Klaatu barada nikto

Two years ago, after struggling for several years with my health, outsourcing, battling with insane laws, lawyers, and greedy corporations, and coping with the bile accumulated from eight years of hatred for my country's politics (this includes Clinton's last two years), I got fed up.

I finally threw in the towel on my profession, and lost hope for my country.

I found a place to live cheap, and decided to enjoy what time I/we had left with all the gusto I could muster. I was awfully tired and ill. It was a good time to go on strike rest.

I surfed one hell of a lot. Studied Spanish. Traveled. I tried to get married (twice), and ultimately settled on embracing bachelorhood to its fullest. I wrote a lot. I learned a lot of music. I helped create a live music scene that continues to expand... I saw that Ron Paul had correctly foreseen the coming calamity, and followed him for a while...

And I didn't write a single line of code. (well, I did tune a few bits with david rowe)

For a while, all that worked for me. Yet I kept remembering that "despair is a sin", and "for evil to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing". I played mind games with myself, rendering the latter comment as "For good to triumph all that is required is that evil men be rendered powerless" - which ties better back into my overall philosophy - but ultimately...

I found myself compelled to create software once again.

Slowly, on my own time, at my own pace, I have been doing work of the quality I desire, at the pace that I need to work at. I'm perhaps 1/20th as productive as I used to be, and half as competent, and probably too perfectionist to be employable at it. Yet - some of the results of my work just made the Linux kernel, and some more will end up in ardour soon, and others stand alone. It has been a worthwhile struggle. I do retain hope that I can find an engineering niche again due to the cost differential between me in California and me here, and a non-native english speaker in China... but I don't really care - it's a rewarding hobby - and I'd rather pursue Quality - as Rob Persig would define it - than profit, any day. I think I can keep the lights on and the bills paid pretty easily now.

Today, Barack Obama is president of the United States.

I am impressed. Obama, by his mere existence, can clear up some of the most terrible cracks in the American conciousness and ideals in a way no one else can.

I pray that he can also reduce the stucked-ness that America has been plagued with for the last decade.

I didn't vote for him, but, weirdly, I can date my returned urge to code back to the day he was elected. I wasn't planning on coding again, I was (still am) working towards making a modest living in another field entirely....

I think it will take a decade or more to reverse the changes the last three decades has wrought. Certainly the next two years are going to be pretty bad. I still feel that it is probable, however, that America's decline is unstoppable - the decline in quality jobs, living standards, ethics, education, and morality, will not halt, but accelerate, and the Far East take the center stage. Maybe they will do a better job with their day in the sun.


Hyperinflation may well set in next year - or at least, strain the currencies still slaved to the dollar.

I think housing prices will continue to plunge for another year too. (and this is a good thing, housing had become unaffordable for too many, including myself - houses are also too big, according to our current demographics, but that's a tale for yet another unpublished article)

There's no sign that Obama is capable of chopping away the deadwood, or setting fire to it. It does look possible he can plant a new forest or two. Governments can create markets. Look at the market for war-making, for example...

I still have issues with resuming my profession - Terry Childs is still in jail - and his incompetent management isn't.

Fear of the competent man still reigns, in scenes that remind me very much of the final parts of Atlas Shrugged.

I was reminded of that particular novel a lot in the last few years. I was spending most of my time being tasked with avoiding copyright and patent laws and seemingly spending endless days with lawyers, and not doing what I loved, engineering. More than once, I quit because what I was doing was ethically or legally challenging. In part, I came to Nicaragua because I hoped CAFTA wouldn't pass (it did, but remains mostly unimplemented), so I could be left alone to create once again.

Last year, I struggled with writing a piece about why I was not a libertarian, but believed they pulled in the right direction. Recently I found part of the answer in something Jerry Pournelle wrote:

Atlas Shrugged shows capitalists overwhelmed by government regulators who don't understand how things work and eventually, which trying to assure fair play, make it impossible for the market to work.

Alas, a slave market shows where unregulated capitalism will go if left to itself.

For two thousand years political philosophers have known that good government consists of a mix, and that maximum freedom can only be obtained through mechanisms to assure that freedom. 'That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed'

Apparently no one remembers any of this. Miss Rand didn't; her unregulated capitalists were still decent men and women.

I am glad to have escaped the slave market.

Some things cheer me up, a lot.

Take, for example, the resurgence of Philadelphia sports - the Phillies winning the world series - and the plucky Eagles first, crushing the Cowboys a few weeks back, and then almost making the Superbowl with comeback after comeback in every game since - the last quarter of the last game was seemingly designed to make a Rocky fan weep every two minutes.

Or, SpaceX building the Falcon 9 rocket from scratch before NASA could even demonstrate a prototype of their own - and getting a contract for it. It's on the pad now. I get choked up about how it represents the America I once believed in every time I look at it. And I remember that Elon Musk is actually from South Africa, yet still believes in the American dream.

Or, Microsoft and Novell engineers slaving - together! - over the Silverlight code over the last few days so that people running on a PowerPC or under x86/x86_64 Linux could watch the inaugural.

