matt weighs in

It was almost exactly 11 weeks ago from right now (as I typed this sentence), when we found out that Barack Obama had officially become the 44th President of the United States, earning enough votes in the electoral college to defeat John McCain. The uncertainty then was almost unbearable for those of us who had been shocked in 2000 and 2004 when the vote did not go our way, when, inexplicably, the country voted to move in a different direction than the relative peace and prosperity of the 1990s. We got it right on November 4, 2008, as the uncertainty of what lies ahead for us as a nation cripples our financial, industrial, health care and military systems.

The United States needed an about-face, gave the directive to one man on that historic day last November and now President Obama has no choice but to deal with these challenges head on. He said he would do so in his inauguration speech, promised to do so throughout his campaign and assembled many bright and experienced people, including Vice President Joe Biden, in his inner-circle and Cabinet to help him. Anything less than vast overhauls of some of our most vulnerable systems means the President missed his chance.

However, this important work can start on Wednesday. For now, enjoy day 1 of the President Obama era knowing that we have the right man in place for this moment in history. He will lead us out of this general malaise that has been hanging over everything for the past four years (I know many would say eight years, but really, it’s been four bad ones). It might not happen tomorrow or by my birthday on February 1st, but it will happen before we have to make our next choice for President in a little less than four years. YES WE CAN!

I am really proud of my vote and the millions of others cast for Barack Obama on Tuesday. The campaign he ran over the last 20 months, from the bottom up, as it should be, is something to admire. I really hope he can continue this momentum of hope and change as he steps into the White House on January 20, 2009.

As happy as I am, I cannot be all-out, jumping-up-and-down thrilled about all the votes cast on election day. Democrats won the big one and gained in the Senate and House, so it was a very good night to like the color blue. However, in Minnesota, Republicans probably held on to two of the seats that were most heavily contested and watched throughout the country.

Michelle Bachmann, in the 6th District, won re-election over El Tinklenberg, which didn’t surprise me, really, but still disappoints me that so many people can’t see through her facade and didn’t understand that she did not do anything to warrant another term and spouts nonsense almost every time she has a microphone in her face. I’m not proud of that district today.

The other, even bigger contest, which surely won’t become official until after a mandatory recount is finished (and most likely not until after some time in court), is the Norm Coleman-Al Franken dogfight for a Senate seat. I am surprised that Franken finished close enough for a recount, but it makes me a little mad to think that if the Democrats somehow could have come up with just a little bit better candidate, then no recount would need to occur. People were itching for Coleman to go, but Franken, if the recount holds true, just wasn’t the man to do it. He said a lot of the right things, but people didn’t like his past and didn’t think he was the right person to speak for MN, since he hadn’t really spent much time here before 2007. Again, if the vote holds true, I wonder if there will be a push for instant runoff voting or some other voting mechanism of ranking your preferred candidates, as Dean the Independent did no favors for either Coleman or Franken.

But, the final vote count I am most disappointed to see, if current counts hold up, is on Proposition 8 in California. Tuesday was a great, historic day for the United States of America, where people of every color, age, income, sexual orientation and geographic location came together as one to elect an African-American man as President. It was a day to help push the dark history of inequality in our country further into the past, to move us forward in working together, believing that anyone, no matter what they look like or where their family is from, can rise up, give hope and provide the leadership we need. And then, because of a vote on one proposition in California, the ugliness of inequality might rear its ugly head for another day. I have not heard one single valid reason, and I have searched on the web and in person, that makes sense in continuing to deny people the legal right to choose the partner with whom they wish to spend the rest of their life. And saying only that “Marriage is between a man and woman,” “It’s disgusting,” or “How can they choose to live that way?” immediately disqualifies you from speaking more on the subject. Changing the Constitution of a state or country to deny people rights of equality that they deserve as humans on this planet does nothing to help move our country forward. It does no help at all.

When you are at home with your family, your married gay neighbors do not diminish the love you feel together.
When you are in your car driving to work, the married gay couple in the next lane does not make you less safe.
When you are on vacation at the beach, the married gay couple taking a relaxing walk in the sand does not make the sunset less beautiful.
And when you are playing with your kids outside, the married gay couple raking their leaves in the front yard of the house they bought, on which they pay property taxes and in which they are only hoping to live a happy and fulfilled married life together, should have no impact on the happiness you feel in your own life.

How do people, just because they are straight, more positively influence our life and the way we live than someone who is gay? And how is it, that on the same day we did so much to break barriers of inequality that sometimes seemed too high to even fathom bringing down, people voted to build those walls back up against your gay friends, your gay family members, your gay co-workers, all your gay fellow citizens?

