I Should Be Laughing

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Architecture Wednesday: California Paradise

This Modernist French Norman Style home sits on a serene forested 1.6-acre site at the end of a small lane in Glendale, California's much desired Chevy Chase Canyon.

The original 1940 French Normandy-style residence was the starting point for a complete renovation and multiple additions that accentuated and celebrated both the existing and new. The home is a composition of planes and volumes, with the monochromatic leafy green facade of the original structure receding into the scenery, while the white stucco and glass of the modern mass provides a seamless connection to the lush landscape.

From the entry courtyard the house opens up to a grand living room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and doors, blending into the sun-drenched canyons behind the home. The dining area, with its lowered ceilings and the heated concrete floors throughout, offers an intimate setting within the large space.

From there the house unfolds from public to private. The high-ceilinged kitchen and family area features a pantry and bar, and breakfast area. Cork floors warm the space and complement the woodwork and cabinetry.

A hall powder room and den lead to the private wing where you find a sitting room and library, as well as two bedrooms and a shared bath. Stairs descend to the lower primary level suite, consisting of a walk-through closet and sitting area, and bathroom with a soaking tub, and then to the main suite with views to the gardens.

The gardens are lush and surround the 4,553 square-foot house, as does hundreds of acres of dedicated open space. There are multiple terraces and decks, a citrus and vegetable garden, and the newly renovated plunge pool on the lower level; a permitted ADU was added in 2019.

It’s clean and quiet and green and peaceful; could you ask for more? Well, maybe $4M … because that’s what this home costs.

Dwell

Monday, November 18, 2024

Good News and Hope from November 5th

We’re a couple of weeks out from Election Day and many of us are still angry and sad and frustrated from the election of The Felon. Like many Americans, I am left wondering what people were thinking by putting this liar, convicted felon, and sexual assaulter in the Oval Office again. What’s going to happen to us, and to the most vulnerable, marginalized among us? And when are the MAGAts going to realize what they’ve done by voting for a criminal?

I imagine it will be January 20, 2025, but then it’ll be too late; no do-overs. Still, there is some light in the darkness; we have many victories to celebrate …

After it was clear The Felon would win the election, he and his supporters declared that he had won an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” but did he?

The final Electoral College victory was 312-226. Sounds impressive, I guess, if this were a sportsball game, but by historical standards, it’s actually a very close margin. In fact, The Felon did only slightly better Biden’s 306-232 victory in 2020, which was a hair better than The Felon’s 304-227 win in 2016.

To contrast: Reagan won with 489 Electoral Votes in 1980 and with 525; George H W Bush got 426 Electoral Votes in 1988; Clinton, 370 in 1992 or 379 in 1996; Obama won 365 Electoral Votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012.

Nothing “unprecedented” about The Felon’s victory.

But what about the popular vote? Sure, The Felon broke Republicans’ long losing streak by actually winning the popular vote for the first time in 20 years but his margin is nothing to brag about. According to CNN, The Felon leads Harris by 3.2 million votes, or 50.2% to 48.1% with 95% of the votes counted but with millions of votes left to count, including in very blue parts of California, that margin will close and it appears The Felon could end up with under 50% of the vote, with a winning margin of under 1.5%.Compare this with four years ago, when Joe Biden won by 7 million votes and 4.4% of the vote.

Sure, The Felon won, but the margin of victory was no mandate.

And while The Felon won the Big Prize, November 5th was an outright loss for other MAGA candidates. Look at Mark Robinson in North Carolina and Kari Lake in Arizona; both lost decisively. In North Carolina, Robinson lost to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein by almost 15% and North Carolina voters chose a new Democratic Lt. Governor, Rachel Hunt, a new Democratic Attorney General, Jeff Jackson, and Democrats even flipped a state House seat to break the GOP’s legislative supermajority, which means Governor Josh Stein will be able to veto the worst of what Republicans try to unilaterally shove down North Carolinians’ throats.

In Arizona, Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego defeated MAGA election denier Kari Lake for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat by 2.5%. That makes Gallego the first Latino U.S. Senator from Arizona and marks the fourth Democratic U.S. Senate win in the state in a row. That means that Arizona, whose voter rolls boast 300,000 more Republicans than Democrats, has Democrats serving as both U.S. Senators, Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State.

We’re not dead yet, y’all.

In addition to Gallego, Democrats did very well in swing state U.S. Senate races, including several Democratic female candidates,: Senator Jacky Rosen in Nevada, Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin in Michigan. Now, with the loss of Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Democrats will be the Senate minority but imagine how much worse it would have been without those other wins.

The strong Democratic performance in North Carolina is going to be crucial in 2026 when Senator Thom Tillis is up for reelection and in 2028 when Sen. Ted Budd is up. Flipping those seats is the path back for Democrats to a Senate majority by 2028. And with North Carolina’s new state Representative-elect Dante Pittman, whose flip of a red seat kept the GOP from wielding an ongoing legislative supermajority, to Michigan where Democrats expanded their majority on the state Supreme Court, to Pennsylvania where Democrats held onto their state House majority, the work on the ground in swing states proved decisive in race after race.

That’s where we start to win and move that up the ticket.

And also look at the wins on progressive policies: out of the ten states that had abortion rights protection measures on the ballot, those initiatives passed in six of them, including in red states like Montana and Missouri where, thanks to these results, there will now be legal pathways to challenge the current restrictive GOP abortion bans. Abortion protection measures also passed in swing states Arizona and Nevada, as well as blue states such as New York, Maryland, and Colorado, where there will now be additional firewalls against future Republican attempts to restrict women’s freedom.

And what about worker’s rights? In deep-red Alaska, Ballot Measure 1, which raises the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2027 and provides employees the ability to accrue paid sick leave, passed with around 57% of the vote. A similar measure in conservative Missouri, which would raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2026 and allow employees to earn an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, passed with 58% of the vote. And in Nebraska voters passed their own paid sick leave measure, winning nearly 75% of the vote.

All this points to a clear opportunity for Democrats moving forward by championing progressive economic policy so that working-class voters understand who is truly fighting for them at all levels of government.

And since The Felon will once again enter the presidency with majorities in both houses of Congress, it’s more important than ever for Democratic leaders around the country to align against his worst policy instincts and do what they can to minimize the damage. In the last week, we’ve seen Democratic Governors come out strongly asserting their intention to block attempts to undermine the rule of law and their citizens’ rights in their states.

Such as Governor Pritzker of Illinois, who said:

“To anyone who intends to take away the freedom, opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior. You come for my people, you come through me.”

And Governor Newsom of California who convened special Legislative sessions of Congress to take on The Felon’s attacks on education, women and the LGBTQ+ community.

And let’s also remember the history-making Democrats voters chose to elevate last week, like Sarah McBride from Delaware, who will become our first openly transgender member of Congress; Senators-Elect Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, making history; the first ever Korean American U.S. Senator, Andy Kim of New Jersey; Julie Johnson, the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas.

At the local level, Democrat Monroe Nichols is the first Black Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city where Black businesses were once burned to the ground and its residents terrorized and killed by white mobs. And now young LGBTQ+ leaders of color: Rashaun Kemp in Georgia and Amaad Rivera-Wagner in Wisconsin.

So, yeah, we are all still heartbroken and shell-shocked but let’s not forget the wins, especially those in Red states, and those progressive policy wins, and those down ballot victories. That’s where you can find the hope as we move through the next two-to-four years. We, as a party, are in a good position to make gains in the next two years as The Felon inevitably overreaches with unpopular initiatives and dubious Cabinet picks, and his so-called “mandate.”

Don’t sit this one out because that’s what the Right wants us to do.