There’s a new blog in the Indiana blogosphere: Political Equinox. The blog has two editors – one Republican, one Democrat. I’m waiting for the “Jane, You Ignorant Slut” moment from the SNL Point-Counterpoint segments. Anyway, one of the editors managed to work Eugene V. Debs and Otto Von Bismarck into his “about” description. So, I’m sold.
What’s in a name?
As the great Canadian philosopher, Geddy Lee once said, “conform or be cast out.” Francisco Mendez Vale is learning the wisdom of those words.
The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles is refusing to issue Mendez a license under his true name because it doesn’t match the name on his birth certificate. The Lake Station man was born in Puerto Rico where the custom is often to name the child after both the father (Mendez) and the mother (Vale) but generally use only the father’s name. The use of only Mendez was good enough for the U.S. military and United States Steel, but by God, the Indiana BMV runs a tighter ship. Social Security records have Mr. Mendez as Francisco Mendez while the birth certificate is Francisco Mendez Vale. So, the Indiana BMV is requiring him to go to court and get his name changed to Francisco Mendez Vale before they’ll issue a driver’s license. I would presume this also interferes with Mr. Mendez exercising his right to vote.
More presidential campaign stuff
Apparently Hillary Clinton showed some emotion on the campaign coverage. I’m not a big fan of Sen. Clinton’s, but the press coverage of this stuff is stupid, bordering on hysteria. Oh, she’s breaking down! It’s calculated! I think maybe she a) meant what she was saying and how she was saying it; and b) she has to be dog-tired after all that campaigning; and c) the display of emotion was pretty mild.
Meanwhile, I kind of like Barack Obama, but I have to confess, I am a little bewildered by all of the (to me) over the top “hope of a new generation” commentary I’ve been hearing and reading. And it’s not just pundits and bloggers. I’ve heard a number of superlatives from friends and acquaintances talking about Obama’s recent speeches. I get the feeling that Obama is the kind of guy upon whom folks can project their hopes and dreams, regardless of whether he is actually an instrument by which they can be achieved.
I’ve expressed my preference for Edwards before, but I wouldn’t be at all upset if Obama got the nomination. The degree to which Edwards is left out of the pundits’ conversation is truly amazing. I hear more about Rudy Giuliani than I hear about John Edwards despite Edwards’ superior poll numbers and fund raising. (Ron Paul supporters are now suggesting I cry them a river.) I’m realistic enough to realize that Edwards’ path to the White House is not clear if one even exists. In sporting terms, he does not seem to control his own destiny. He has to hope for some help, either through Clinton or Obama imploding or something else. He could have an interesting role to play if we get to the Democratic Convention with neither of the other two having a majority of the delegates.
MyDD Presidential Delegate Counter
The excellent political site, MyDD has created a handy-dandy Presidential delegate counter widget. I’ve plugged it into the left sidebar (the formatting is a bit off — it will probably drive crazy my poor web designer wife, but it’s good enough for my aesthetically challenged sensibilities.) If you are interested, the widget code is available here.
As of right now, the Democratic delegates are as follows:
Obama 16
Clinton 15
Edwards 14
(Out of 4,372 possible)
The Republican candidates are:
Romney 17
Huckabee 13
Thompson 8
McCain 5
Paul 4
Hunter 1
Giuliani 1
(Out of 2,516 possible)
The media generated “momentum” from Iowa can’t be discounted, but in terms of actual delegates, it bears repeating that Iowa is not terribly significant. I’m wondering why very little is being made of Romney’s victory in Wyoming. Is it just because political reporters have decided arbitrarily that Iowa and New Hampshire are important or is there something less artificial going on?
Gravatars
I’m messing with the gravatar plug-in for the comments. Basically, if you go to their site, and upload an image to associate with your e-mail, it will display that image whenever you use that e-mail address to identify yourself with a comment.
Update – Brenda posted this in the comments – I had a similar problem:
After I selected my 80×80 icon and hit crop, I had to also assign it to the email (seemed like it should do it automatically, but it was a second step).
HB 1075 – Perpetual embryo storage
Rep. Murphy has introduced HB 1075 which requires a health care provider to perpetually store embryos created through in vitro fertilization or artificial reproduction. Failing to do so is a Class A misdemeanor. The only acceptable way for a health care provider to get rid of an embryo if the biological parents abandon it is to have the embryo adopted.