People working towards being united, rather than divided.

One of the most galling things about the Bush regime was that, after election on the thinnest of margins, he then proceeded to rule as if he had an absolute majority.

I'm comforted by the idea of a new president that reaches for a cigarette, rather than a bible, when he needs contemplation - a president that might reach for technology, rather than weaponry, to achieve his goals. A uniter, rather than a divider, that actually may be one.

It is a nice thing to hope for, and although I can't gush over him like many of my friends, or Andrew Sullivan, or Doc Searls... Barack Obama does give me hope for a better tomorrow - or at least, a slightly less worse one. I'm willing to give him his shot, for now.

I intend to hang up this blog - and the prolefeed - and blogging in general - completely for a few months while I work on some code and some spanish. Maybe when I come back things will truly have changed.

"If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way." - Elon Musk

I didn't actually manage to see Obama's inaugural speech, though I read it. It didn't say a whole heck of a lot, really, that hasn't been said before... but it said it well.

However, in seeing pictures of the Mall today, I couldn't help but be reminded of the following:



not this part of the movie, in particular, but the sense of imminent doom, removed by the words,
Klaatu Barada Nikto...

(didn't they remake that movie recently?)

Labels: america, Barack Obama, election 2008, nicaragua, Ron Paul

  ¶ 4:44 AM 3 comments

  My vote

I thought for weeks, and wrote page upon page that I am not going to get around to publishing, about McCain, Obama, Nader, McKinney, Barr, and Baldwin.

I am, on the whole, glad the primary season for the major parties went down as it did.

Ron Paul knocked out the rabid Rudy Guilani, that plastic faced Mormon car salesman excluded agnostics from his tent and went down in flames, and I forget the rest of the Republican field, thank god.

The underqualified Clinton got beat by a guy that had made it on his own. I'm happy about that, too. I loathe the idea of a hereditary aristocracy.

I was sorry that Ron Paul didn't do better. I'd like to see the federal government stripped of all but its constitutional powers by design, rather than bankruptcy.

It was good to see libertarians co-operate on his campaign. Nice change, too bad it didn't last.

When the media was betting on Guilani - Clinton as the final candidates (funny how wrong they were!), I was getting ready to emigrate and utterly fed up with the endless battle over Vietnam and Woodstock.

My generation has to clean up that worldwide mess, as do multiple generations afterwards. So shut up about it, retire already, and get on the golf course.

I've already written elsewhere about how I'd like to vote, and my unresolved issues, and here's the short version of why I voted as I just did:

McCain: Eisenhower was a successful general and a war hero. So was Andrew Jackson, and for that matter, George Washington. McCain was a flyboy with no responsibility for tens of thousands of men and a POW. Neither of these characteristics make for great leaders of men.

Palin: Although I share some of her husband's seccessionist sympathies, I can't embrace ignorance. Lately, her campaign rhetoric has been full of the "Joe the Plumber" references, trying to capture the hearts and minds of the remaining middle class - the ones who don't have to cope with H1B visas or overseas competition.

Hey Palin: What about "Eric, the engineer", "Al the Artist", "Mike the musician", and "Paul the programmer"? What about "Wendy, the writer", or "Sal, the sysadmin"?

:sound of crickets:

Obama: Great speaker, with a speech in hand. Off the cuff. His speech. Reminds me. Of. William Shatner's. Delivery. Maybe. He can. Heal. Part of. The Country. By making it. Even more. A centralized State. But the. Republicans. Have looted. The treasury. Making it impossible. For him. To cope with. New crises.

Biden: Biden is one of the poorest members of congress. Whether this is due to honesty or lack of financial acumen remains to be seen.

Nader: In 2000, Nader was the one person I felt confident that was on the side of the people. Too bad he's now too old and too marginalized, and has no military experience.

Barr: How I feel about Barr is unprintable. His oh-too-recent conversion to libertarianism, arrogance, and uncooperation with the other third parties, cost him my vote, and the LP the chance of a lifetime. His VP is an ass, too.

McKinney: I kept wondering when the popular press would evaluate McKinney vs Palin, or, for that matter, Clinton. It never happened, I guess because McKinney would have come across as so much saner and more experienced in comparison. I do look forward to seeing the 9/11 records unsealed on Jan 3rd.

Baldwin: I'm not huge on pastors as presidents. Even ones that are willing to allow agnostics in their tent. I would like more people to pay attention to him, he writes well.

After eliminating each of these choices, I finally realized that I'd already voted... with my feet.

I'd decided, 18 months ago, that I'd rather live under a weak and socialistic government than under an all-powerful one of any stripe.

I still have to pay attention to the elephant in the room, but I intend to arrange my life so that what happens in the world matters to me as little as possible.

I hope you can live with your choices. I can live with mine.

Labels: Barack Obama, chuck baldwin, democrats, election 2008, green party, hillary clinton, republicans, Ron Paul

  ¶ 10:06 AM 1 comments

  Waiting for another shoe to drop

Q- Why did God create economists?
A- So meteorologists would not look quite so bad.

