Check out "Across the Aisle"
Hey all... I'll be most likely neglecting this blog for the political one that Joey Bishop and I have started. The address is
http://www.bipartite.blogspot.com and it's turning out to be a pretty rockin' sweet time, so come on over!
Vote Early, Vote Often...
¡Viva la Revolución! As I write this I am wearing the cliché "I √oted Today!" sticker... That's right, two hours ago I excercized my voice in American democracy. Some observations:
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Voting is very easy. I walked from UMPI to the rec. center to vote around 9:00 (after my morning class) and by 9:25 I was back at UMPI, sitting in my next class. I think the people who tell hour-wait horror-stories are people who went during lunch hour back in '92 and were late for work. So they haven't voted since and plan to keep others from doing the same so they don't feel guilty. That, or I was lucky to hit the polls during "dumb luck short-line hour," also known as "when most people my age are asleep hour".
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I am still registered under my parent's address, which I was fine with until I had already filled out much of my ballot. It turns out my apartment and my parent's house are in two different state representative districts, and so I was left with a Churchill-or-Sunderland decision. I voted Churchill because of my party line and the fact that I know absolutely nothing about Sunderland. It was such a disappointment because I was psyched about my Fisher-Smith choice, when I was going to vote for a Democrat for good reason. If you ask me, "Did you vote for Jeremy Fischer in '06?" the answer is "Heck yes I did!" because I wrote him in for City Council. Loophole? You know it is. I'll know next election to stop by the little table and change my official address. I'm now going to post a semi-related picture to hold the interest of anyone already bored by this post. Dig in, it's a long one:
This is where I voted today.
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There are few local candidates for anything and little choice/information to make an informed choice available. Probate, treasurer, attorney general, and sherriff were all choices of "Democrat-I've-Heard-Nothing-About" or "Write In". I voted for myself, David Kavanaugh, my wife, the unknown democrat, and nobody, respectively.
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The vote for Governor will be very interesting. I proudly voted for Chandler, but I think he's faded at the end. With the polls sitting at Baldacci 36, Woodcock 30, Merril 27, LaMarche 11, my prediction is Baldacci by between four and seven. Embarrassing would be if Merril beat out Woodcock... though I must give her credit, her campaign has been very agressive. Perhaps another week before the vote, as her ad today in the
Bangor Daily News suggests, and we'd be looking at a third-party woman governor and yet another reason for Maine to be noted as a whole different electoral world than the rest of the nation. I generally liked Angus King, so maybe Merril wouldn't be so bad. To make sure you all read everything I have to say about the election for governor, why don't you stop for a minute, breath, and look at this picture:
Picture courtesy of the Bangor Daily News, November 03, 2006.
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What I want to underscore is the level playing field that public money for elections has created. We may be heading into an era where 45% would be a clear mandate to lead and 40% would mean a comfortable win, elections ripe with third-party candidates in contention and a voice for a greater multitude of ideologies state-wide. While I am still slightly dubious of so much tax-money being sunk into the election, I am very impressed with how well this election has gone off and how positive the push for an even electorate would be. Who would have thought 36% would be the
leader in the pre-election poll!?
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I voted no on 1 and yes on 2. While I was initial in favor of the taxpayers' bill of rights (TABOR), I was struck with a thought recently. The lawmakers who are overspending and running the state into deficit were elected by the very same voters who would be able to decide where further spending is permissable. If we don't choose people who are fiscally responsible, who is to say that we ourselves will be come election day? Further, consider it this way: just as the United States is a Republic, where representatives (little "r") are elected to vote on behalf of the people of their state/district, the people we elect are those we trust to spend the money we send with them to Augusta. However, I did vote "yes" on 2 because if TABOR does pass (it probably won't), referendum 2 will help iron out some of its wrinkles. My father happened to go to Tabor Academy for high school, which has no connection to a Taxpayer's Bill of Rights whatsoever. Their emblem is below:
All-A-Taut-O inDEED.
