A blog by Nicholas Solter about politics and everything else
Posted in Barack Obama on Nov 13th, 2008
Last month I wrote that the Obama campaign uses open source software, and that the Obama movement itself is similar to the open source software movement.
As another piece of evidence on the campaign’s use of open source software, Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, points out that barackobama.com was built on the open source MySQL database.
I’d also […]
Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Health Care, John McCain, Politics on Oct 9th, 2008
My mother had a great letter published today in the Santa Barbara News Press. Viewing it online requires a login, so here’s the full text:
John McCain’s tax credit of $5000 for health insurance is a drop in the bucket. My husband and I pay $1200 a month for self-employed health insurance premiums. That amounts to […]
Posted in Barack Obama, Choice, Election 2008, John McCain, Politics on Oct 7th, 2008
Since my last post about Joining the Obama Campaign I’ve gone into the local Obama campaign office about once a week to volunteer. Although I tried at first to convince the volunteer coordinators that I should do data entry, they’ve mostly had me making phone calls. The way it works is that I get a […]
Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Politics on Oct 3rd, 2008
As a Barack Obama supporter, I don’t like to criticize his campaign. However, I feel compelled to point out their failure in one area: yard signs. It took me over a month to get an Obama yard sign. I first tried the local campaign office, which has been out of them for weeks (actually, they […]
Posted in Election 2008, Joe Biden, John McCain, Politics, Sarah Palin on Oct 3rd, 2008
My reaction to the vice-presidential debate last night: Incessantly claiming that you’re a maverick does not make you a maverick. As my high school English teachers would say, “Show us, don’t tell us.” And Sarah Palin did little to show us any evidence last night that the Republican ticket would be anything more than Bush’s […]
Posted in Economy, John McCain on Oct 2nd, 2008
From CNN’s Political Ticker comes this gem from the McCain campaign:
John McCain said Thursday that Barack Obama’s poll numbers are rising as the economy seems to sink “because life isn’t fair.”
“He certainly did nothing for the first few days,” McCain told Fox News Thursday. “I suspended my campaign, took our ads down, came back to […]
Posted in Economy, John McCain on Oct 1st, 2008
It’s amusing to watch Republican presidential candidate John McCain claim to support government regulations and oversight in light of the current financial crisis when he’s been fighting against just that for his entire political career.
This video from BraveNewFilms illustrates this disconnect quite well.
Posted in Economy, John McCain on Sep 24th, 2008
I find economics confusing in the best of times, so the current situation in the United States is bewildering at best. However, I’ve found two articles that explain fairly clearly how the deregulation favored by John McCain and Phil Gramm has led directly to the mess in which we find ourselves. If you’re confused by […]
Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, John McCain, Politics on Sep 18th, 2008
Sarah (full disclosure: my sister) is participating in an interesting discussion over at An Angry American. The conversation there is I think quite representative of the political conversation as a whole in this country. Sarah wrote several specific, concrete, points about why she’s voting for Obama: the economy, the war in Iraq, abortion, etc. Her […]
Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Politics on Sep 16th, 2008
For the first time in my voting life, I am living in a state where my vote for president will actually matter. I’m encouraged by the recent trends in Colorado: We have a Democratic governor, Democratically-controlled state legislature, and one Democratic senator. Additionally, Mark Udall, Democratic candidate for the other senate seat, is polling well. […]