Entries tagged with politics

Entry tags:

politics

protecting marriage

I'm late in adding my voice to this. California's Proposition 8, and similar efforts when they crop up in other states, destroys families. Its supporters like to argue in the abstract, but it has real effects on real people, and if you can't look the affected people in the eye and say "yes, I intend to attack you", maybe you ought to rethink your support.

I am married, religious, and heterosexual. I cannot see what recognizing other types of unions could possibly do to threaten my marriage. On the contrary, equal acknowledgement of all unions helps protect the institution; it makes it more likely that the folks in marriages actually want to be in them, rather than settling just to get legal protection (for, say, your kids).

What threatens marriage? Taking it lightly and not working with one's partner(s) to strengthen the family. The high rates of divorce and abuse demonstrate that we heterosexuals don't have a great track record on this. Why should I believe that my gay friends will do worse? I expect they'll do better, because when you're a minority, it takes a certain degree of commitment to your marriage to be willing to put yourself out there in the first place. I suspect there is a far, far lower proportion of casual marriages in the gay community than there is in mine.

You know what consittutional amendment I'd like to see? The abolition of marriage as a legal entity. The avenue of legal partnership -- for the sake of inheritance, custody, power of attorney, taxes, finances, etc -- should be available to any group of people who voluntarily and compently choose to enter into such an arrangement. The state should simply register them, as it does for business partnerships. Beyond that, it's not a state concern. This is not marriage; this is a civil union.

Marriage, on the other hand, is a religous matter. Different religions have different rules for what they will and won't accept. That's fine; all communities have rules that apply within that community. It is equally valid for Roman Catholics to say "no divorcees need apply", for Jews to say "no intermarriages here", and for Pastafarians to say "marriages must be trios of any two adults and a pasta product". Your community, your rules, and your own enforcement problem. Please leave the rest of us out of it.

If there is anyone out there who is at this late hour still able to turn dollars into efforts to defeat this proposition, please let me know. (The link I've seen expired before I saw it.)

Entry tags:

links

It looks like Congress is on the verge of passing the bailout bill. Sigh. I feel like I want to say more about that, but it's not coming. In the meantime, this background explanation from David Director Friedman seems sound to me.

To maybe bring some cheer in the wake of that, it's clean-out-the-browser-tabs day:

The sanctuary in the desert, modernized by

hobbitblue:
You can go North, South, East or West
>N
There is a table of bread here
>Eat bread
You are not hungry, trust me.
[...]

The great schlep -- an organized campaign to send kids to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. Or, at least, they'll visit. :-) Link from

browngirl and

mamadeb.

Duckling scam from

zachkessin.

Q: How many children of a dysfunctional family does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Your brother would know.
Passed on by

siderea.

Sarah Palin Disney (video) forwarded by

tangerinpenguin made me laugh.

hrj made mock sushi.

I want this lamp (from

nancylebov).

I found this video touching, right before Rosh Hashana (it has no religious content). Forwarded by

530nm330hz.

And finally, sing to your pooky is a thoughtful entry from

scaharp.

Entry tags:

bad form

About a week ago I started receiving spam ("that you signed up for" -- um, no) from the Obama campaign. Complaints to their postmaster have gone unheeded (and have not bounced). My first letter took the tone of "this must be a mistake" and I commended them on the otherwise good experiences I've had with their campaign while asking them to correct this error; the second was closer to "you are reflecting poorly on your candidate". Still nada. As a matter of security I do not follow "unsubscribe" links in unsolicited email (who knows what they'll really do?), though I did go to their site (through the front door) and leave feedback reporting this problem.

The problem is not only continuing but escalating. I can set my spam filters to take care of this, but it's bad manners on their part and seems unwise when they want my vote.

If anyone reading this has ties to this campaign, you might want to tell them to knock it off. I would point out that the opposition has not stooped to spamming me so far. (If I'm really lucky, perhaps this post will snare a campaign person following referrer links.)

Entry tags:

harvesting some browser tabs

The bookshop that has all the books in the world -- except one is a lovely 8-page graphic short story (link from

shewhomust).

Joel on Software and Coding Horror (I hadn't heard of the latter before but looks interesting) have launched Stack Overflow, which looks like it could be a good resource for answering technical questions. (I hope that by logging in with my LJ OpenID from home and saying "always accept", I'll be able to answer questions with that ID from work where LJ is blocked.)