I had tears of joy on Tuesday night, as I watched Barack Obama humbly accept the duties and responsibilities as President-elect of the U.S. We know it won’t be easy, but he, and those he chooses to help him, will do great things for our country. I just hope people realize that there are still inequalities to overcome. There are still dreams and equalities for which to fight. It just doesn’t seem right that we did so much good and may have done so much bad in one election day.

Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain said that he’s going to suspend his campaign and return to Washington until a compromise is reached on the Wall Street bailout bill. He also proposed to Democrat Barack Obama that they postpone Friday night’s debate to focus on the economy and find a solution to the current problems.

I don’t have a problem with them making a trip to Washington to hold talks with their peers on what the best course of action is, nor do I have a problem with suspending the campaign for a couple days, if for no other reason than it will hopefully spare us seeing ads on tv every 3 minutes. The current state of the economy has many people spooked and deserves special attention.

My problem is with McCain’s ridiculous proposal to postpone the debate on Friday night. The first debate is supposed to focus on national security issues, which I believe McCain would want to jump on, no matter what is going on…it’s his strongest play. Couldn’t a few questions be thrown in regarding the current economic bailout bill, so the American people can get a taste of what the candidates are thinking? McCain and Obama should want to get in front of a national audience as much as possible, at this time, so they can tell us what their thoughts are themselves, instead of us getting it second-hand from the usual suspects in tv, radio and newsprint.

I don’t think McCain showed very good leadership and executive decision-making when he chose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate, and now this offer to postpone the debate. I think the offer is a major political gaffe and shows much less leadership ability than Obama, who proposed earlier in the day that they work together on an economic statement to be released jointly.

No good can come in this election, and folks will have a harder time making up their minds, if the Presidential candidates do not meet face-to-face, as scheduled. In May, maybe it would pass, but not with six weeks to go before a very important election for the country.

Some tough words from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann for a day of remembrance.

He has not been shy in his critique of the Republicans and John McCain this summer, which led to this “Special Comment” on his show last night. Not too long, but I became a little uncomfortable. I am not sure if it’s because I believe he’s telling the truth or if I think he might have gone overboard. Either way, it’s the toughest critique I’ve seen during this election season.

I won’t pretend to understand how Myanmar is governed. I haven’t read enough about it. However, if nothing else, the last 8 days have showed us that their governing style does not allow them to help their citizens when they need it most, if they even care. Take this story from the New York Times. Replace the words cyclone with hurricane, Myanmar with Louisiana, Yangon with New Orleans and military/junta with Bush Administration. Imagine the outcry and protests.

It’s one thing to ignore those who need help in normal times, but quite another to ignore those who need help in times of unbelievable circumstances and peril. I read an article this past weekend wondering if the U.N. or the U.S. needs to stage a humanitarian invasion of Myanmar if it isn’t opened up more fully to foreign aid soon.

This is a U.S. invasion I could throw my support behind.

Okay, I’m back at it. You can stop holding your breath in anticipation now. I hope you have noticed some additions in the sidebar of the main page – Twitter (or tweets), which we love and force ourselves not to update every hour and our Flickr pictures, which we have to do better to update more often. We can even send our tweets by text message, which we did Friday night from Chino Latino in Uptown. You’ve been warned. I’m working on a few other things that may or may not screw up the sight if I mess them up, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum, or at least contact my friend Dave, who’s recently been experiencing some updating pains. That’s the joy of the interweb.

A few thoughts on a Sunday night to catch up:

1. We could get some closure to the Democratic race on Tuesday. Most polls show Hillary with only a slight edge in Pennsylvania (down from earlier in the month), but nowhere near significant enough to make up much ground in delegates. I didn’t see the most recent debate last week, but most accounts were fairly disgusted with ABC’s lines of questioning. Two different recaps are here and here. I have thoughts on what Obama said at the private fundraiser in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, but he looks to have weathered the ridiculous reactions to it (hint as to how I feel about those reactions).

2. The NCAA basketball tournament was exciting as advertised. I have to admit that I fully jumped on the Davidson bandwagon after they disposed of Georgetown, who, most unfortunately, was my pick to win the whole damn thing. I had G’town in my pool with Laura’s family, who mostly live on the West Coast and had a predictably strong UCLA bias. Congrats to those in Missouri who were biased to Kansas, and, therefore, came out on top in the pool.

