lummi island wine tasting nov 25 ’16
(note: some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Closed for Thanksgiving
Please note that the wine shop will NOT be open Thanksgiving weekend. History shows that most of you will either be Away or Otherwise Engaged with family and friends. We wish you all Good Cheer, Warm Hearths, and Warm Hearts, and look forward to seeing you Friday, December 2!
No Bread this week
Hopefully you froze your Dinner Rolls from last week as Janice suggested so you could pop them into the oven and enjoy them with Thankgiving dinner. Both wine and bread will be back next week, and we hope all are enjoying a heart-warming holiday with friends and family.
#RECOUNT2016
Yes, this is really happening! In many places the recent election results were So Surprising that they substantially contradicted the usually extremely reliable exit poll data, which can and should always be used to verify election results. When exit poll results differ significantly (in a statistical sense) from “official results,” it is a strong indicator of irregularities that should be investigated.
Such is the case with much of the recent election results, particularly in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The Green Party has initiated a fund drive to pay for a recount and vote verification in those three states. You can read more about this effort and add your donation here.
Wisconsin Court Decision
No doubt all of our Regular Visitors and Members have found themselves involved in intense conversations with our dear friend (and Member!) Peter Earle and wife Sandy, who moved to Lummi Island from Wisconsin earlier this year. Peter is an almost-retired lawyer who, like Don Quixote, has spent much of his legal career Tilting at Giant Legal Windmills.
One such case has involved the matter of Partisan Gerrymandering, under which many states, helped by ALEC, the Koch brothers, and their Ilk, have drawn up Bizarre and Unfair District lines to give Republican candidates an Unfair Advantage. The case was heard by a three-judge panel of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in June, and a decision has been postponed until after the 2016 Election. That decision has just been announced, and they have WON! Almost certainly the case will move on to the Supreme Court. Some years ago Justice Anthony Kennedy lamented that gerrymandering was indeed a problem that could not be resolved legally without the development of some valid test to prove it was unconstitutional.
The Good News here is that Peter and his colleagues engaged a Stanford statistician who developed just such a Metric, based on the idea of “wasted votes.” That is, in an unbiased districting, each party would have equal efficiency at converting votes into legislative seats. In unfairly drawn districts, the dominant party jams as many opposing votes into a few districts as possible, giving it an unfair advantage in all the other districts. This decision is a very exciting development, and we all hoist our glasses to Peter and his national team of colleagues on having put this case together and brought it to this recent victory, a Grand Thing Indeed!
Go Peter!
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