Programmers as carpenters (short).

Harold Feld's analysis of the Palin camp's attack on Oprah (part one). This story fizzled soon after hitting CNN on Monday; I hope that's the last we hear of it, but it seems plausible that it could come back on a slower news day. Sheesh. Usually it's folks from the left who assert that freedom of the press means you're entitled to someone else's press.

A few on the economy, some serious and some light (because sometimes you have to laugh to avoid crying too hard):

We've all seen that ABC graph comparing the Obama and McCain tax plans (sorted by bracket). Here's a version that's closer to scale (link from anastasiav).
Scott Adams surveyed economists to try to find out what the experts think about the candidates. A surprising (to me) number said it doesn't matter which candidate wins (on this set of issues).
An article on the current troubles by one of the Nobel laureates in economics. Interesting on first reading; I haven't dug deeper yet. And, as demonstrated most recently in the previous bullet, economists don't tend to agree on much.
This picture turned out to be sadly ironic.
Didn't anyone consider this angle on the looming economic disaster? (Onion video from rjlippincott).

Entry tags:

short takes

goldsquare's post on 9/11 is short and to the point. I wrote and deleted more words before seeing this, so I'll just point you there.

Tonight I got one of the most polite political-solicitation phone calls I can remember receiving, from the local Obama campaign. With all the dirt, both real and manufactured, in the political arena, it was nice to have a pleasant and non-pushy conversation. Had I not been on my way out the door, I would have accepted her offer to answer my questions. But I am welcome to stop in at their local office three blocks from my home any time I like, she said. (I assume she doesn't really have anything that isn't on the campaign web site, but sometimes the human interaction is nice.)

This was more timely yesterday, but: http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/ is worth a look. Do look closely. :-) Thanks to

browngirl for the link.

From a recent conversation about workplace diversity: "We have a very diverse department. We have emacs and vi users." :-)

A pet butterfly? Link from

mabfan.

A light-hearted comment on the economy relayed by

thnidu.

Entry tags:

health,
politics

ponderings: health care

In the comments here we were talking about health care in the US. The current system is broken in many ways, but the "nuke it and start over with some nationalized program" proposals are scary too. What incremental improvements are possible? I have to believe that there are some.

One idea I'm interested in is what would happen if we separated paying for routine care from paying for catastrophic care. What would happen if people could be on their own for the former but could buy a policy to cover hospitalizations, major illnesses, and the like? How effective would that be and what would it tend to cost? What would having that in play do to the over-the-counter (uninsured) price of routine care? (Yes, I know that not everyone can afford to pay for routine care out of pocket. I'm exploring a suite of options, not choosing a single one.)

On the flip side, would medical practices or insurance companies be willing to sell affordable plans that cover all your routine care (only), if they were not on the hook for catastrophic losses? Could that get things down to the point where the average family could afford regular checkups, preventative care, and routine tests (which helps prevent some catastrophic issues)? Such plans exist now in niches (vision and dental, most commonly in my experience), but I haven't heard of one for general medical care. Why not? (Am I totally misunderstanding where the profit centers are in the insurance business?)

Both angles are important. What I'm labelling catastrophic incidents are (as the label implies) financially devastating if you don't have sufficient coverage. Outside of elder-care issues I'm not sure how common they are, but it's the sort of thing I wouldn't want to take a chance on. I insure my car and house, after all -- how much the moreso should I insure my health?

What I suspect has a bigger impact on the poor, though, is the routine care. If you don't have insurance, you're looking at a three-digit number to walk into your doctor's office. Throw in some kids and you're in trouble. (This is why I asked what would happen to those costs if catastrophic care were a separate factor.) Could plans that just cover routine care be made affordable enough for most people? This doesn't solve the other problem, but neither does the current system -- we rely on hospitals' obligations to treat (which is a legitimate public demand while they pay no taxes), or medicaid/medicare/SSI in some cases, to get through those. Remember, incremental improvement.

I'd also like to explore the effects of reducing drug regulation, letting people buy from anywhere that's selling and reducing barriers to getting things onto the market. I know the standard argument against this (those high prices pay for R&D), but I'm not sure how much I believe that. What are the other considerations?

Where else could we look for incremental improvements?

(In case you haven't figured it out, I am not a medical professional, an economist, nor part of the insurance industry.)

