Stand up and be counted

We've got the chance to move one step closer. Let's do this.

Unfit for office

On a week where he managed an odd homoerotic George Wallace impersonation, news breaks tonight that Mike Huckabee spoke via satellite to a national meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens in 1993. The Sinn Féin to the KKK's IRA, the formerly named White Citizen's Council is one of the most enduring white supremacist oranizations in America which was very active in the later part of the Jim Crow era.

The next year, their annual convention was moved to Little Rock so that Huckabee could attend in person, but he pulled out at the last minute once the press found out that he'd be sharing the stage with a Nazi sympathizer. Read on...

Update: Christopher Hitchens, love him or hate him, has a brutal takedown of Huckabee on the race/confederacy issue in Slate. Juicy bits include:

So slack is our grasp of history and principle that we seem unable to think of the Confederacy as other than "offensive" to blacks. But there are two Republican candidates in this election—the absurd and sinister Ron Paul being the other—who choose this crucial moment in our time to exalt those who attempted to destroy the Union by force, and those who solicited the help of foreign powers in order to do so, and whose treason led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Should their patriotism be questioned? I would say most definitely yes, and questioned repeatedly, at that, perhaps especially if they are seeking the nomination of the party of Lincoln.

I have a proposition for you

Actually, seven. It's that time of even-numbered year, and I'm starting to chew on the propositions set to go on the February ballot. I have sympathy for the cause of Prop. 92, but wary of putting more constraints on the legislature. I'm leaning no on everything else. Any thoughts?

I always vote Yes on Prop. Joe, and I think he'll need all the help he can get this season.

Iowa

Seems I should write more and considering a good half of my posts have been about the presidential candidates, this would be a good time to get moving again.



I couldn't be happier about Obama's victory in Iowa. As you can see below, I agree with most of his ideology but more than that, I'm drawn to his character, his pragmatism and his temperament. I've always been queasy about the manufactured, impersonal candidate. Nearly every nominee in my lifetime has come from that mold, so this is a refreshing change. Huckabee breaks this mold too, but his lack of substance, even ignorance on foreign policy is a non-starter. But his rise is no great surprise, I had been telling people for at least six months to look out for him as the campaign's dark horse. There wasn't a candidate to capture the Bush vote with the demise of George Allen and the false start of Sam Brownback. Don't be surprised if Fred Thompson catches some of those voters if the people and media pay more attention.

I'm impatient to see Edwards get out of the race because I've been done with him ever since his horrible debate performance against Dick Chaney in 2004. That was supposed to be the great closing argument of the campaign and he showed us how little breadth he had as candidate. Obama v. Clinton will give us an historical matchup of history-making candidates with very different approaches to politics, if not policy.

A narrow question...

...but I thought I'd put it out there anyway. Anyone was experience both with TiVo and the new DirecTV branded HD DVRs. Since I'm shut out of many channels by having the former, I'm thinking of jumping to the latter. In a way this makes me feels dirty, liked those who bailed on the Mac from Windows in the pre-Steve Jobs era. Any advice?

Great candidate matching quiz

I love this. You construct your ideal candidate based on the issues and you rate how important each issue is to you. It also asks about certain characteristics, like age range, prior experience, etc.. These are my results. This squares well, but it doesn't take into account the stylistic approaches that, for example, endear me to Obama or McCain but repel me from Clinton or Giuliani. Post results in the comments. Canadians, too.

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100 %)
2. Barack Obama (88 %)
3. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (77 %)
4. Al Gore (not announced) (75 %)
5. Hillary Clinton (75 %)
6. Dennis Kucinich (74 %)
7. John Edwards (74 %)
8. Joseph Biden (74 %)
9. Bill Richardson (73 %)
10. Christopher Dodd (72 %)
11. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (67 %)
12. Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (64 %)
13. Ron Paul (54 %)
14. Mike Gravel (49 %)
15. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (46 %)
16. John McCain (42 %)
17. Elaine Brown (38 %)
18. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (37 %)
19. Mike Huckabee (36 %)
20. Mitt Romney (36 %)
21. Rudolph Giuliani (32 %)
22. Chuck Hagel (not running) (31 %)
23. Alan Keyes (29 %)
24. Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (27 %)
25. Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (25 %)
26. Fred Thompson (24 %)
27. Tom Tancredo (24 %)
28. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (17 %)
29. Duncan Hunter (15 %)
30. Stephen Colbert (campaign ended) (10 %)

Pressing issue of our time

What do you think?

Also important, do I have what it takes? We report, you decide.

A Hero's Welcome

Believe this, here's an un-ironic, non-outraged link to a Glenn Beck segment. His show recently featured my cousin Sharon Hyland Keyser, who is a newly married wife of a marine serving in Iraq that recently left her job to start an organization to give returning soldiers in the Philadelphia area a surprise welcome when they return home. These welcomings have been pretty elaborate and the stories are really touching. Her brother also served in Afghanistan and her parents are very good people.

The organization takes a non-partisan and non-ideological stance and welcomes the support of anyone regardless of their position on the war. Support the cause if you're inclined to. I will.

I don't really watch cable news, except when news breaks, so hat tip to my Mom for the heads up. This reminds me, my wife Allison is supposed to be on CNN Headline News any day now in a taped segment about colleges. She's also supposed to kill me for telling anyone. Please let me know if you see her segment.

Not looking so good for HRC

Ouch.

Through the Fire

For those who don't know, the early part of our week was spent bounced from house to house and hotel to hotel as the Buckwheat fire threatened our house and of course those of our neighbors. Long story short, a distant cloud of smoke turned into a very present and surrounding cloud of smoke and ash in the matter of about 10 minutes. 10 minutes after that, we were ordered to leave and ten minutes after that flames were visible on the top of a hill that ends about 100 yards from my house. The fire would eventually burn the entire hillside, but it stopped there thanks to some smart controlled fires and what must have been an airborne dump of water, which must have been something to see (my more fearless neighbor has much of this on video).

So we split up into two cars, mom and kids in one and dad and dog in the other and both filled with a mishmash of those things that we deemed irreplaceable. Apparently this didn't include socks, underwear or a second shirt, but that's another story. It's interesting that when faced with the prospect of loosing everything, and I'm a bit of a collector of things- cookbooks, computers, kitchen gear, regular books, CDs, etc., you desire to take almost nothing. I went with our two most recent computers (the digitized collection of media makes these escapes much easier in the modern era) some old photos and some old 8mm film. The kids grabbed a couple of toys and that was about it.

After being stuck in traffic for a good hour, we had a semi-sane dinner and made way to my Mom's house, on the other side of the valley, a good 15 miles away. She lives on the top of a hill on an acre of mostly dry brush in view of the moutains that gave off a new glow that night as well: a completely separate fire was making a halo around the ridgeline and burning mountainside after mountainside in a deliberate push toward civilization. A few hours later, with Allison and the kids already asleep in a half-filled former bedroom, we were evacuated from there as well.

Luckily we found a hotel that night and things only got worse in general the next day as the fire threatened more and more homes and people, leaving some burnt and destroyed, we were able to find a hotel for the next night, just in case. We returned to home on Wednesday with everything just as messy as we left it, but without a sign of damage. Close one.

With permission, I'm posting a couple of pictures I found on flickr by a guy named Josh Converse who took these pictures just around the corner from my street. These almost perfectly sum up the feeling in the moments just before things got really bad.




I haven't obtained permission to re-post these photos, so I'll just link to them. You can see some early progression of the fire closest to my house here and here.