3. The NBA playoffs have started, and they are living up to their billing, as expected. I watched about 52 of the 58 minutes in Game 1 between San Antonio and Phoenix. The Suns were ahead most of the game and should have won, but were in foul trouble when it mattered – I’m not a big fan of refs and usually tell whoever will listen that I know I could do better in stripes.

The game was almost unwatchable for two reasons: every ref call was followed by players whining about it (this grows tiresome) and THE PA ANNOUNCER AND THE MUSIC WERE SO LOUD THROUGHOUT THE GAME THAT I ALMOST TURNED DOWN THE SOUND ON THE TV (bet you want to stop reading after I just screamed at you for five seconds). They do this at MN Timberwolves games, too. Music plays while the game is going on, and the game announcer thinks it’s his job to get the crowd going. The game should be exciting enough to keep the fans in it. This was evident during last year’s playoff games between Golden State and Dallas. GS’s crowd was so amped that they drowned out the music. I can’t imagine the next time that might happen at Target Center.

4. Elliot is walking. I can’t tell you the non-stop joy this is to watch him keep his balance on grass, dirt and sand. It’s great comedy, and I may start taking bets with people as to whether or not he can stay on his feet for more than five seconds on different terrain. I would take the over every time.

5. I miss Johan.

6. I watched three of the six MN Wild games and listened to two others on the radio. They only led for about four minutes in the six games played (about 380 minutes total), but with my limited hockey knowledge, they controlled play for most of the series. They ran into a Colorado Avalanche team whose goalie won the series for them (you can’t overlook their overall defense, though). I think the Wild were done in by a team that played their game better than they did in the series. The Wild are coached to be defensive minded first and take advantage of opportunities to score when the opponents give it to them. This series they lost, they were the aggressive team the majority of the time, and Colorado scored when they had the chance. Only one goalie was MVP in this series.

It’s appropriate that I write this as we watch the semifinals of the Minnesota State High School Hockey tournament. It has been a pretty good week. Happenings in no particular order: state hockey tournament (it’s so big that it’s played on the biggest sports station in the midwest, the Fan Radio Network), Brett Favre finally retired, had riveting elections in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday night and it will all culminate on Saturday morning with a first attempt to brew our own batch of beer at home (actually at a friend’s house, as he has done it before, is much more responsible than me and has a turkey fryer in which to make the process go faster).

First, Favre. There was some pretty ill-intentioned ribbing of my brother-in-law, a Packer fan, this week. The ribbing from me and other Vikings fans revolved around “Favre sucks,” “Go cry some more,” “Now he can swallow pain-killers in peace,” and “Damn, the Packers and Favre suck.” That kind of stuff.

I tried making the point that it wasn’t that we really hated Favre so much, but we hated the way he ended up making Vikings fans feel – he won another Super Bowl for their franchise, broke a ridiculous number of QB records as the Vikings went through an average of one QB every two years, held press conferences to tell us he would hold other press conferences to tell us whether or not he might retire, and to top it off, had every national broadcast team love him up every frickin’ time he was on national television. Absolutely sickening.

Filthy Packer fans had reason to be optimistic every dang year, because they knew he was going to be under center each game (275 straight). I loved it when the Packers had a horrible year two years ago. I thought for sure he was done then (then all the non-press conferences only to announce he was coming back), and he comes back and leads them to the brink of the Super Bowl. I’m just glad he laid an egg in his final game and threw an interception on his final pass to lose the game for the Packers. That’s what I’ll hold on to, even though I guess I’ll solute a pretty damn good career for a pretty damn good quarterback for a pretty damn insufferable fan base. Oh, and he had one of the worst acted athlete cameo roles of all time in There’s Something About Mary. I’ll solute Fav-ruh for that, too.

I like that there’s at least one race for President still going on in one of the parties. Why not let it take a little longer to decide which Democratic candidate will have the chance to make history in November. Good for the Republicans for choosing their candidate already. From the list they had, it shouldn’t have taken long to come up with the best of the worst. Anything can happen, of course, but they cannot be confident with their nominee. Experience, sure, and a great American, but not much of an independent thinker anymore. The race will do that to a candidate.

Clinton and Obama is riveting to watch. Emotional crowds and speeches (unlike the stinker McCain laid on Tuesday night), aides resigning, an ex-President getting called out for hurting the campaign and the whole woman and minority angles. Fascinating stuff, with at least another six weeks of seeing who might fall apart first (Obama needs a big boost soon).