Entry tags:

politics

voting strategically

I've been thinking about this November's election, and the presumption that PA is a swing state and That Matters, and voting for the lesser plausible evil versus voting one's conscience. I started to write about this in comments in someone else's journal (where it was arguably off-topic), so I figured I should bring it here.

Most of the time we vote in elections to address that particular election -- a tactical move (and an important one), in the grand scheme of things. I'm coming to the conclusion that no third party can ever advance so long as everyone does that, so I'm strongly leaning toward making a strategic vote this year, recognizing that the payoff will be delayed if present at all.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

weekend bits

I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta for sunrise and sunset changes over the course of the year, with the widest swings being at equnoxes and the smallest ones at solstices. I grok that; I don't grok that they don't match.)

Friday night I saw something unusual at services: a man lit candles and a woman made kiddush and there was no special occasion dictating that. For all that egalitarianism is a core principle in my movement, I don't think I have ever seen a woman make kiddush in our sanctuary before, unless there were special circumstances (sisterhood service, a bat mitzvah, etc). Gee, maybe there's hope that someday I will be offered that honor after all. (There's still another barrier: there is a strong meme of giving that pair of honors to a couple. This was violated this week, too.)

Yesterday morning after services our newest rabbi (hmm, I need a shorthand notation for him -- the others are "senior rabbi" and "associate rabbi") talked with the group about adult education. He wanted to know what we want to learn, when we want to learn it, and how we want to learn it. It was a good discussion; I wish im luck in distilling down feedback that, in aggregate, meant "all of it". :-) He seemed a little surprised by the idea that, actually, we'd love to learn on Shabbat -- ideally right after services, but late afternoon leading into havdalah would be acceptable to some. I hope that idea bears fruit. (Of course, he was asking the group of people who self-selected to stay around after services for the discussion... but every option doesn't need to appeal to every congregant, only to a critical mass. And we also discussed the idea of giving the same class multiple times, in different kinds of timeslots -- a teacher's dream, but for some reason we don't tend to do it.)

At the end of the discussion he said something interesting, so after it broke up I asked him "did you just imply that you're available for individual study?" and he said yes. Heh. I'll be in touch.

Short takes:

I assume that everyone has by now seen Jon Stewart on election hypocrisy. You might not have seen Language Log's discourse analysis on Karl Rove.

(I have not posted about the election; it's not because I don't care, but because there's so much as to overwhelm and lots of other people are already posting good, thoughtful pieces.)

I recently found myself in a discussion about internet discussions and used the phrase on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. I later went looking for the cartoon; it shouldn't surprise me that it has a Wikipedia entry, but it did surprise me a little that Google suggested the phrase after I'd typed only "on the internet". That real-time search-guessing thing is good sometimes. (I also went looking for a recipe for a dish I ate last night at Ali Baba's, and when I'd typed only "mujdara" it offered two completions, "recipe" and "calories".)

Speaking (sort of) of internet discoveries, this article from Real Live Preacher taught me about the Caganer, a figure we don't often see in nativity scenes these days but apparently quite normal in times past.

This article on using the internet for identity theft (link from Raven) didn't have anything new for me, but it's a good summary to give to people just getting started. It did remind me how annoying I find the canned security questions used by most banks -- things like "mother's maiden name" and "city of your birth" were way too easy to crack even before the net was ubiquitious. (And the ones that aren't tend to be non-deterministic, like "favorite color".) Fortunately, in most cases your bank doesn't really care about the answer; it's just a password. So lying adds security at little cost, assuming you can remember the lie. (What do you mean my first pet wasn't named "as375m~@z"? :-) )

Entry tags:

random bits

Why, oh why, is tulip season so short? It feels like they just showed up not long ago, and now they're fading. Oh well... on to something else, I guess! (I think the lilac bush is next to bloom, but I'm not sure.)

This weekend Dani and I joined some friends for a last-minute gaming get-together. We played La Cita (my third time, I think), which split interestingly: the winner had 35 points (would have been 40 if he hadn't starved his people in the last round), another player and I had 32 and 33, and the other two were in the high teens. It didn't look like that in play. (I thought I was doing worse and those last two better.) Then we played Rum and Pirates and all clumped within a few points of each other (something like 62-70). I like both of these games and will happily play more.

