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first post of the new year

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Hi everyone.  I’m back from my winter holiday routine and need to blog to procrastinate from Actual Important Stuff.  Said holiday routine was satisfying as usual, and as usual consisted of…

  • Christmas at the in-laws.  It was wonderful to see all of them, and I wish I could have stayed longer.  Xmas loot included Spore, which I have sworn not to play until I defend my proposal, and Wall-E, which we’ve already watched again, as well as a great metal water bottle that’s already seen a lot of use, and lots of other great stuff that I’m not mentioning only because I haven’t actually seen most of it since Xmas day, due to the rest of the routine.  Oh, and a wonderful surprise bit of news that I can’t divulge yet.
  • Brunch the next day with mom’s extended family.  It was nice to see all of them, and we came away with seven boxes of everyday stoneware from Grandma.  J. is stoked.
  • Dance Camp!  Which was lots of fun, as always, and really the only way to ring in the new year.
  • A few days of relaxing back at the in-laws (sadly, brother-in-law and sister-in-law-squared couldn’t stick around as long as us).

A quick check on last year’s New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Get back into shape: total fail.  Joined a gym, was doing really well through the spring and summer, totally fell off the wagon once the fall term started.  Currently weigh more than I ever have.
  • Dance more, and collect dances so as to eventually become a caller: danced a very little more than in the past year, but not enough to really get credit for the spirit of the resolution.  The latter part is going okay, but is a low-priority, long-term project.
  • Develop a good thesis topic, write and defend a thesis proposal: have the topic and a substantial outline.  Behind schedule, but significant partial credit.
  • Help elect a Democratic president and legislature: Done and done.

Now, this year’s resolutions:

  • Dance more.  Effectively a perpetual resolution every year since I was 12, because I always start the new year having just come from dance camp.
  • Defend my thesis proposal. (Two-year resolution: get the hell out of grad school.)
  • Lose weight.  I’m getting a thesis gut, and it’s gross.

And finally, a homeowning/renting lesson: it’s a good idea to turn your water heater down to ‘vacation’ when you leave for vacation.  It’s NOT a good idea to immediately crank it all the way up to ‘hot’ when you get back.  Because it overflows and pours water all over your basement floor.

Happy 2009, everybody.

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Posted in 2008 Elections cycle, Family, Life, Life in graduate school, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Gen-Y envy

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

I’ve mostly gotten used to star athletes being younger than I am, and as my body deteriorates from lack of use, I can accept that for some basic biological reasons my best days, physiologically speaking, may be behind me.  (Which is not to say that I wouldn’t love to get my ass back in shape.)

Less so with authors, musicians, scientists and the like, as I feel all of those are enterprises that ought to favor those with a bit of wisdom and life experience.  (Not that I’ve really gained much of that as I’ve languished in grad school.)

Now there’s this guy:  Aaron Schock, Congressman-elect from Illinois’ 18th CD (that’s Peoria, for you Illinois readers; the next district west from my home town), is exactly one year and one week younger than I am, and will soon be the youngest member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the first born in the 1980s.  Now, I’m not a big fan — I don’t know much about his record in the Illinois House, but I do recall some accusations of shady financial backdating, he proposed selling nuclear weapons to Taiwan, and he brought President Bush to campaign for him.  Obviously, he wouldn’t be where he is if he wasn’t a skilled politician.  And he’s not the first member of Congress about whom I’ve thought, “I’m smarter than that guy.”  But still makes me think a little, what the hell have I been doing with my life?

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Posted in 2008 Elections cycle, Life | 3 Comments »

Proud, relieved, hopeful / COUNT FASTER!

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

So, I think it’ll take a good long while for last night’s results to fully sink in, especially since some of them aren’t in yet.

