My father was a state rep in Texas, and has been involved in politics for many years. Growing up in the house of a politician exposed me to the rough and tumble of “retail politics,” but I have stayed so far away from that type of thing for so long, I often forget what a blood sport politics actually is.

My dad “retired” (i.e. stopped doing some things to do start doing others), across the Texas border in Louisiana. This year he is working Barack Obama campaign, and his new state of residence, plus his old Texas ties, permitted him to campaign for Obama in both democratic primaries. He was working the Texas polls all Tuesday and he just got me a “field report” on his day.

Now a old white guy going out to campaign for a black man in rural Texas might seem like pretty a dangerous endeavor, and from his report, it got a little ugly. Retail politics, Texas style:

The Texas result was swayed by Limbaugh getting his listeners to vote for Clinton and go to the caucuses. Those “Limbaugh Lemmings” would never admit to supporting Clinton in any other forum, including November. At the precinct I worked the election judge delayed the start of the caucus for over an hour. Five carloads of “Clinton supporters” arrived just before 8:pm, they then opened the doors and Clinton had 21 out of 37 of the total sign-ins. In the precinct your mom worked they held the caucus sign-in open an hour late (illegally) until the REPUBLICAN PRECINCT JUDGE arrived and signed in as a Clinton delegate. Ugly, ugly stuff. It was my request that they double check the distance markers that got me my threat to get arrested. The original marks forced me across the highway from the voters going in to the fire station polling place. I knew it was wrong and there was a good space on the other side for me to work. When the city employees finally came out to re-measure and correct the markers, the local JP stood there and told the Republican Election Judge that if I gave her any more trouble, he’d come over and put me in jail. He said it walking away so I didn’t take it seriously. I thought they’d at least appreciate the knowledge that their city maintenance folks didn’t know the difference between 100 feet and 115 feet! That could be trouble on some road or sewer projects : )

We’re OK. And as Mom said, Democrats have jumped in the open primary to screw the Repubs in the past, so we can’t cry too loudly.

My two sons displaying their favorite colors and players. Both excited for the upcoming weekend.

My sister, Cathy Kemp, has a Ph.D. in philosophy (she also has a JD, but does not practice) and teaches philosophy, currently at Penn State. She and her husband migrated from Denver to central PA when Penn State offered her husband (Mitchell) the chair of its philosophy department, and offered Cathy a tenure track position as well.

Seemed to be a great move, after leading a successful department at the University of Colorado at Denver, this was a step up for Mitchell. But then Mitchell noticed that some of the philosophy graduate students were experiencing rough treatment by some of the senior members of the faculty. The treatment seemed to be focused on minority and female students, so Mitchell followed the recommended course of action, and turned the issue over to the campus office of affirmative action. 11 days later, Mitchell was demoted from the chair position.

He went through the EEOC, and last fall filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming retaliatory demotion against his employer. Needless to say, working for an employer who you are embroiled in litigation with simultaneously has not been a pleasant experience for Cathy and Mitchell. Seeing as this has been going on for over 2 years now, I wonder how they have held up this long.

Anyway, although the filing of the lawsuit makes this a mater of public record, I have not widely discussed the issue, but the central PA media has finally pick up the story (probably because Penn State’s women’s basketball coach is under fire for discrimination at the moment):

Mitchell Aboulafia, 54, of Harris Township, has said that Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, and an associate dean illegally demoted him in March 2004. They did so, Aboulafia has claimed in a civil complaint, because he raised and reported sex-discrimination worries in the college.

Aboulafia led the philosophy department from July 2003 until his demotion.

During that period, according to the 23-page complaint, Aboulafia received “numerous, troubling reports” about some faculty members.

The reports alleged that some students, teaching assistants and young faculty members were subjected to discrimination and harassment, according to the complaint. Those reports suggested that the behavior was in violation of federal and state law and university policy, Aboulafia has claimed.

His complaint reads: “… many of the most serious reports involved one particular senior professor, who oversaw the academic work of graduate students in his role as a teacher and dissertation director ….”

That professor is not named in the complaint.

When Aboulafia took the reports to Welch and Ron Filippelli, then the associate dean in the college, the deans did not take “any meaningful action to address these issues,” the complaint reads.

“Instead, both Dean Welch and Associate Dean Filippelli appeared to be more concerned with protecting the department’s senior faculty members who were named in the reports than they were with protecting students, graduate teaching assistants or junior faculty members …,” it reads.

. . . .

Aboulafia declined to comment for this article. In his complaint, lodged in August in federal court, he said that he contacted the university Office of Affirmative Action with his concerns on March 11, 2004.

Ken Lehrman, who heads that office, told Aboulafia “that he had acted properly in contacting” the office, according to the complaint.

Four days later, Aboulafia has said, he received e-mails from Welch and Filippelli. They told him that “such matters should be kept within the college,” according to the complaint.

Lehrman could not be reached Tuesday.

But the university provost office told Welch and Filippelli that their responses to Aboulafia were improper, Aboulafia has claimed.

Then, on March 22, 2004, Welch demoted Aboulafia from his position with little explanation, according to the complaint.

By September, Aboulafia filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission. The U.S. Department of Justice, in July, granted Aboulafia the right to sue.

Link.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a striking bird that once flourished in the forests of the Southeast but was thought to have become extinct, reportedly has been sighted in eastern Arkansas, a Cornell University researcher says in a paper released Thursday.

Link.

For years now I have organised my business finances using Quickbooks, and my personal finances using Quicken.  Setting it up was a bit of a task at first, but then it hummed along without complaint for years.  My banking  and credit card transactions loaded in each month with a click of a button. All my bills were paid either automatically, or with a click of a button.  I have not actually written out a check in years.

All this bliss came to a screeching halt recently. Intuit, the maker of quicken told me I had to upgrade to the latest version to continue using their online bill pay system. I was angry, but frankly too invested in the system to balk.  So I paid them more money and took the update.  Then the second and more dire issue hit: Quicken’s new improved version no longer accepted inputs in the formats provided by my bank and credit card companies. This leaves me either the option of keying in every transaction (not going to happen) or hoping that Intuit’s market share will force my financial institutions to adopt Intuit’s new format. I’m glad I am not the only one upset with this:

Boing Boing: Quicken disables the software you paid for to force paid upgrades:

Intuit has lost a customer on this one. Make that two customers — for life. This is the dirtiest of pool imaginable. Bait-and-switch. I wonder if it’s even legal. You’d think that if Intuit had actually made a compelling new product that it could entice its customers to buy an upgrade; seems like they’ve decided that instead of improving their products, they’ll just extort money from customers who were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place. That’s a mistake I imagine very few of us will make again once word of this gets out.

Christmas southern style: Pelicans on the lake.