A few weeks ago I ordered a used DVD set via Amazon Marketplace. (I decided to see what all the Heroes fuss is about.) I chose a seller who had only a handful of ratings, all positive, figuring that someone like that is motivated to give good service. (Also, I noticed that the DVD would ship from PA.) A few weeks passed with no DVDs, so I sent email a couple days ago. This morning the seller wrote back with profuse apologies; he (she?) had accidentally sent my order to someone else who'd ordered on the same day, but now had the set back in hand -- "so I'll drive it over this afternoon". It turns out the seller is in the greater-Pittsburgh area. As promised, the DVDs were waiting for me when I got home from work, so everything worked out just fine. (I never order anything from third-party sellers that I actually need in a hurry.)

Speaking of TV, the BBC might bring back Blake's 7 (link from caryabend). Woo hoo! I trust that this will eventually find its way to DVD and, thence, my TV. Since it's been more than a quarter-century, I do wonder what they'll do for casting. Of course, they could well do a "25 years later..." story, even though the final season left things on a cliffhanger.

(Anonymous) quote of the day, after interviewing a job candidate: "He has a lot of learning to do, and I don't want to pay the tuition".

This sign in a shop made me laugh.

Reusable printer paper looks like an interesting idea; I wonder if it can be developed economically. I'm surprised by the claims about what it costs to (1) manufacture and (2) recycle a piece of paper.

Quote of the day #2 brings some much-needed context to the flap over Obama's ex-minister. Excerpt (compiled by dglenn): "No one likes to hear someone, especially a preacher, criticize our good country. But Donna Potis [...] and so many others who decry presidential candidate Barack Obama for having attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church while he preached prophetically have very selective memories." The whole thing is worth a read; it's not long.

Somewhat relatedly, osewalrus pointed me to this post pointing out that all the candidates and the voters have a bigger religious-leader problem than this. Excerpt: "[I]f I wake up and find that I'm in an America where certain pastors and certain churches are openly denounced from the White House's presidential podium, I will suddenly get even more nervous about freedom of religion in America than I already am." Yes.

I found this speculative, alternate timeline of the last ten years by rjlippincott interesting.

Question for my Jewish (and Jewish-aware) readers: Thursday is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust rememberance day), so instead of my usual "daf bit" in the morning service, I'd like to do something on-theme. It has to be a teaching, something that would qualify as torah study, which rules out most of the readings that tend to show up in special services for the day. Any suggestions? I could probably find something in Lamentations, if that's not cliche, but I'm not really sure. And naturally, I do not wish to offend with a bad choice people who are old enough to remember.

Entry tags:

politics

PA primary, and a question for Bostonians

No surprises here -- with 99.3% counted Clinton won PA by 8.6% (54.3 - 45.7) (full results here), enough to continue an increasingly-ugly fight but not the clear win she needed in order to be viable. Obama isn't much affected; a win would have helped him but everyone expected him to lose, so a loss doesn't seem to hurt. Apparently she got the older rural white vote and he got the younger urban black vote, as everyone expected. I wonder if months of arguing about demographics will be better or worse than months of mud-slinging? Though I guess after the people are done voting, with no winner, things might change. I do wish that, in the absence of news in one area, the online media were more inclined to report actual news in other areas. (I'm glad my dead-tree newspaper still does a reasonable job of that.)

Some folks have been claiming that the media are biased against Clinton. I don't see it, really; there's plenty of bias against Obama too. Who actually believes that "the media" speak with one voice? It's important to use multiple news sources precisely because they don't. But for those who claim an anti-Clinton bias, what's with reporting this as a win by 10%? At best you can round (legitimately) to 9. (While I was writing this the site updated, now reporting 54.6 to 45.4. That's still not 10% unless you do your math by rounding one number and then substracting from 100 to get the other. I could see some sloppy reporters doing that, but those weren't the published numbers this morning when I saw 10% headlines.)

In unrelated news... friends in Boston, is this report accurate? (Link from Metahacker on LJ.) Legislation is pending to restrict public movement of people suspected of being gang members -- sponsored by Democrats? WTF? That seems really out of character for most Democrats at all, let alone New England Democrats. Or is this some sort of trick where you introduce a bill you know can't pass to get some of your constituents off your back, while hoping other people see what you're doing and don't hold it against you?

Entry tags:

politics

election

The polls were practically deserted when I went this morning on my way to work. There weren't even any campaigners out front -- just one guy from the Sierra Club with a petition. Weird. (My district -- or maybe my state, for all I know -- doesn't tell you what voter number you are for the day, like I've heard some places do. So we'll have to wait for the news reports to find out about turnout.) For better or worse, I've now done my small part to nudge the election in the direction I prefer. We'll see if it did any good later.

