Alas, so true. Don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the site, Gus, but Riverside is my home town. Come to think of it, the trends you cite might be the reason I've never mentioned it.

Thank God it wasn't just me.

J. Voss and K T Cat ~

Will we be fortunate enough to see either of you in Orange County next weekend for the So Cal Ricochet meetup?

I agree, although I'll take what I can get. What a remarkable development it would be for the rest of the state if a city the size of San Diego could upend the conventional wisdom on managing local government by power of example.

MT ~

This same thought crossed my mind. Does anyone really think the (imagined) Republican senator from Massachusetts would have played the role of a Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn during those years? Would Romney have been the lonely voice against raising the debt ceiling? Would he have been the one blowing the whistle on the Bush Administration's spending habits? Heck, would he have even done that if he was the junior senator from Utah?

That incredulity was exactly how I reacted when I first saw it. But, alas, it is true. It's an oil rendering of the "Hope" poster from 2008. I'm assuming they won it at a union raffle.

My next door neighbor is the head of a local teachers union chapter. Because of the lavish pay and benefits she's been able to accumulate thanks to the muscle of the California Teachers Association, she's moved to this relatively affluent beach community so that her son doesn't have to attend the same run-down schools she teaches in (located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles). She lives with a man who is not her son's father, but won't marry him because it would diminish the amount of college aid her son will be eligible for come admissions time.

The couple has a canvas oil painting of Barack Obama over their fireplace. They drive a mint green Toyota Prius with an Obama 2008 sticker on the left side of the bumper and an Obama 2012 sticker on the right side. She casually mentioned in conversation once that the solution to the hardships faced by Golden State teachers was to fully unionize charter schools and private schools.

All that to say, count yourself lucky if you live in the liberal true believer version of Portlandia. Some of us inhabit the special interest version. Send help.

You'll always get my attention with a sports rejoinder. Fair point. Amended to include field position.

Great choice, Gaby. I always thought it was a shame that record didn't get more traction. It deserved to be a #1 single. There are very few people who can write hooks like Stevie Wonder.

The problem with the vast majority of popular love songs is that they're either fueled by unchecked eros or rank adolescence (Taylor Swift, put down your guitar and go to class). Avoiding those two poles, I'd submit Ray Charles' rendition of "Come Rain or Come Shine" as an all-time classic.

Great choice, perfectly described, Pseud. With a few exceptions ("Lay, Lady, Lay" comes to mind) I've always thought Dylan wildly overrated (he's the example par excellence of novelty being confused for profundity), but this is a beautifully pure love song. It's also had several nice interpretations in recent years, courtesy of Garth Brooks, Billy Joel, and Adele.

I wish this was the first time I had been compared to the couch on Andy Griffith.

Don't worry. We'll fix it when we remaster this episode in 30 years.

You know, about 30 minutes later in the podcast, I had the nagging feeling that I had screwed that up. So much for sneaking one past the goalie ... if y'all don't mind a sports metaphor even further diminishing my nerd credentials.

There are going to be some folks at DARPA very unhappy with me about the fact that this picture leaked.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the population trends in Virginia are making its electoral votes an extension of Washington D.C.'s. The DC suburbs in Northern Virginia (where I used to live) are the big growth areas and they are populated by Beltway types who have a vested interested in growing government. Drive half an hour west and you start finding Waffle Houses, Cracker Barrels, and authentic southern conservatives -- who are becoming steeply outnumbered.