I’m hopeful, relieved, and proud that America has decisively chosen Barack Obama as our next president.  I didn’t support him because of the historical nature of his candidacy, but electing the first African-American president is a Big Deal.  Moreover, I think he will be a good president.  He ran a nearly flawless campaign.  He will inherit a giant mess, but I think he has the intellect, the temperment, the potential to be one of the truly great presidents.  The extent to which he achieves that potential is, I suspect, largely outside of his control, and he certainly has his work cut out for him.  In the coming weeks I’ll probably be thinking about what I think he needs to do (because, you know, clearly he needs my advice), and working to control expectations (because he is and must be pragmatic and incremental, which is sure to disappoint us progressives).  But for the moment I’m trying to savor how nice it will be to have a president I respect and admire.  It will be the first time in my life.

But to some extent I’d already gotten used to the idea of Obama winning, so it’s not as high-emotion as it might have been.  I’m not so overwhelmed that I’ve lost sight of various down-ballot stuff.  Here’s a quick scorecard.

It seems to have been at best a decidedly mixed night for human and civil rights in America.  Anti-gay marriage ballot measures won in Arizona, Arkansas (ban on gay couples adopting), California? (they’re still counting, but ‘Yes’, the bad guys, are winning 52-48 with 95% reporting on Prop 8), and Florida.  None were defeated.  We may have elected a black man president, but the struggle for civil rights in this country is not over.  The reproductive rights of women seem to have fared better, with abortion bans failing in California (again, still counting, but 52-48 for the good guys with 95% reporting), Colorado, and South Dakota.  (The California measure was about parental notification; the Colorado and South Dakota ones were (near-)total bans.)

The Senate is still up in the air.  That is, the extent of Democratic gain in the Senate is still up in the air.  It currently stands at 54-40-2, with 4 pending.  The two independents are Bernie Sanders, who is effectively a Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, who at least deserves to be stripped of his chairmanship and may well get kicked out of the caucus entirely.  (Much as I’d like to see that, I don’t actually think it would be prudent.)  Georgia’s race has Chambliss well ahead, but word on the tubes is that there are a lot of Atlanta early votes still to be counted.  We just need to get Chambliss under 50% to trigger a run-off.  Minnesota’s race is RIDICULOUSLY close, possibly headed to an automatic recount.  At the time of writing, Coleman is ahead by about 700 votes out of 2.8 million cast.  Godon Smith is currently ahead in Oregon, but it seems that there may still be enough uncounted votes to change that to the result I expected.  There’s word of counting weirdness in that race on dKos.  We came up short in Kentucky and Mississippi, but picked up seats in VA, NH, CO, and NM.

And congratulations Alaska, you’re about to be a national joke.  In addition to Sarah Palin, it’s looking — stunningly — like Ted Stevens will win re-election despite being a convicted felon, AND Don Young will win re-election, despite being under investigation in the same constellation of corruption allegations.  This puts you in the illustrious company of New Orleans, who sent William Jefferson (corrupt Dem) back to the House after the FBI found $90,000 of cash bribes from foreign interests in his freezer.

In other house news:

  • Chris Shays, the last Republican in the House of Representatives from New England, lost to Jim Himes in CT-04 last night.
  • Bill Foster won re-election, and Debbie Halvorson won in my home district.
  • Kanjorski and Murtha both held on to their seats in PA.  Kanjorski held off the challenge from the xenophobic Barletta, and Murtha held on despite calling his constiuents racists and rednecks.  So, I guess that’s +2 for racial tolerance?
  • Bachmann held on to her seat.  +1 for McCarthyism.

We still don’t know about Darcy Burner…she’s neck and neck with Reichert in WA-08 with only 41% reporting.  COUNT FASTER!!

And the presidential race hasn’t been called yet in North Carolina or Missouri.  (They called Indiana for Obama while I was writing this!  We turned Indiana blue!)

Also: turnout.  Under-30 turnout was only up a little bit.  Weak.

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Posted in 2008 Elections cycle | 3 Comments »

Races to watch

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Sure, the headline drama tomorrow night will be the presidential race.  But that story might be slow to develop, or (better for us), we might know by 8:40 how it’s likely to go.  (hint: watch Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida.)  Here are downticket races I’ll be watching — enough election night drama to keep you glued to the TV all night tomorrow!