Over the weekend we got automated phone spam from Hillary and three of her supporters, all of it devoid of positive content. Yuck. We also got phone spam from the Obama campaign -- one succinct, positive message with a URL, either from an actual human or using much better recording technology than the Hillary campaign. So that's minus 4 points for Hillary and minus 0.5 points for Obama, more or less. (No, this didn't affect my vote.)

In the last few elections there's always been a bake sale at the polling place, run by kids. (I assume it's a fundraiser for their school. Now that I wrote this, though: are schools not in session today, or were these kids missing classes?) I try to support fundraisers where the kids themselves are doing the work (as opposed to when parents shill for their kids); I think it teaches good values. But I didn't expect this to work today. When they asked if I wanted any cookies I said "got anything that's kosher for Passover?", and they actually did! They had macaroons that they'd arranged to make in a kosher l'pesach kitchen. Cool. So I bought some. They are far from the best macaroons I've had, but they're ok and really, the cookies were secondary anyway. I strive to support with my dollars -- and my votes -- the behaviors I want to encourage, and withhold both in response to behaviors I find objectionable.

Entry tags:

politics

voter registration

PSA: tomorrow is the deadline for registering to vote in the PA primary.

I'm curious about the numbers of new and party-change registrations. Apparently there have been 111,000 new Democratic registrations since the fall election and the number of registered Republicans has gone down by 13,000 in the same time period. But, of the remaining 98,000, how many are brand-new registrations and how many are changes from third-party or independent voters? I'm curious.

According to this article linked by

byronhaverford, they're a few thousand shy of 4 million Dem registrations. That says to me that, while 111,000 new (nominal or actual) Democrats is impressive, it's not nearly the number of cross-registrations I would have expected. Of course, this number will change in the next few days, but even so, I guess I was expecting a lot more non-Dems to temporarily switch, like I did.

So for those of you who kept your Republican registrations, I have a thought. Your primary is sealed up already, but instead of staying home or wasting votes on McCain (who doesn't need them), how about casting votes for whichever Republican candidate you feel best represents what the GOP should be and was before the far-righteous got into power? You're not voting for a person (that's already over with), but you could vote for an idea or a direction. Were I registered Republican I would be voting for Ron Paul because he's the only Republican who's against the Iraq war and he seems to actually be for smaller government. (That latter used to be definitive for Republicans, but it hasn't been true for a while.) Could he win? Of course not. If he did, could he implement his agenda? Not very much. But if he showed up with a primary win, that just might get people to start talking about those ideas.

Or not. Up to you. I'm just suggesting that you make your votes count in this late state.

Entry tags:

politics

Obama's speech

Barack Obama's speech today really spoke to me. He has articulated many of the problems we face as a country, without sinking into us-versus-them mode. Lots of politicians have claimed to be uniters, but this one seems to actually have that clue. Go, read.

Aside from major deal-killers, more than specific issues, I judge candidates for executive offices on their visions, their passions, and their characters. I had already registered as a Democrat to vote against one candidate in next month's primary; it's refreshing to find myself wanting to vote for somebody. (I don't know how I'll vote in November, but I don't have to decide that any time soon.)

Entry tags:

link round-up

Maritan Headsets (from Joel on Software) is a long but worthwhile article on software standards -- both not having them early enough, and having them and trying to enforce them. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, like the paragraph containing this passage: "[...] but of course when you plug the headphones into FireQx 3.0 lo and behold they explode in your hands because of a slight misunderstanding about some obscure thing in the spec which nobody really understands called hasLayout, and everybody understands that when it's raining the hasLayout property is true and the voltage is supposed to increase to support the windshield-wiper feature, but there seems to be some debate over whether hail and snow are rain for the purposes of hasLayout..."

Rescue me: a fed bailout crosses a line seems (to this non-expert) like a good analysis of what just happened to the market and the dollar. (Need a login ID? Try BugMeNot.) I am more scared, and more angry, about our government's economic policies than I've been in a while. As someone on my subscription list said (I forget who), the people who actually took personal responsibility and saved rather than spending recklessly are the ones who are going to get hammered by this, while the idiots who bought houses (or corporate holdings) they couldn't afford and racked up tons of debt will be bailed out because we can't stand to say "too bad you were an idiot".

