My opinions on everything!

Seriously, I filled out my ballot tonight, and I thought I might do an election blog, but it’s pretty boring. Granted, it’s only the primaries, but so many of the races are either uncontested or foregone conclusions, it’s like there is not even a point. So, I thought I would just write about everything else going on.

Wearing the American flag on Cinco de Mayo: I do suspect that the kids in question were doing it somewhat defiantly, as is not completely unheard of with teenagers. That being said, threatening suspension is ridiculous, as is asking them to turn the clothing inside out. If they were trying to be intimidating by anything other than their clothing, but all means punish that. If they were wearing clothing that had a negative message even, maybe, though you don’t want to be overly draconian about the whole thing, but if all they are really doing is wearing flags, it’s not an issue.

Actually, this one does appear to be a non-issue. Most of the student body seems to feel it was an overreaction, the school board feels it was an overreaction, so basically you have one principal in trouble, plus Roger Ebert. People overreacting to (and via) tweets, though, is a whole other topic, and one I don’t care about very much.

BP versus the Gulf Coast: The damage that is happening there literally makes me feel sick. The rush of lawyers heading there to try and get lawsuits started is not as visceral, but still kind of sickening.

Arizona’s new law: There are a lot of things wrong with this. The part that makes it really ugly is that it is essentially turning Arizona into a police state for brown people, many of whom are citizens. I don’t imagine that many Caucasians are going to be asked for their birth certificates when they are out walking, and it’s just wrong. I think all the citizens who are against this law should start walking around with their birth certificates around their necks as a protest. Maybe it’s a lame protest, but it’s a nasty law.

The bigotry factor is what makes it ugly, but I’ll give you two things that make it stupid. Firstly, if the real purpose is to cut down on crime, I think it will turn into a pretty ineffective way of fighting crime, including the crime of illegal immigration. More to the point, you have to fix immigration from the employer end. As long as people can come here, get hired, and make money that even at horrible wages looks good to them by comparison with what they can make at home, they will keep coming. If they aren’t getting hired, it will take a while to filter through, but it will change things around, and I bet you will find it easier to crack down on employers than seal the borders.

Things that are appalling: The skinny jeans defense and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Kind of disturbing: In the picture of Kagan that AOL is using, she kind of looks like Brendan Fraser (which has absolutely nothing to do with her qualifications).

Okay, so what about that election? Well, the two ballot measures are both basically procedural, and the voters pamphlet did not have a single argument against either of them, most of the judges and representatives are running unopposed, and the gubernatorial races seem to be a lock for Kitzhaber and Dudley.

I’m actually not down with that, for what it’s worth. On the Democrat side, I favor Bradbury, and voted for him. I am one of those people having a hard time getting over Kitzhaber calling Oregon ungovernable back in the day. He needs to demonstrate that either he has changed or the state has changed to build confidence. The two things he has indicated don’t even come close. Yes, Oregon is not currently GOP-led, but that could easily swing back the other way in the near future. The margin is not really that wide, and partisanship has gotten much worse, so there are still going to be real issues there.

The other thing he has said is that he would focus more on dealing with the voters, and getting them behind ideas, rather than focusing on trying to work with the legislature to get his policies passed. Once again, partisanship has gotten much worse, and I just don’t see him pulling it off.

That’s not that I don’t think he’s a good man, and if I needed someone to head a special committee for working out medical reform, where we could reduce costs and improve care and get it offered to more people, I would totally put him in charge.

Bradbury I think has a more realistic view of the situation, and he really won my heart by pointing out that a lot of the issues we have stem back from Ballot Measure 5, which I say all the time but in general it gets ignored, and yet it damaged schooling then and it has never really been repaired. I’m not crazy about his Bank of Oregon plan, because what I really want is for people to leave big banks behind and go to credit unions, but his principles are sound. So it’s Bradbury for me, but if he loses I am sure I will be voting for Kitzhaber in November.

Honestly, I kind of like David Lim, and if I were registered Republican I would vote for him, but he really is a long shot. In fact, I recommended to my family members that they vote for Alley, because I think he is the only one who even has a remote chance of beating Dudley, and we all hate Dudley.

It is interesting to see how many people Sizemore has lost over time. He doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a joke. On the plus side, he saves Dudley from being the biggest ego in the race, so that’s nice.

The 26th district only has the one Republican candidate for representative. I did think about advising the voters to come up with a good write-in candidate, lest they have to choose between a lying child-abuser who manipulated his way into the office and a Democrat, but it’s hard getting a good write-in campaign going, so we’ll just worry about that in November.

There is one other race that is pretty interesting. There are three excellent candidates for Metro President, but one keeps raking in the endorsements, and he has mine as well—not just for the sentiment. Tom Hughes will be a great leader for Metro:

http://www.votetomhughes.com/home.php