Category: politcs

Sorry so long (Best of luck Barack, farewell Bill)

Wow, time flies when you’re not blogging – sorry about that;-) Elections were … well, let’s just say we learned lessons about how early to prepare for new stuff. But it did go pretty well;-)

So now, a watershed moment in American history. Let’s all hope and pray for better days ahead, and that bipartisan is still possible. We shall see.

And tonight came word of a sad passing of what folks used to call a “city father” of Bend – Councilor and former mayor Bill Friedman has passed away at age 72. I liked Bill – I don’t know if I ever saw him lose his temper, but he was a strong voice for good planning to deal with Bend’s rapid growth over the past decade. It’s easy to look back and make judgments, but I have no doubt every vote he cast was done with Bend’s best interests at heart.

He loved to be witty, and to sit back, let others weigh in and then slowly, calmly, crystallize his thoughts. I wrote on the Website tonight about a memorable moment, when he donned a Dr. Seuss ‘Cat in the Hat’ hat to read a fable of ‘The Lonely Little Log Deck,” as he argued for the controversial Southern River Crossing (now Bill Healy Memorial Bridge). A fun moment, from someone who often tried to break a testy council moment with a gentle moment of levity.

He shall be missed, by many.

Personally, I’m going to try for more blog entries. If I can’t do this at least weekly, something’s wrong. Adding WordPress to the laptop’s taskbar should help remind me.

Actually had less news for a change this weekend (yay) allowing time for things like reading, not just skimming The Bulletin (had to drop The Oregonian, who can afford $75 a month!) and last night actually watched a movie with darlin Deb (that “Journey to the Center of the Earth” remake, a fun trip;-)

Election season is coming

That’s meant as a joke, as it already seems to have gone along for, oh, 42 years.

A certain weekly paper here scoffed at our lack of local election coverage, including on the Web. Seeing as how the ballots don’t go out for 3-4 weeks, I feel the criticism was a bit…premature.

What we plan for Decision 2008 at KTVZ.COM is as much live streaming video as MSNBC offers up, tons of CNN and NBC video, and a page chock full of links to candidate and measure Websites, election info from counties and parties, etc., as well as a robust calendar of election-related events (forums and the like) and a billboard with lots of unedited announcements from candidates and campaigns of every stripe).

Oh, and a constantly updated stream of political headlines from AP, blogs from Politico.com – lots of fun stuff, some on the site already, much more to come.

I’d promise to post EVERY news release, but you should see how many we’re getting from the Smith and Merkley campaigns alone. I’d never get any news written!

But we’ll definitely ramp up in coming weeks, giving you a place to turn and seek out information galore. And of course, our local election features will include article comments, and those ought to get really interesting. And they’ll also be a big test of my now-stronger efforts to keep the tone civil and to bounce offensive comments that violate the Terms of Service.

Election Night, we’ll scroll the results through the night and take advantage of frequent news breaks in NBC’s presidential election coverage to tell you who’s up, who’s down and what’s what.

It oughta be a blast!;-)

“If your budget’s in a dark hole, press 2”

Just had an interesting, keypad-based phone survey from Rasmussen Reports.

All about spending this month, last month, next month, is my personal finance situation getting better/worse. (With the missus out of work for almost two YEARS now, gulp, can’t get much worse.)

I used to think we could “talk up” the economy to counter the talking down by the Big Bad Media (heh);-) But between the gas-price crisis and the housing crunch, I guess we really do need the “moral equivalency of war,” as someone put it years ago. But unlike the Iraq/Afghan War, we all have to share in the consequences and coming up with solutions.

Can the ridiculously partisan finger-pointers on Capitol Hill get their act together? Can government really solve any of this?

Want a place to talk about this? Try my embryonic, nobody-talking-yet High Desert Forum, at http://highdesertforum.yuku.com. It’s a way, I hope, to talk beyond the local news articles of the day. Please join me!

Live streaming video x 2!;-)

So I’ve put out two “not really breaking, but sorta” breaking news e-mails in the last hour.

One is to watch, via KTVZ.COM, MSNBC’s coverage of the fascinating discussions going on at the Democratic Party Rules Committee of how to solve the Michigan and Florida primary messes.

The other I’m watching is the space shuttle Discovery astronauts suit up and later blast off for the International Space Station, courtesy of NASA-TV.

We’re really only “pass-throughs” for both networks – one we’re a part of (NBC), the other we taxpayers all pay for. It’s like our links page – sure, it’s just linking to other folks’ stuff, but the goal is for folks to say, “I don’t know how to get there – but I know where to go to get there!”

Now if only my hard drive would stop thrashing. (Darn that Norton 360 v.2 upgrade.) It does it about half the time now, and while it doesn’t slow my PC to unacceptable levels, it is a drag on the system.

That, and today’s dual space/politics live streams, remind me of a fun conversation I had with visiting brother-in-law Don last night, always a great time. I thought about some paralells between government and technology.

Both try to solve problems. Both do – some of the time. But both drive us nuts, and don’t live up to the grand dreams they espouse. Neither can save the world. Both could doom the world. Both mean well, but (and boy do I know THAT feeling.) And it’s hard not to think, in both broad categories, that the less they do, the less trouble they cause.

I’m a defender of both against the critics, but especially government, because for some reason, we believe government – a collection of fallible, imperfect human beings – should get things right all (or more) of the time, when the truth is, you multiply a person’s flaws by the hundreds or thousands involved in such enterprises, and it’s amazing they get anything of value done at ALL.

So what do you think?