Live from Austin!

Washington Post :

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn’t pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

[...]

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama’s face on Seifert’s T-shirt and said: "He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Stay classy, America!

It’s starting to look pretty empty in the house, as most of our stuff is now boxed to go. With that in mind, here’s our approximate planned route:

I-90 to NY via Springfield, MA.
I-90, I-87, I-84 to PA. Possible stops at New Paltz.
I-84, I-380, I-81 via Scranton, PA. Possible stop at Harrisburg, PA.
I-81 through MD to WV, via Hagerstown.
I-81 through WV to VA.
I-81, I-66, I-64, I-81 again. Possible stops at Winchester, Harrisonburg, Staunton, Roanoke.
I-40 through TN to AR. Nashville, Memphis, Johnson City, Knoxville.
I-40 through AR to Little Rock, 167 to El Dorado, I-20 to Shreveport LA.
I-20 from Shreveport LA to TX, via Tyler and Waco. Possible stop at Corsicana.

Suggestions for things we simply must see are welcomed. With a little luck we’ll have a Prius with GPS navigation. Failing that, we’ll have an iBook linked to a GPS.

Suggestions for good places to eat are welcomed too. As I’ve discovered on previous road trips, You can only eat so much Taco Bell before going insane.

Jane Baker claims, in a $7.5m lawsuit, that she suffers brain damage that means she needs help reading and understanding material, and carrying out conversations.

She says that this makes her virtually unemployable. It leaves one career open for her, however—she’s running as a Republican Representative for Pennsylvania.