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Being a conservative, I am a wee bewildered by my party's support for the bill. Shouldn't Republicans be shouting not, "YES ON 1," but rather "HEY, VOTE FOR SOMEONE WHO WON'T OVERSPEND YOUR TAXES: HINT, THERE'S A LITTLE 'R' BY THEIR NAME ON THE BALLOT!" My only thought is that perhaps the same Republicans who introduced the bill are the ones upset about the taxation of tobacco, and their smoker's cough prevents them from yelling more than three words at once. To them I would suggest "VOTE FOR Rs" instead of "YES ON 1". Let's not tie our legislators' hands, but rather make sure the hands we send aren't overzealous with passing out our dough.
Election '06, Part Duex.
Three more things I think:
1)
I like Chandler Woodcock and I think he should get the call to the state house. While I respect Baldacci and think he will probably be a strong candidate for Senator one of these days - legislator seems a more successful role for him - there are problems in Maine I think a straight-foward Republican like Woodcock may be more adept at addressing. Does anyone have a current poll? I've heard everything from Baldacci-Woodcock 43&/42% to Baldacci-Woodcock-Merril-LaMarche 40%/23%/11%/7%. I'm a little skeptical that fewer than one in four will be voting for a major-party candidate whose favorability ratings slightly beat out Baldacci.
2)
Token candidates seem to abound in the world of Aroostook County politics. With all due respect to my party's candidate, "Taxfighter" is a silly title and to simply fight taxes is irresponsible. The Democratic candidate, Jeremy Fischer, seems to have more aptly stated a responsible Republican's view of tax reductions with clear purpose. Has anyone noticed how his voting record is more to the right than some of the Republicans at the state house? Would anyone care to know that Fischer is the same age as Franklin Pierce was when he was a state representative? Things went pretty well for Pierce from there, despite being a single-term president. And a somewhat mediocre one at that. Back to what I was saying, it seems to be a whole lot of Party A's incumbant vs. whomever Party B could scrape up to run against them. I should run for the state house if that's all I need to be to become a major party's candidate.
3)
Has anyone been thinking about how unique the next presidential election will be? It's been decades since a presidential election featured exactly zero sitting presidents or vice-presidents. I'm getting pretty pumped about following both primaries and working on a campaign come election year. My early favorite: McCain/Collins '08. Or Perry/Erskine. Are you up for it, Lynn? You're a strong running mate because you can deliver me the "American citizen, Canadian permanent residents living in the United States" vote. If it's close, that extra .0001% will come in handy.
Thoughts on the 2006 Election
Some of my thoughts on the upcoming election are as follows:1)
My Status as a Card-Carrying Republican is still intact, although I am not so party-line as I once was. I think that the party's leadership has lost connection with much of my generation. It has made the mistake in foreign politics of speaking too loudly about our big stick (to allude to the better of the two Roosevelt presidents). It doesn't feel the need to be accountable as the majority party.
2)
I Support Three Non-Republicans thus far in '06: Barak Obama (D-IL) for the Democratic Presidential nod, Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) for a Senate seat, and Jeremy Fisher (D-PI) for the local seat in the Maine House of Representatives. I also support Josiah Bartlett and Bill Pullman as president, but I don't think either has much of a chance.
3)
The Economy is doing very well... why doesn't anyone care? I was young, but I remember such a loud trumpeting of economic boom in the 90s. Now that we've finally recovered and the Dow has set yet another record... hardly anything past the obligatory news brief.
4) Koiizumi is no longer the Prime Minister of Japan. It's Shinto Abe, who should be much cuter because he is the youngest post-WWII Prime Minister of Japan, but somehow he just doesn't cut it in the cuteness factor. Here are the two together:
...I'd also like to go back to my high school years and apologize for being overbearing and jerk-ish to people when it came to politics. Looking back, I don't think anyone really knew what they were talking about, so either whining or jerkishness seemed necessary in debate. Not cool... my apologies to anyone for any time I was a jerk to them.
