Blogiversary 12
I don't recall if I celebrated my blogiversary last year; I was starting a temp gig at the time. I made sure to put it into my Google calender.
We are now going through the fourth Presidential campaign during the life of the blog. I think I referenced in earlier posts I had been debating with myself for a few weeks whether or when to start the blog. To a certain degree, I wanted to pose as an independent blogger; I had been a nominal registered Republican since the late 1980's when I left the Democrats as a young professor and alienated conservative Democrat (the politicization of the brilliant Bork nomination was the final straw; I had long fumed over the progressive wing of the party that had marginalized us). I had always been a fiscal conservative, even during my liberal salad days.
But even in my more socially (modern) liberal days, I disdained political correctness; I opposed the Chicano protests while at OLL, resented being forced to attend the lecture of then an obscure speaker of color, Alex Haley. I loved academic rigor and "the Great Books" and hated being force-fed multicultural rubbish. I was (and remain) strongly pro-life. Still, I was impressed with much progressive legislation more in terms of its ideals than in its means. I didn't have an undergraduate course in economics, although I had some exposure through a social philosophy course, including Marx and Engels. I really didn't have a concept of the opportunity costs of legislation, unintended consequences, how government exacerbates underlying issues and creates moral hazard.
I had become increasingly skeptical of progressive legislation and its effectiveness, not to mention the political failures of Carter's Presidency for which I had had a personal stake, volunteering for the first and only time in his Texas campaign. Four years later, I would be standing for Ted Kennedy at the 1980 caucuses. It really wasn't Kennedy's policies, more of an identification with the ideals of his slain older brothers, John and Robert. But what really solidified my growing political conservatism was taking graduate economics courses at UH. (And they were not at all "conservative"; it might shock my old professors to know of my interest in free market economics.) At the time I was a computer programmer/analyst and looked at getting an MBA for career prospects.
(I also thought maybe it was a way of meeting single women. It was partially effective; I did date more over the next 6 years, but no serious relationship and one particularly bad one that led me to separate from Catholic Newman, my refuge of sorts from the madness of academia and its stresses, on campus around the time I started on my dissertation.) The part-time MBA program, especially for non-business school graduates, required 12 prerequisite hours (4 classes): two in economics and 2 in QMS (basically statistics). I'm fairly sure that my econ courses were totally meat-and-potato economics without any obvious political perspective. In fact, I can honestly say I don't know my UH professors' politics (don't blame them for my views :-)), except Dr. Zinkhan, my marketing prof, once cautioned me I was coming across as too strident. (Unfortunately, Zinkhan became probably my most famous former professor involved in an infamous murder-suicide in Georgia a few years back.) For the most part, I think most business school profs lean moderate to progressives in their views.
The fact is that I had liked McCain's maverick reputation and bipartisan approach; he was the clear front runner to succeed former rival George W. Bush when his mismanaged campaign came apart in 2007. I was ecstatic when he rose from the ashes to capture the nomination, battling media conservative trolls in online forums targeting McCain for early votes against Bush's temporary tax cuts, his embrace of immigration reform, and ill-fated campaign finance reforms. I had made two small donations, never did get the promised gimmick gift of a tire gauge named "Obama's Energy Plan". I did get livid over the Obama asshole behavior, which I never forgave Barry for, like when McCain tried to defer the first debate over the TARP crisis, and Obama was sneering McCain was trying to chicken out of the debate, said he could do his part on the road with a pen and a phone.
When I started the blog, I wanted to avoid the appearance of a tilt, and if my blog and tweets have shown over the years, I have blasted some views of favorite politicians and even occasionally praised the opposition and/or Trump. You can probably read some of the criticisms I had of the McCain campaign (e.g., the Palin pick, the campaign suspension, etc., I was actually surprised the populist in him didn't take the obvious stand against TARP), and you saw parts of my dismay when I publicly called on McCain to dump Palin. But for the most part I was paranoid that if I publicly criticized McCain, it might be used to hurt his campaign. Ah, the hubris of a new blogger's ego!
The blog eventually migrated into what it's become in the present; it found its own formula/niche. I'm now more libertarian than conservative, and there's a lot of older stuff that I would wince at today. Now I came to see McCain in a tougher light; the straight talk turned into soundbites, and his pro-interventionist bias bothered me.
Sure, I was hoping readership would grow more than it has, but I'm less than a year away from post #5000. And I hope you all continue the ride, to find interest in what I have to say.
The Census: Again?
I know I blogged about doing this year's census. And I'm a digital packrat, I keep hardcopies of everything, including the online census.I don't know why suddenly I felt like I was getting targeted by incompetent Census people again. It seemed like I was getting more than my fair share of Census ads online and on cable. Maybe just a coincidence, but a weird one.
This is probably the first time, with remote home work, that anyone has probably found me at home at Census time. Maybe these bozos have done this in the past and I never knew about it. So some older dude, not identifying himself, knocks and asks to talk to the head of the household. I honestly thought this was one of these usual sales guys trying to sell me alternative energy from BGE (local utility). I have zero tolerance for being interrupted by these guys and quickly ended the encounter as "Not interested."
But the "head of household" bit was unusual and it popped in my head maybe this was a Census dude. A few days later I came home from a grocery run to find a Census flyer on my (and also a neighbor's) door.
Dude, I already submitted my form and I can prove it. If the Census "lost" my data, not my problem! Go away for another decade.