Senate:

  • MN: Franken (D) v. Coleman (R-inc) v. Barkley (I).  Al Franken is funny, but his candidacy is no joke.  This one’s pretty unpredictable, because of the third-party candidate, who’s getting about 20% in polls.
  • AK: Begich (D) v. Stevens (R-inc): Ted “Tubes” Stevens is an old, mean, corrupt son-of-a-bitch.  He was convicted of seven counts of failing to disclose gifts last week.  He should be toast.  Begich is mayor of Anchorage.
  • KY: Lunsford (D) v. McConnell (R-inc): How awesome would it be to knock off the minority leader of the Senate?  Sadly, Lunsford seems to have hit a ceiling in the past few days, but we can hope.
  • GA: Martin (D) v. Chambliss (R-inc): How awesome would it be to knock off the asshole who smeared triple-amputee Max Cleland?  By electing a progressive Democrat.  In GEORGIA.  This race is still pretty tight.  If nobody gets 50% +1 votes it goes to a run-off, and Georgia will be flooded with volunteers who have nothing to do now that Obama’s won (knock on wood).
  • NC: Hagan (D) v. Dole (R-inc): Another promising Dem pickup in the South.
  • NH: Shaheen (D) v. Sununu (R-inc): The Shaheens did a little Obama-smearing in the primary, and Sununu’s a moderate Republican, but still, one seat closer to 60.  And Sununu, while moderate and somewhat tech-savvy (which I like), voted with Bush 90% of the time, in particular on his disasterous economic policies.  And he’s son of John H. Sununu, who was NH governor and Bush I’s chief of staff…I don’t like nepotism.  When canvassing for Obama in NH yesterday, I was also effectively canvassing for Shaheen.
  • MS-B: Musgrove (D) v. Wicker (R-inc).  This one is beginning to look like a long shot.
  • OR: Merkley (D) v. Smith (R-inc).  Gordon Smith is a moderate, because he as to be to survive.  But it looks like that won’t be enough this time.

House

  • IL-14: Foster (D-inc) v. Oberweis (R) rematch.  See IL-14.
  • WA-08: Burner (D) v. Reichert (R-inc).  Darcy Burner is a (former?) Microsoft program manager, where she helped create C#.  She’s an awesome progressive who lead a team of challengers and military advisors in the development of a sensible plan for getting out of Iraq, like, before Congress did.  (Actually, you’ll notice that Congress still hasn’t, really.)  She lost everything but her loved ones and the clothes on her back in a fire that destroyed her house this summer, in the middle of the campaign.  And she’s got a narrow lead over an intrenched incumbent who’s taken a huge illegal loan and gotten gobs of money from the NRCC and smeared Burner in negative adds.  After Obama, this is one of the races that I’m most excited about.
  • PA-11: Kanjorski (D-inc) v. Barletta (R): Barletta was the Mayor of Hazleton, PA when they passed that wacko anti-immigrant law.  It’s likely that Barletta will win, which will be sad, and embarrassing for northeastern PA.
  • CT-04: Himes (D) v. Shays (R-inc): Chris Shays is the last Republican Representative in New England.  He’s survived several close races before, but this might be our year.  (If he loses his House seat, watch for him to run against Chris Dodd for Senate in two years.)  This race is basically the definition of toss-up.
  • MN-06: Trinkleman (D) v. Bachmann (R-inc): Yeah, that Bachmann.
  • IL-11: Halvorson (D) v. Orzinga (R) v. Wallace (G): My home district, which has been gerrymandered beyond credulity.  I think my parents are supporting the Green candidate, since there’s no evidence Halvorson realizes Normal is in her would-be district.
  • AK-AL: Berkowitz (D) v. Young (R-inc): Don Young is another corrupt Alaska Republican, who is likely to lose his seat this year.
  • AZ-03: Lord (D) v. Shadegg (R-inc): Shadegg is a conservative hero, pursuaded not to retire.  This is one of Kos’s favorite races.  But it looks like Shadegg might hold on.
  • PA-12: Murtha (D-inc) v. Russell (R): Murtha’s a high-ranking Dem (who survived Abscam and is the king of pork) who called his constituents racists and rednecks, which isn’t generally a good idea if you want to get re-elected.  But for partisan purposes, here’s hoping he holds on to his seat.  His opponent is a carpetbagger.

