(Our other winter sport, incidentally, is called Aussie Rules.)

I knew that!

I tend to be pretty enthusiastic about the Australian system - preferential voting, compulsory voting (which kills voter suppression as an issue), proportional Senate representation, independently drawn electoral boundaries, standardised ballot design over the whole country.

Oh we do need to get us some of that! Not that I think this is ever going to happen, but it sounds nice.

Yeah, we could use some Aussie rules in the USA.

Used the CPAP machine for the first time last night. Plus a nap yesterday. The machine tells me I got total 10 hours of sleep. I feel better. Not all bouncy full of energy, but I guess I have years of sleep debt to catch up on.

That is wonderful, Zenkitty! Sleep is indeed a glorious thing.

landlord decided to give the lease to a relative to open their own place, even though the existing place has been there for 25 years

That seems like a recipe for failure of the new place. Won't most of the locals who frequented the previous establishment be ticked off?

Timelies all!

At the con, baby-wrangling and listening to the first concert of the day.

I read an article in CNN about how Obama being president has strained relationships between some white people and some black people since it exposed a level of racism that black people didn't think their white friends had. Makes me think how it bothers me so much when people (mostly on Fox News) talk about how Obama has worsened race relations when it seems clear that his presidency has simply exposed racism that was already there. Anyhow, it got me thinking about where Obama stands among the presidents I've experienced which is pretty much Carter onwards. I was seven when Carter was elected and it was during his term that I first started paying attention to politics. This feels like the only safe place I can express this.

I'll start with character. 1. Carter - Easy choice. Even people who hate him rarely question his character.

2. Obama - While I feel like he stepped back from the promise of his 2008 campaign, he still shows a lot of character to me. The dude took on health care knowing the heavy political price it would cost because he felt it needed to be done.

3. H.W. Bush - Always struck me as a very decent man. I put him below Obama because I think he had less political courage. That's the last of the easy ones, now it gets tough to figure out.

4. Clinton - Does he have character issues? No doubt about it. He also made some politically craven decisions during office. However, despite investigation after investigation, his administration didn't have many, if any, scandals that actually affected governance. Also, and this puts him above the last two, he kept his administration in control.

5. W. Bush - This is tough, but I think I have to put W. Bush before Reagan. I think he's a decent enough guy, but that's the problem, he's just this guy. He didn't have the force of personality or the intellectual confidence to control his administration. No wonder the deficit exploded, the financial system collapsed, and we ended up in two land wars in Asia. No business being president.

6. Reagan - I didn't think I'd end up with Reagan last, but then I remembered the numerous scandals that did affect governance. I remember fact-free press conferences. I remember a president who felt like little more than a figurehead. I remember just being a kid and not seeing how his campaign promises added up: we're going to cut taxes, ramp up defense spending, not touch social security, and balance the budget? What? He seemed a decent sort of fellow, but not someone who really had what it took.

Of the recent presidents before my time, I have to admit I'm also intrigued by LBJ. He seems like the last person you'd expect to battle (and from what I understood he got in there and really twisted arms) for civil rights and fighting poverty. And he did it knowing full well the staggering political cost for his party.

I can put away the paint rollers. At least on this project. I still have o touch up the trim and plaster and paint one patch, but the front room and stairwell are DONE. I can put everything back and finally clean.

I still have one piece of trim to put up and the access panel, but the worst is over.

I think this article about LBJ is interesting: [link] More nuanced than you'd expect.

I've been reading the Robert Caro Johnson biographies--interesting guy. Just when I thought I absolutely didn't like him, he could kind of redeem himself. Vietnam might have been different if he didn't think backing down was weak/ personally humiliating though.