We’re brewing an amber ale for our first batch, and we’re leaving the house at 7:30am on Saturday morning to do it (we being me, Siena and Elliot, so they can play with kids their own age). But blueberry pancakes await at our destination. I’ll let you know how the beer turns out, as we’re hoping to have it at Elliot’s 1st birthday party in two weeks.

I was moaning and groaning a month ago about election season and how I really didn’t want it to be here, how I couldn’t believe we had been hearing from candidates for over a year now and how the primaries and caucuses shouldn’t happen until closer to spring. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind much on this; however, I am very, very excited about the Democratic candidates and am having a hard time deciding who I whole-heartedly support (maybe I need Bush to come be my “decider”).

Sure, I placed a vote at the MN caucus on Tuesday night, but was it for who I really believe in? Should I support the candidate who has pretty much started a movement across the country and has songs inspired by his speeches? Or do I support the candidate who knows exactly what she’ll do from day one and won’t waste any time if she steps into the White House on January 20, 2009?

According to the Presidential-match survey I took later on caucus night, I probably wrote down the wrong name. But I don’t feel bad at this point, because I know I will be supporting either the first female or first African-American President of the United States come election time in November.

Damn, that feels good to write.

Other thoughts…

It’s a good thing Laura planned an awesome 31st birthday for me last week. I had been bummed leading up to it, because the Johan Santana trade finally went through. You know how I feel about this. I could not feel more terrible about the Twins upcoming season. The only 2 things I’m seriously looking forward to are seeing if Liriano will be the same as he was before and knowing that I’ll ride the light rail to the Metrodome to watch a game, which will make Siena and Elliot very happy (and me).

Next, the Super Bowl…that freaking Super Bowl. Eli Manning – Super Bowl MVP, Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Patriots not coming up with one stop in the 4th quarter when they needed it. 3rd and 11 – 1st down. And most unbelievable of all…The Great Escape, as I call it. 3rd and 5, 2 defensive hands on his jersey, he spins away, heaves it just to get rid of it and a guy with 7 catches all year (7, right?) pins the freaking ball to his helmet as he’s falling to the ground AND HANGS ON while a guy is punching at the ball, his helmet and him. No way the Giants should have won that game. No way they should have even had a chance to win that game. No way the Patriots should have come out as conservative as they did to begin the game and NO WAY SHOULD ELI MANNING EVER BE SUPER BOWL MVP OVER TOM BRADY, RANDY MOSS, BILL BELICHECK AND THE PATRIOTS DYNASTY.

If I was a betting man, I would have been taken to the cleaners. I chastised everyone who picked the Giants leading up to the game. I still think it was a bad bet to make, but you can’t argue with the results. If you took the Giants, you shouldn’t have, but enjoy your filet mignon, nice bottle of wine and bippity-boppity-bacon wrapped shrimp you can buy with your winnings.

Finally, KG (may) come to town on Friday. Doesn’t look like he’ll play, but I hope the Timberwolves still do some sort of video tribute to him before the game or halftime.

He put this franchise on his shoulders for 11 years and despite managements’ mis-management of the team, took them to the playoffs more times than they should have gone and played with anybody they asked him to play with. He put up hall-of-fame numbers while making hall-of-fame money.

He was worth every penny.

How can I even compete with the content on the main page? My guess is that I won’t, so therefore shouldn’t even try. I think I’ll leave the family storytelling up to Laura, for I had typed only 4 words in my 1st post attempt, and I hear over my shoulder, “That should be on Siena’s page; plus, I was going to write about that. So be it.

Since I’m into sports, I’m sure I’ll comment (hopefully) briefly on different topics regarding the Minnesota and national sports scenes. Here goes: I really can’t believe the Twins are reportedly close to shipping Johan Santana to one of our coasts to play for a team in their own league – could be New York, Boston or Anaheim (to join the already departed Torii Hunter and I refuse to call them the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California in the country of the United States, or whatever it is now).

I was for upping the tax $.03 for every $20 I spend on certain things, so the Twins could build a stadium, but if they don’t offer Santana 5-7 years at $20-$25 million per year, I’ll wonder what is going on over there at Kirby Puckett Place and why they didn’t bother to open the new stadium with the best pitcher and/or the best center fielder in baseball when their fans paid almost $400 million for them to have a place to play.

They’ll sell tickets, because of the newness of it all, and who wouldn’t want to watch a game outdoors rather than in the dome, but this is not looking good, and I am quite upset.

I’d rather not read or see on tv reports of any more deals for Santana that may or may not be happening this week. And I won’t even get started on how I feel about Hank Steinbrenner trying through the media to make the trade happen over the weekend. I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well, and we won’t even have a roof.