Other:

  • CA: Proposition 8: Threatens to overturn the legalization of gay marriage.
  • SD: Ballot initiative to ban abortion.

Anybody got any others I should be watching?

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Posted in 2008 Elections cycle, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

My day in New Hampshire for Obama

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Today I woke up early and drove up to meet a middle school friend who now lives in Vermont, and together we drove across the river to Keene, New Hampshire to volunteer for Obama (and the coordinated campaign with Jeanne Shaheen, Paul Hodes, and John Lynch).

Change starts in an abandoned warehouse with a packed parking lot, buzzing with a steady stream of volunteers, roughly forty at a time.  A grandmotherly woman greets us as soon as we walk in the door, directs us to the table loaded with canvassing packets and invites us to grab some breakfast.  (I learned later that she and her husband actually live near me, and they’re staying in a hotel in NH for a week to volunteer, with their super-sweet golden retriever.)  We get our marching orders and hit the concrete.  (Well, this is New Hampshire, so most of it was actually grass.)  There are multiple people holding “honk for Obama” signs on every corner of every intersection in downtown, and people were honking.

It was a lovely clear day, cool but pleasant and sunny, the leaves past their prime but still colorful.  New Hampshire is full of classic old New England houses, and we had a super-idyllic single-lane red covered bridge on our turf, too.  We found a good deal more Obama support than McCain support, which was promising.  But it’s clear NH is a battleground state…there were political signs everywhere you looked, even out in what I would call rural areas.

We canvassed until about 4pm, came back to headquarters (which was still buzzing), tallied our sheets and turned them in, grabbed a bite to eat, and came back to help assemble literature for the next day’s canvassers.  As we left town around 6:30, we passed the McCain/Republican headquarters for the area.  It was dark.

Also: as I was writing this, I watched Rachel Maddow give an excellent editorial about the new poll tax of six hour lines at polling places.  She’s absolutely right.  That’s an outrage.  We can not claim to be the foremost democracy in the world when we have 50% voter turnout, 6 hour lines at polls in poor neighborhoods, and suspect voting mechanisms like the one that nearly disenfranchised my mother earlier this week.  Shame on us.  America, fix this.

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progress

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Just heard an interviewee on NPR repeat an Obama text message he got:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.

Martin walked so Barack could run.

Barack is running so our children can fly.

A cheesey slogan, maybe, but it got me a little bit.

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Hillary verdict: good for Obama

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Something I’ve been thinking recently: with the advantage of hindsight, I think we can say that the tough primary contest against Hillary Clinton ultimately helped Obama, perhaps a great deal.  Three main reasons:

1. All the negative nonsense, the Wrights and Rezkos and Ayers, has already come out.  McCain’s campaign would like to call Obama’s character in to question with the questionable associations, but Obama’s already addressed them months ago, and they’re old news to the voters — turns out these things get weaker with age.

2. Obama has tuned up his debating skills.  I never thought he was a particularly bad debater, but he had some bad moments in the primaries…he’s worked out all the kinks now, and I think he gave three near-flawless debate performances in the past month.

3. Ground organization:  the extended primary gave Obama a head start on building a 50-state ground game.

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The gloves come off

Monday, October 6th, 2008

If Barack Obama’s campaign has your email address, you probably just got an email announcing keatingeconomics.com.

I’m SO TICKLED to see a Democrat delivering such a punch.  McCain’s campaign has telegraphed in the past few days that they’re going to attempt to smear Obama with guilt-by-association character attacks, such as tying Obama to William Ayers.  (Because, I would argue, they’re getting their ass kicked on the real issues and they’ve got nothing else left.)  Well, I think this will turn out to be a hell of a counter-punch.  I haven’t seen the full video yet (doesn’t go live ’til noon), and I’ve only skimmed the keatingeconomics.com site (because I’m working at 3:30am), but if they’ve got this as coordinated as I have to imagine they do (with surrogates and stump speeches and Tuesday’s debate) it should be a far more effective attack than trying to associate Obama with a domestic terrorism plot that occurred when he was eight.

