So last night I said that I needed to do more for my candidate, Howard Dean. This morning I wrote a personal letter to 10 Democrats in South Carolina, talking about why I’m for Dean and they should be too.
I excerpted most of it here at my Dean fundraising page, which I also worked on today.
And all this before my morning coffee!
So, Dean came in 2nd, 12% behind Kerry. Not total victory, of course, but definitely enough to keep Dean a serious contender. I also seem to recall reading a statistic that nobody has ever become President of the US without finishing either first or second in New Hampshire. If true, then Dean is still well placed for victory. And as I recall, Clinton won niether NH or IA.
One neat thing that happened tonight – I was watching the election results come in over at the Plough and Stars with a bunch of the SF for Dean crew and during Dean’s speech, about halfway through, he paused, looked down at some people, and said, “wow, there’s people here all the way from San Francisco” (or words to that effect). The entire room went up in a big cheer at that. A reporter from the local ABC affiliate showed up about 10 minutes after Dean’s speech had ended. He’d have gotten much better footage if he’d gotten there earlier, but he interviewed a few folks anyway.
I still have trouble understanding Kerry’s appeal. I watched his victory speech tonight and I found him boring, full of platitudes — in short, a typical politician, with no special fire. And I would really like to know how he can justify voting for both the Patriot Act and the war on Iraq when he did NOT vote for the first war on Iraq.
I’m not going to cut my nose off to spite my face. If Kerry wins the nomination then I of course will vote for him. I may not like the guy but I’ll take any Democrat over the current occupant of the White House.
Still, I want Dean to be the nominee, not Kerry. I haven’t been able to do much on the ground to promote Dean, since the majority of campaign activities take place on Saturdays when I’m at work. But I’m going to try harder to find some that I can do when I do have time off.
It’s coming up on two years since my last layoff, but even so, news of a layoff affects me deeply. Today it was PalmOne, the company formerly known as Palm, Inc that recently acquired Handspring.
I’m well aware that businesses cannot guarantee employment to their people if the tides of business change. Nor am I enough of a Socialist to think that it’s their obligation to do so. But after having been laid off multiple times in the dot-com implosion and also once back in the recession of the early 90’s, my sympathy is much more with the people being let go than with the companies who make the cuts. Especially so because the trend these days is that jobs which vanish do not come back. Bob Herbert’s latest column is one of many pointing out this trend.
The good news in today’s announcement is that PalmOne is going to be focusing more heavily on smartphone convergence devices like their Treo line. As a longtime Treo fan, that pleases me. But to do so at the cost of people’s jobs also gives me pain.
Ironically, I found the URL reporting the layoffs because the battery on my much-loved Treo 180 is showing signs of permanent failure and I’m starting to think about replacing it. I don’t have the cash in hand for a new Treo 600, and even if I did, there are other things on my “to buy” list that come higher – like a new SLR camera to take with me to Italy.
There’s an abundance of Treo 180s on eBay for about $100, so if necessary I can go there for a replacement. Despite its slow processor and B&W screen, the Treo 180 is an excellent balance between a PDA and phone and I’ve been really happy with it. Faster access to the Internet, a color screen, and other bells and whistles would be nice, of course, but that’s what my Tungsten C is for.
But getting back to my original point, I hope that what comes out of PalmOne in the future is really, really good. Otherwise those people’s lives will have been kicked to pieces for nothing.
Oh boy. So many things that bothered me. Where to start? Every time he talked about America’s “moral tradition” I kept wondering – whose tradition are you talking about? Some gonzo Christian perspctive, not mine.
I’m late for work, so I’ll just hit a few high (or rather low) lights.
And because you acted to stimulate our economy with tax relief, this economy is strong and growing stronger
Yeah right. So where are all the jobs? India and China.
For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be permanent.
And our ballooning budget deficits?
So tonight I propose an additional 23 millions for schools that want to use drug testing as a tool to save children’s lives.
Great – make more children into criminals without doing anything about increasing funding for addiction treatment.
Even the good ideas got poisoned. A Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative is a great idea. Most ex-cons get little to no supoort once they leave prison, and recidivism rated are high. But then he just couldn’t resist turning the proposal into part of his plan to ram Jesus down people’s throats by making it part of his faith-based agenda.
Gotta get to work now. Blargh.
We’re going to Rome in April!
So Kerry took Iowa. That was quite a surprise. I was not too surprised that Gephardt faded – there never seemed to be much juice behind his candidacy. Edwards, I think, has floated towards the top becasue he’s gotten enough name recognition to garner interest but not so much intense scrutiny as to increase his negatives. I’m not sure he can go all the way but he’s looking mighty attractive as someone’s VP.
Dean took third – disappointing. It puts the presure on and makes New Hampshire a real do-or-die scenario. Although if I recall correctly, Clinton placed 4th in Iowa and did not win New Hampshire, so all is not lost.