As long as I'm saying "too bad"... too bad, Michigan and Florida. Agreed.

On a lighter note: Garfield Minus Garfield is surreal. And since seeing it a week or so ago, I haven't been able to read Garfield "straight".

Entry tags:

random bits

I've mentioned before that my synagogue maintains a freezer of donated, cooked food to have on hand for houses of mourning, families where someone's sick, and similar acute cases of need. I think this is a great idea; if you're cooking anyway you can cook a little more to donate and help someone out. Yesterday I got email from the person who monitors this saying they're low on meat and pareve dishes, so tonight I'm roasting an oven-full of chicken to take over (less one meal's worth for ourselves this week), and tomorrow night I will make some vegetarian soup. I love being able to help in this way.

Speaking of soups, recently Dani and I were at a restaurant where I had a really fabulous butternut-squash soup. This one was dairy (I detected cream), and I couldn't identify all the spices. Web-surfing has led me to some promising recipes; I'm open to specific suggestions. I have now procured one butternut squash with which to experiment.

I'm about 40% of the way through the second book of His Dark Materials. I am pretty sure I know what the deal was with Grummon (the explorer Asriel went off in search of). So either I'm right or the author is being clever and has something up his sleeve. It feels pretty darn obvious, so I'm not ruling out the latter. (No, please don't tell me; I'll know on my own soon.)

The local SCA choir is singing at an event this weekend. I think we sounded really good at Monday's practice; I'm looking forward to the performance. We'll also be doing one piece jointly with our instrumental group, which is nifty. We haven't done that in years.

Jericho returns for a short second season (half-season?) next week. I really liked this show, so I'm glad to see it unharmed by the writers' strike. Whether it is harmed by its network is yet to be seen. (They cancelled it and then responded to a fan campaign.)

Assorted links (most sources lost, sorry):

Baby dos and don'ts. That the site is not in English really doesn't matter.

Surfing cat. It's not entirely clear to me that this is the cat's idea.

Joel on Software recommends Tripit for keeping track of the assorted confirmation numbers involved in travelling. Sounds useful especially for us infrequent travellers who don't have the routine down already.

Bruce Schneier on security versus privacy. Too many people think it's a zero-sum game; it's not.

Bookmarking (haven't finished reading yet): Rands in Repose on preparing presentations. It's odd: in most contexts public speaking is, ahem, not my strong suit. Really not my strong suit, even in fields I know very well. I get nervous and fumbly-mouthed. The exception? While I'm not as skilled at the mechanics yet as I'd like to be, giving sermons or divrei torah does not make me nervous.

I pass this on too late for voters in half the primaries in the country, but even so, there's a general election coming, so:

jducoeur nails what's really important in choosing a candidate. (PA doesn't vote until late April. It's possible we won't actually be irrelevant this time, but we'll see how today turns out.)

George Bush v Mohammed ibn Tugluq by David Director Friedman, on whom the law binds.

Entry tags:

politics

election non-surprise

I'm kind of sad that John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race. He wasn't going to win (on first ballot at the convention), I don't think, but he has enough of a following that it seems like he could have influenced the front-runners had he stayed in. On the other hand, he was probably drawing more votes from Obama than from Hillary ("sleaze as usual"), so if it helps Obama win the nomination it won't be all bad. He hasn't made a formal endorsement, but this might count. Still, if the Dems don't slap Hillary down hard and soon, they risk blowing the election, either by nominating a slick divisive candidate or by doing too much dirty campaigning before rejecting her.

(I'm not for Obama, but I'm against Hillary. I really wish we didn't have institutionalized two-party rule in this country; it discourages innovation.)

Did anyone else catch the complaint from the NH chapter of NOW? (It was in the news yesterday or the day before.) They complained that Kennedy "betrayed women" by not endorsing Hillary. Earth to NOW: you are doing harm to your candidate if your entire platform is "she's a she". Not that I mind, but I'm just sayin'.

Entry tags:

election results

Locals already know this, but for anyone else who was curious about the results of the elections I wrote about yesterday... from the county returns:

( Read more... )

Ravenstahl won the mayoral election, which isn't too surprising. I had hoped his margin would be lower, but a 35% share for a Republican in a city that's 5:1 Dems:Repubs is something Ravenstahl should pay attention to.

