The Minnesota Republcan presidential caucuses

[Doug Kerr]

The state of Minnesota will hold its Republican presidential caucuses on Tuesday, 2012.02.07.

A caucus is held in each precinct. The caucus attendees will chose the delegates in the next higher political unit (the hierarchical tree is not uniform across the state). There will also be a non-binding "straw poll" of the attendees' preference among the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination.

The process, through multiple layers, eventually results in the selection of the delegates to the Minnesota state Republican Convention.

The state convention selects the Minnesota delegates to the national Republican Convention. There is no formal way in which that selection takes into account the expression of preference by the caucus attendees.

Of the 13 delegates selected, 10 may be (or not, as decided at the state convention) committed to vote, at the national convention for a specific contender in the first round of balloting (unless the contender earlier withdraws from competition or "releases" his delegates).

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Doug,

In case you are planning to continue reporting for all the states: perhaps Asher should create a subforum for everything regarding the US elections? Just an idea anyway.

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi Doug,

In case you are planning to continue reporting for all the states: perhaps Asher should create a subforum for everything regarding the US elections? Just an idea anyway.

Actually, I probably won't; it is too depressing, and there is too much other stuff going on around here!

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Actually, I probably won't; it is too depressing, and there is too much other stuff going on around here!

Best regards,

Doug

I can imagine that. How are your plans to move your home developing?
Best regards, also to Carla.

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Cem,

I can imagine that. How are your plans to move your home developing?

Moving along well. The biggest challenge is getting rid of a lot of stuff. This past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Carla masterminded a gigantic garage sale. It was very successful. But the stuff still here looks like were about to have a gigantic garage sale.

At the Alamogordo end, everything is moving along fine. We have to have wholly different wireless service (AT&T Wireless' coverage in that area is very spotty), Internet Access (AT&T doesn't offer their U-Verse very-high-speed DSL service in New Mexico), and so forth.

We will go to Alamogordo at the end of February to execute the mortgage note and consummate the sale transaction, establish our new wireless and Internet access service, transfer the water, gas, and electricity supply, and so forth.

There is a lot to it.

To illustrate the topographical setting of the new house, this is an excerpt from a pseudo-relief map of the area around Alamogordo (the scale is such that width of the map is about 125 miles).

The little white dot (in the center of the finding circle) is the location of our new house. Only 1/4 mile to the east the Lincoln National Forest begins and the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains begin to turn up.

This mountain range is an eastward-leaning tilt block; thus the western flank is quite steep, while the falloff to the east beyond the crest is more gentle. This is what we wanted, as it makes the view from the house stunning, while putting us on the side where the snow is more moderate. (The prevailing winds are from the west; the air is compressed passing eastward over the peak and then cools there because of the temperature lapse at that altitude. Then as it continues eastward past the crest, we have adiabatic expansion, the temperature drops precipitously, and snow is the common result.)

Here we see a satellite view of the area:

You can easily see the extent of the main incorporated area of Alamogordo - about 2.25 miles west to east, 1.75 miles north to south. The maptack shows our house.

Best regards, also to Carla.

Thanks so much.

Best regards,

Doug