a list
today i attended our wonderful state fair of texas. it was a spectable to behold, as it has been for the last 20 years i have attended. this evening the live music of oklahoma band 'cross canadian ragweed' rolled itself through the corridors and byways of fair park in dallas, and these rollicking tunes inspired me to make a list.
a list of the top ten things i hate.
1. snobbish elitism
2. country music
3. unnecessary criticism
4. country music
5. country music
6. country music
7. absurd lavishness
8. country music
9. country music
10. frat boy clothes
perhaps i should have made this list at a point when i was less...influenced by my surroundings.
last night i watched the texas 'gubernatorial' debates (yes, that's actually what they were called) which pitched our four major contendors for governor against each other in a question-answer-rebuttel format. i watched mostly to see our two independant candidates and listen to what they had to say; friedman and strayhorn have been causing quite a raucus with their independent tendancies in this steadfastly conservative state.
however, both of these candidates absolutely bumbled their way through the debate with hardly a hint of cohesiveness and more than a hint of pure ignorance about texas politics and the general "realistic-ness" of anything that they were proposing to do for texas. kinky regularly would stray from questions concerning public education and property taxes to (inevetably) the alamo or general travis while gesturing grandly with the cigar that he obviously would never be allowed to light, while strayhorn routinely tried to deflect questions she didn't know the answer to onto entirely unrelated tangents. She also didn't know the name of Mexico's newly elected president. That might be a handy thing to know if you are governor of Tejas.
candidate bell, the democratic candidate, came off as likable but entirely too rehearsed. everything that came out of his mouth sounded like he had written it, had his wife edit, and rewritten it especially for the occasion. i appreciated his views on public education but anything else was lost in his constant reiterations of "when i am governor of texas" or "when i am texas governor" and other slight variations on that rather tiresome theme. the only candidate that really came of as comfortable and slightly competant for the post was incumbant governer perry. not quite what i was expecting.
oh well. though i wish his views on public education standards were a bit higher, i was fine with everything else governer perry said. plus, he came across as neither an addled ignoramus nor a well-mannered robot. i guess he has my vote once again. i was really hoping that one of the independents would come through for me this year, but alas, i am not impressed. sorry kinky and strayhorn; next time you might want to do some google searches on "texas history and politics" or perhaps "linear arguments" before you go on tv to declare your overwhelming desire and clear qualifications to be governer of the second largest state in the union. then, round out your preparation with a brief query into "not talking gibberish." oh, i forgot; apparently kinky hates the internet. won't touch the stuff. thinks it's the "devil."
i guess he'll need to get someone to do his googling for him.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, October 07, 2006 at 11:23 PM.
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11:14 AMj.chizzle, thanks for the rundown of the debate. sounds like i didn't miss too much here in spain. oh, that's funny
...but also a little (lot) sad for our state.
12:19 PM
very amusing rundown. quite agreed. however. i think that although perry seemed the coolest and most collected, he's also been in the governors palace for 6 years now. he's pretty rehearsed for these kinds of things. strayhorn and friedman, having little experience, performed poorly. a debate is not an all-revealing answer. remember nixon lost to kennedy because the lights were too hot. i think it's unfair that there is only one debate. which of course works in perry's favor.
i felt like bell won the debate inspite of his robotness. perry is a smooth character. he's gorgeous and he's got a snake charmers voice. but is it true that he contracted out the controversial trans-texas corridor to a foreign company? is it true that he lied about reducing expenses in the governor's office? and what is he going to do about the ineffective border policy and texas school problems?
i left the whole thing a little disappointed. i'm not going to vote for perry.
2:42 PM
oh, i agree about the overall importance of a thing such as a political debate. however, whether or not you are an experienced debater you should be able to cohesively convey your positions and feelings about things without a lot of jibber jabber. it seems like that should be a general requirement of effective administration, more of a reference to the individual's general adaptability and preparedness than the absolute last word about his or her character and such.
the trans-texas corridor issue doesn't even phase me. i think he made a generally good point about the historic farm roads system, as well as the competitive bid system for the construction of the system. whatever. i'm not going to base my vote on something like that. i also have a lot more problems with other state expenses besides the governers office.
overall, generally the most favorable candidate to me. do i love all his policies? no. will i support everything he does? no. overall do i have serious beef with him? have i had serious issues with his governor-ship thus far? can't say i really have.
i think the thing that irked me most about bell's platform was his funding solution of increasing taxation of small businesses (or large ones, i suppose.) "closing up any and all of the loopholes" in the tax code were his words, i believe. yeah, that's attractive to the small business owner, and especially to a college senior who hopes to start up his own gig soon. more stringent taxations sounds great to me, boy.
...and martial law on the border? are you serious?
9:23 PM
preparation and presentation are indeed major issues. but in a televised debate, i can imagine getting a bit flustered and saying not quite what you mean to say. experience may change that.
i had never even heard of the trans texas corridor until the governor's race. apparently it upsets a lot of farmers. i'm not sure how i feel about it. but bidding it to a foreign company siphons texas money out of the state. if it was contracted in state, it would create texas jobs and taxpayer money would be re entering the economy. also this is no farm road. we're talking a 180 billion dollar, fifty year long, quarter mile wide slice of land. oh and apparently nobody got a chance to vote on it. how is this going to be paid for? higher gas tax? probably. tolls? certainly.
i don't see it as an issue of expense so much as honesty. if he lies to make the numbers look good. then the numbers might be shit... all of them.
i don't remember Bell saying that about the small business tax. i think that would be the stupidest thing ever. i know kinky wants to get rid of the small business tax.
national border defense? are you serious? 1500 national guardsmen without bullets? are you serious? 12 million illegal aliens? are you serious?
are we serious? are we building a freaking wall? are we serious or not? is texas the largest state in the mainland USA or the most prosperous state of Mexico?
10:11 PM
points taken. however, i tend to think that a more viable solution for the illegal alien problem tends to lie more in our legal treatment of aliens already here (i.e. access to public schools, hospitals, employment, etc.) rather than such things as wall and fence building with armed military patrolling the border for an indefinite amount of time. not that more precautions shouldn't be taken there as well, but people who really want something are creative. we need to start enacting internal solutions to the problem that is already present. i don't think that any of the candidates really expressed this sort of solution; i realize that exporting 12 million illegal immigrants is not realistic, but once they find that their children can't attend school here or the hospitals are closed to them they might rethink their choices. harsh? yes. effective? i would think it might be. just a personal theory though.
i also think that we should fill the rio grande river with paranas. that should be a bit of a deterrant for a swimmer.
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