I think he said Ikea was nearby. You're right: Berkeley has a slightly higher than average share of loonies than the general populace. But it's slight and not that noticeable.

It's got some charming business districts, free of an excess of corporate fast food logos. It has possibly the finest grocery store I've ever seen: The Berkeley Bowl. Check it out if you're in town -- on Shattuck, a few blocks north of Ashby. The produce section is bigger and more diverse than any I've seen. Chefs from around the bay area go there to shop because of the eclectic selection. They've finally (I think) gotten approval from the city to build a new branch not far away, near I-80 and Ashby, which will hopefully serve the greater bay area more and ameliorate the long lines at the original store.

I've spent a lot of time on the peninsula, though virtually none in Santa Clara. Worked in Palo Alto, Atherton, Redwood City, Portola Valley, Woodside, and Hillsborough. They're all fairly amorphous to me -- not too interesting -- lotta money, it's true. The only decent place to buy groceries are the two Whole Food outlets, and they're expensive.

Geroge Allen would have gotten into at least some kind of trouble if he'd pulled a stunt like that in college. What, in the senate, it's a yawner?

Maybe it was an ambitious staffer who dressed up the format of Durbin's wording and fed it to him, I dunno. I do know that in '04, Allen was on the tube complaining that Kerry voted for the $86 billion before he voted against it , not a graceful thing to say bit in NO WAY did it mean Kerry was pushing to defund our armed forces, which is the charge Allen got around to. Anyone who knows how the senate works knows that various forms of a bill are introduced and that voting against one version doesn't mean you want the main body of the bill to be defeated, just that you want some modification. Kerry wanted to introduce a little more pay as you go to the process instead of borrowing, borrowing, borrowing.

So Reops think that running the "voted for it/against it" awkward gaff several hundred million times in the campaign was an appropriate way to describe Kerry. Bad news: I think Allen's two recent gaffs are far more real and serious and need to be broadcast in such a way as to send him back to vocational school. I don't like nor trust the guy, a grinning ass of an oaf.

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