HB 1056 – Smoking with a child in the vehicle
HB 1056 would impose a $25 fine for motorists who smoke in a passenger vehicle while it is occupied by a child, 13 years old or younger.
Boy, that would’ve made some of my childhood vacations more pleasant. As the youngest child, my seat was always in the way back of the station wagon. My folks were smokers. I remember the conversations occasionally going like this:
Doug: “Can you open a window, please?”
Parents: “Nope, we have the air conditioner on.”
*Cough* *cough*
Somehow the smoke traveled to the back of the Impala wagon a lot faster than the cool air.
Sen. Kenley
The Indy Star has a nice little write-up on Sen. Kenley who will probably be the most influential legislature during this session’s property tax debate. I’d know a fair amount about his background but there were some new bits. I knew he’d gone to law school at Harvard but hadn’t known he got his B.A. at Miami University, my alma mater. That doesn’t surprise me as I had run across his son, John, at Miami while I was there and then again at IU-Bloomington when we were both in law school. (Incidentally, John was a credit to his father in that he seemed to be one of the hardest working guys at the school — he was always in the library). I hadn’t known that John was half of a set of Kenley twins.
Presidential Debates
I watched the Presidential debates last night off-and-on, intermixing it with watching some of the football playoffs. How is the citizenry supposed to inform itself with that kind of competing programming?
Anyway, the format was kind of interesting. For starters, it was a back-to-back debate with the GOP going first and the Democrats going second. So, that put the tone of the two debates in starker contrast. Second, there was kind of a roundtable format with all the candidates sitting around and some back and forth permitted. To me, it looked like the Republicans had their knives out much more than did the Democrats. By and large, it was Mitt Romney on the receiving end of those knives. I think Huckabee had the best zinger of the night. He had said something about Romney’s position and Romney took the occasion to admonish Huckabee not to characterize his position. Quick as a whip, Huckabee interjected “which one?” — highlighting Romney’s, shall we say, flexibility. In terms of substance, it seemed to me that the Republicans (except for Ron Paul) tied the albatross of George W. Bush’s foreign policy ever more firmly around their necks.
On the Democratic side, the candidates were generally more polite to each other. One thing that was evident was their exhaustion. They all did fine when they were actively speaking, but they all seemed to have that glazed look when they were watching one of the other candidates. That’s understandable given the pace of the campaign. As a strategic matter, it looked like Edwards had made it his goal to knock off Clinton and worry about Obama later. Stylistically, he was probably the most passionate of the candidates, really hitting his stride when the topic shifted to domestic economics. As a practical matter, I don’t know how much his debate performance helps or hurts him in terms of his efforts to get out of third place in New Hampshire.
Clinton’s gender puts her in a tough spot when Obama and Edwards gang up on her. Do too little and she looks ineffective and vulnerable. Do too much and, fairly or unfairly, she’s going to get tagged with the “shrill” card. She can’t really go with a strategy of claiming that “those mean guys are ganging up on poor little me,” because a) you don’t really want that in a President; and b) she’s campaigning as (and probably is) a tough person. Her most implausible gambit was the “35 years of change” mantra. To me that’s like claiming that four right turns constitutes a change of course. A couple of times, I felt bad for her because they were talking about how she looked or how likable she was in a way that was pretty well tied to her gender.
Obama didn’t make a particular impression on me. He certainly didn’t hurt himself, but I don’t think debates are necessarily his most effective forum. I think he’s more effective standing at a podium by himself making a speech. I think his best moment was when the moderator asked him something about the Republican debate and Obama confessed that he’d been flipping back and forth between that and the football game. He proved that he actually had been watching when he advised the moderator that the Redskins hadn’t been doing so well.
Bill Richardson was just along for the ride. It’s probably a failing on my part, but whenever he talks, I can’t help but think of Horatio Sanz from Saturday Night Live.
Ron Paul getting shut out
I find Ron Paul to be an interesting candidate even if I don’t ultimately support him. He’s raising gobs of money and his poll numbers are comparable to a lot of the other Republican candidates. So, it’s inexcusable to me that the upcoming GOP debate sponsored by Faux News will be excluding Rep. Paul. Apparently I’m not the only one. The New Hampshire Republican Party is withdrawing as co-sponsor of the debate.
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