Dan’s Web Spot

I have often wondered why we need the electoral college in this country.
It seems like an unnecessary step and cost to the taxpayers. Sometimes a state will spend all of its electoral votes on the state's popular vote results, and other times a state may choose to pro-rate their electoral votes depending on the voting percentages of the popular vote.

Confused? I was (and frankly, I still am).

Seems like although for the most part, in the voting history of the United States, the electoral votes have been cast in accordance with the popular vote. However, depending on the state, there can be rather strict or very loose requirements on the voting practices of the electoral college.

Here are a few links I found interesting: » More...

Samai and Dan take the Gold in Rhythmics in Beijing!

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In my miniscule mind, I would have thought one of you out there would have something to say here,

as outspoken (ahem) as some of you are

and still, nothing.

So I was wondering why all of a sudden I had to refill my new bird feeder on a daily basis. Initially, a refill would last some 4-5 days. Then the squirrels found out about it and the refill frequency dwindled to 2-3 days.

Lately the feeder has been empty each morning. Last night, I happened to flip on the back deck light and peer outside before retiring to bed and noticed a couple of visitors under the bird feeder... rather large visitors, I might add. There were 2 absolutely beautiful does helping themselves to whatever they could, both in and out of the feeder.

At last the mystery is solved, and as far as I can tell, there at least has not been a visit from a bear yet. How do I know? I'm only guessing this because the feeder is still intact and hanging off of the deck.

A few years ago, I lost a bird feeder to a bear. I found the feeder quite damaged, removed from its hanger, dragged some 50 feet over a rock wall in my back yard, and urinated on. There were plenty of bear tracks from the original location to the final resting place of that old feeder. In fact, this story was recently refreshed in my head when I took a load of scrap metal objects to the dump about 4 days ago. One of those objects was that old feeder...