I'm pleased that the Libertarian candidate for controller got 10% of the vote. While there's still a long way to go and Pittsburgh might be degenerate, I think the best path for third parties given the official biases against them is to win smaller races and work up from there. I'd love to see a libertarian on city council. (No, not enough to run.) Remember, until yesterday our mayor hadn't been elected as mayor.

In other news: county-wide, 26.7% of voters (over 69,000 people) used the "straight party line" option. Sigh.

Entry tags:

politics,
rants

voting machines: too much automation

This isn't a gripe about the electronic voting machines with no audit trail and annoying user interfaces; that's a separate rant. This is a gripe about a feature also shared by the old machines: the "vote party line" lever/button.

I am offended by the presence of this option. It wasn't as glaring on the old machines, where the entire option space was in front of you and you watched the affected levers go ka-chink, but it was still wrong. My ballot this morning consisted of six screens, so I could have pressed that button without even looking at the effects. (Yes, there's a confirmation phase, but it's easy to just hit the big red "vote" button at that point.)

I don't want it to be that easy for people to vote for people whose names they won't recognize two minutes later. If you want to vote a straight Democrat or Republican or Pastafarian ticket, you should have to touch every lever, button, or check-box. Voting is a responsibility in which you should invest more than a few seconds' worth of thought. There were ballot items I skipped this morning because I did not feel well-enough informed; that should be more common, and the party-line button makes it less likely.

If we want a parliamentary government where you vote for parties instead of people, we should make one explicitly. I've heard the argument that taking away this option would disenfranchise some voters. Well, yeah -- if you don't want to look at each ballot item on which you're voting, you should be disenfranchised. If you've gone to the polls at all, the incremental cost of facing the candidate's names (and parties -- you get that information) does not seem at all burdensome. If even a few voters look at a name and say "hey, wasn't he the one who was indicted?" (or whatever), it will have served its purpose.

Entry tags:

Pittsburgh mayor

Tuesday Pittsburgh is having a special (off-cycle) election for mayor. The incumbent, Luke Ravenstahl, was the president of city council and stepped in after Mayor O'Connor died a little more than a year ago, so this election is for the rest of the term. Now, Pittsburgh has been suffering one-party rule for decades, with five times as many Democrats as Republicans registered, so usually the contest is in the Democratic primary, not the real election. But this year, for the first time in a long while, there's a credible Republican challenger, Mark DeSantis.

I was surprised to read this week that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which leans pretty far to the left, endorsed DeSantis. So did the police union. (So did the more-conservative newspaper, but that's not a surprise.) DeSantis doesn't have as much money in his campaign fund as Ravenstahl, but he's got a decent war chest, and his contributions have been outpacing Ravenstahl's for the last few months.

The election is probably still Ravenstahl's to lose, so I'm a little surprised that he's gone in for negative campaigning (and pretty stupid negative campaigning at that), and that he doesn't seem to demonstrate the political acumen to deal with the public blunders he's made while in office. Yes, elected officials misuse public property and blow off their obligations all the time, but he got caught and, instead of apologizing, tried to justify it.

DeSantis has credible ideas for getting the city back on its feet financially, he seems to know that he's accountable to the public, and he's not part of the "same old, same old" club that's been running the city into the ground for years. Is he perfect? No, of course not -- but he's better than maintaining the status quo. And he's got momentum, which the third-party candidates I would otherwise pay closer attention to do not.

I know it will be hard for DeSantis to accomplish all that much directly if elected. I have no illusion that the Post-Gazette's endorsement is sincere; I think they hope to dispose of the current mayor, use city council to prevent the new mayor from doing anything, and then come back strong in two years with whomever the Dems have groomed while out of the spotlight. But even so, all that said, I'd like to see what DeSantis can do, both directly (fixing some of the city's problems) and indirectly (breaking the one-party mindset). I plan to vote for him on Tuesday, and I hope enough others will step out of the "I vote for my party" pattern to give the guy a chance to improve things.

Entry tags:

politics

wishful thinking

My state's government has partially shut down over a budget spat. "Non-essential" employees have been given the temporary boot, but the legislators and governor at the center of the problem are still getting paid. Instead, they should keep the workers and stop paying the politicians until it's fixed. Fast Eddie and the more-numerous-than-necessary-anyway legislators should suffer the consequences of their brinksmanship, but, sadly, it never works out that way.