A Post for Lynn Erskine.
Two posts in one morning...
Today I am especially ambitious about writing and I would like to touch upon a few random topics which hitherto I have not had a chance to blog about. Here goes:
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Drum Lessons: I am giving drum lessons now - or will be very soon - and I am looking for more students. E-Mail me (michaeltperry@hotmail.com) if you are interested in learning.
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Junichiro Koizumi: Junichiro Koizumi is a small Japanese man who is quite cute, loves Elvis, plays the violin, and happens to be Prime Minister of Japan. He is right-center politically and has been Japan's leader since 2001. An example of how cute he is would be the picture below, featured in the "What's Up Around the Prime Minister" section of his Japanese/English website with the caption "Photograph of Prime Minister experiencing the acoustic-related technologies":
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Rockstar: Supernova: I don't know if anyone out there follows the second-tier reality TV show circuit, but Rockstar: Supernova was a pretty good. The highlight of the entire show, by far, was the House Band. They are tight to the point where it is a little ridiculous... I can only assume that this comes with playing with one another every day, but you have to think that there's something extra that goes into truly acquiring a tight group. I think back to
the band that made me a high school rock star and the worship band I used to play in. In both cases, we actually weren't our best during the early days when the band was a daily obsession, we were better when we gelled either as musicians (former) or friends (latter).
I digress. Lukas Rossi won and he should never have made it into the top three. His rendition of the Killers' "All These Things That I've Done" when there were something like five contestants left was horrible (it sounded as though he was singing it whilst being impaled), but it didn't matter. It was clear that from about the third week, Lukas was the assumed winner by the band. For the record, Ryan Star, Tobi Rand, and Magni should have been the top three.
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Thailand: Why have I not heard more attention being called to Thailand in the past few days? Perhaps the news is going crazy about it (I wouldn't know; I don't have TV), but there is certainly no buzz about it around the water cooler. A bloodless coup d'etat just before elections were scheduled (October 15) staged by the military... so far, a new (Islamic) ruler has, taken from wikipedia: "cancelled the upcoming elections, suspended the Constitution, dissolved Parliament, banned political protests, declared martial law, and arrested Cabinet members." He claims there will be a new civilian government, elections, and constitution within a year, but who knows? Utter craziness...
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John Mayer: I really like John Mayer and I'm happy that he's now making music that shows his talent as a musician (see his newest album: Continuim). I have been listening to his things since I heard about him on a Dave Matthews Band web site... at the time he was an up-and-coming singer/songwriter in Atlanta and had maybe a dozen songs on Napster (that's right, folks, Napster). He wrote lovey dovey sappy songs with witty lyrics when I went through my 2003-04 lovey dovey sappy witticism stage ("Room for Squares"). He wrote songs about coming into the next phase in life when I was starting to really realize where my passions are and what I want to be ("Heavier Things") and now this new album. I don't know why I felt the need to make that Mayer's career-My life comparision, but for what it's worth, you can now all see that it's workable. FYI.
The Things People Do
The following five things have been done to or around me in the past few days, and I've been annoyed by them enough to mention them in this post:
- In the computer lab, check to see if my document is theirs as we both wait for our respective papers to come out of the shared printer, creasing the corner of my coverpage in the process.
- In the library, embarrasingly whisper on a cell phone, only to boisterously relate the contents of the call to their friend, sitting about 10 feet away.
- At China Hill, be rude to the women getting their food, treating them as though they are dimwitted (seemingly) simply because English was not their first language.
- On Parsons Street, cut in front of me on two wheels to take a left turn into Skyway Industrial Park, looking at me (both driver and passenger) to see if I would react angerly.
- On the phone, call my cell phone, ask for "Derrick," and then swear at me when I explain that I am in fact not Derrick.
The things people do.
A Thought about September Eleventh.
Today is not the fifth anniversary of September 11th. We've been having them for quite some time now.
Just ask
William Wallace.
