote on the district lines when people have already committed to voting for a candidate running in that district. The hard part will be getting the legislature to ratify. Wonder if there is a back-up plan if they refuse.

A beautiful aspect of this is it will all be accomplished during Arnold's first term. He'll be there to veto any horrific plan and to lobby for the acceptance of a good plan. But just in case he doesn't like being governor and decides he doesn't want a second term, he'll have accomplished the most important thing he can do for the Republican Party.

As you all know, I'm crazy for Arnold and hope that he'll want to run for reelection and stay involved in the party for a long long while. But politics can be very ugly and lots of people don't like it once they see the ugliness.