To summarize the Keating thing in one sentence, John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee for intervening with federal regulators on behalf of his political patron Charles Keating, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry, allowing Keating to defraud his customers and ultimately putting taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars.  It is, as the website says, eerily similar to today’s credit crisis.

So, I think it’s an attack that has legs, because it’s directly relevant to the current situation, and it directly involved McCain.  But it’s not just the merits of the Obama counter-punch that I’m so excited about…I’m just really glad to see the Democratic nominee playing to win, hitting back and hitting back really, really hard.

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format, Ifill not great

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

As for the debate, it came out pretty much as I expected…neither candidate made the mistakes they might have; Palin gave memorized answers to questions different from those asked and didn’t drool or fall over; Biden didn’t stick his foot in his mouth.  Popular opinion seems to be that Biden won…okay by me.

What I’d like to complain about is the format-moderator combination.  There were several instances in which Ifill tossed to a rebuttal with a quick “Governor?” or “Senator?” when no rebuttal was necessary, desired, or even possible.  Instead, we got another two minutes of repetitive word salad or talking points, when we could have moved on.  And of course there were no follow up questions actually challenging Palin on not answer the questions.  I thought Jim Lehrer did much better.

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pre- VP debate thoughts

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Some free advice (worth every penny, no doubt!) for Joe Biden regarding Thursday’s debate.

  • Use a very light touch.  As her few press appearances so far have demonstrated, Palin’s utter un-qualified-ness will be apparent without any help from Joe Biden.  Biden must be very, very careful about attacking Palin, to avoid the Rick Lazio effect and a sympathy backlash.  He should present a clear contrast by demonstrating his range of knowledge and his nuanced and specific grasp of policy, but there’s no need to push Palin — she’ll crash and burn on her own.
  • Corollary: give Palin enough rope to hang herself.  Give her plenty of time to display her grasp of the issues.
  • Strongly counter lies.  Palin may not know anything, but she’s a strong, confident and (at least on first presentation, to many segments of the population) likable politician.  She and McCain have been lying almost pathologically.  Biden should forcefully say “that’s not true” when something isn’t true.
  • It’s okay to be boring.  Joe Biden isn’t known as a boring guy — he’s a lively and spirited debater, and he has a well-deserved reputation as a gaffe machine.  But the storyline on Friday doesn’t need to be about how Biden shone in the debate with his best performance ever (although that would be okay) — it needs to be that Palin totally collapsed while Biden looked on serenely.  Err on the side of bland but well qualified, and avoid long-windedness and gaffes.
  • Focus on the top of the ticket.  This might be obvious, but Biden should set up a contrast between an Obama administration and a McCain administration.  The contrast between Biden and Palin will take care of itself.  By extension, if Biden needs to refer to something incoherent that Palin says, he should discuss “the McCain-Palin campaign” or some such — let her answers reflect on the whole ticket, and attack the whole ticket, not her personally.

I recently read some advice to Joe Biden that he should “break the fourth wall”, explain his dilemma of either attacking or appearing condescending/patronizing, explain that attacking (taking Palin seriously, even if she doesn’t deserve it) is the more respectful of the two and that it isn’t personal, and then attack.  Something along those lines might work, but I’m arguing that it isn’t necessary.  If Biden successfully navigated that approach, he could completely demolish Palin in the debate.  But it’s a high-risk approach, tricky to do correctly and with a very high cost (appearing even more condescending) if he makes a mis-step.  I think, if her interviews and their aftermath to date are any indication, that the media and the public are ready to bury Palin anyway — Biden doesn’t need to do it all in 90 minutes.

A danger in the approach I’m suggesting is that it may underestimate Palin.  I’m counting on Palin to match her interview performance in the debate.  If a much more coherent and better informed Sarah Palin shows up, she’ll vastly outperform expectations and be set up to win.  I think that means Biden must come prepared to mercilessly rip in to McCain (which I don’t expect he’ll have any trouble doing), so he can counter every attack Palin makes, and for every time Palin actually acquits herself well Biden can match that and take a swing at McCain.

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