t+1 » politics

The Houston Chronicle endorses Obama

matt — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:21:37 +0000

I’ve been wondering what my historically Republican hometown newspaper would do, and today they endorsed Obama. Here’s an excerpt:

Perhaps the worst mistake McCain made in his campaign for the White House was the choice of the inexperienced and inflammatory Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Had he selected a moderate, experienced Republican lawmaker such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with a strong appeal to independents, the Chronicle’s choice for an endorsement would have been far more difficult.

That captures my feelings. If McCain would have stayed true to his remarks in 2000 about Jerry Falwell, and stayed true to his original position on the Bush tax cuts, and then chosen a VP like Joe Leiberman, truly showing his independent nature, then this could have been a very different race.

Sarah Palin interviewed by Katie Couric … WOW.

matt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:31:15 +0000

My three-year old son is more coherent when he explains how dinosaurs live in the museum. If the voters choose McCain and Palin, then we deserve every bit of the hell that comes with it. It is painfully clear she is not ready for the job.

I’m so worked up over this bailout I’m participating in democracy

matt — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:48:51 +0000

I just finished using a form on George Voinovich’s site to let him know my thoughts on this banking crisis.

I’m not adamantly opposed to the bailout in theory. I get the idea that the some market activities have external consequences. But I also get that this administration always says “trust me!” right before shit gets really, really bad. If we’re going to do a bailout, let’s do it in a boring and well-thought out way. I want to make sure that this bailout buys us enough safeguards and regulations so that we’re never faced with this crap again.

The villains on k5 have a pretty good discussion about this bailout. I like this comment:

Just about the only way that it would cost 700 billion to get with two chicks is if one was Natalie Portman and the other one was a clone of Natalie Portman. Even cloning a human probably wouldn’t get you particularly close to 700 billion but you might be in the same ballpark.

Ha ha.

Anyhow, I also went to Sherrod Brown’s website and read his statements from today’s hearing and I really like his angle. I’m not too worried about letting him know how I feel since he’s already there.

I also liked how Sherrod Brown has RSS feeds for his site, and a pretty nice looking color scheme. Maybe that’s because he just got there.

UPDATE

Another fine Ohio politician, Marcy Kaptur, is also on the right side of this:

My zeal for McCain just evaporated

matt — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:51:14 +0000

Yeesh. This is akin to a programmer mixing up javascript and java:

Questioned by reporters, McCain continued, adding that it is “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaida is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

Then, Senator Joseph Lieberman, who, like McCain is a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq, stepped forward and whispered in McCain’s ear.

McCain then said, “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaida,” the Washington Post reported.

This article has the bloody details.