There has been a lot of doom and gloom lately. A whole bunch of bankers and economists are now in Washington, trying to fix it. By Wednesday last week I had concluded that the Paulson plan had created more uncertainty than it resolved, and world governments were all competing now to offer the best deals for international capital for fear they would go the way of Iceland. Perhaps this weekend the uncertainty will end, although the gross distortion of the markets created by all this government activity will remain for years or decades.

"Who will get a handout? Who won't?" - has become the dominant economic thought.

Thursday's stock market took out those fears on the regional banks.

I have long advocated decentralization, local government, local ownership, and local responsibility for your actions. It's hard to look the guy you are screwing over in the eye at the behest of your faceless masters.

The course the world governments and corporations are on is the precise opposite, and when those efforts fail... ordinary people will have to pull together again for mutual support.

Some are calling for the G7 to incorporate the more successful economies of the third world. Gee, thanks for the invite to clean up the party mess....

I still believe that hyperinflation, at least in the conventional sense (1000s of percent) is impossible for the dollar. All the naysayers quote from both the Great Depression and the Weimar inflation, and in neither case were the markets so globally linked, and in the Weimar Republic case, the Mark was not backed by 12 aircraft carriers, a multitude of nuclear submarines, an uncountable number of ICBMs, and the best (if currently overstretched) air force and army in the world. Fiat currencies, backed by force, can hold up for a while.

Note that I find it depressing to have to say that. I would prefer to be saying that there was some strong sector in the US economy that would save us all, but the online advertising bubble has run its course, and nothing has shown up so far to replace it. Nanotech and solar? Maybe...

Nothing has appeared to stop this endless flow of fake money after bad. Over the past few years all the core statistics have been jiggered as to make objective evaluations of what to do invalid, much as they were in the Soviet Union before its collapse. Why not give up on GDP, and substitute some index of more use than the CPI? An orgasm index for men, and a "feelin-fine" index for women, perhaps, and a quality of life index, which would also factor in man's impact on the planet.

I desperately would like to see fish populations stop imploding for one thing, and to get better than 0 cents a word for what I write, for another. I have no idea on how to accomplish either.

Protecting house prices? What long term good does that do for those that don't own? Or, take, for example, the auto industry bailout incorporated (without fanfare) in the budget passed recently...

GM and Chrysler, due for a 25 billion dollar handout/bailout, are in merger talks.

These businesses are too big to fail? They are too big not to fail. When a corporation - or government - reaches a certain age and size, much like a person, it gets blocked arteries and mental problems. It's best that they die, or divest, and make room for something new to rise from the ashes.

Take a moral dilemma like this one, and smoke it for a while. Tesla Motors has developed a breakthrough electric sportscar and is building a 250 million dollar facility to produce an all electric sedan, heavily subsidized by two local governments, without help from the feds. What makes that investment less valid than the bailout from congress? Why should California be competing with the Federal Reserve? The Fed can print money, California can't. Who is making better investment decisions?

California's still in line for a 7 billion dollar bailout, because they can't get anyone to buy their bonds, perhaps due to their irresponsible spending? Debt, debt, and more Debt. When will adding on debt seem like an unsound option to anyone in power? High rates of inflation seem inevitable for the foreseeable future. Why buy poorly paying bonds from a bankrupt state with no worthwhile industrial outputs save movies and online advertising?

There is no sign of anyone finding a way to pay for anything except by printing money. I'd really like to know where the money for all this is going to come from... some change in government policies... some cutbacks... legal changes... somewhere....

Perhaps the Guvernator will legalize pot, like Mexico is trying to - tax it - and send the tax money to the schools and Tesla? That would almost make sense in this environment. It would mellow everybody out, and boost sales of chocolate and twinkies, and cut down on the pesticides in use in the national forests.

Regarding higher rates of inflation, there seems to be no valid hedge left (besides put options). I view the now global guarantee of banks by governments (australia
just joined the club), as the ultimate gun to the heads of lenders that would rather choose to be prudent, and raise interest rates and lend only to those creditworthy.

I would have liked it if McCain hadn't show up for the first presidential debate, and the other presidential candidates had. I still remember that the last time they tried, in 2004, the Libertarian and Green candidates were arrested, which I guess was disincentive enough for them not to even try this year.

It sure would be nice to see some more options on the national debate stage than a choice between fascism or socialism.

It's astonishing how hard you have to work to hear these other points of view in the tumult, even with an RSS news feed. Here's Ralph Nader, running independently and now on the ballot of 45 states, Ron Paul, running nowhere but behind the scenes, the Green Party, and Chuck Baldwin, of the Constitution Party, and Bob Barr, of the Libertarian Party....

But, noo... A or B, A or B, A or B, crieth the MSM!

I'd like to hear from more real bankers, brick and mortar bankers, regional bankers, someone like Jimmy Stewart in "It's a wonderful life", to get the straight dope. The only one I know (retired, father of a friend), just stuffed his savings into a coffee can.

According to wikipedia, U.S. Treasury statistics indicate that, at the end of 2006, foreigners held 44% of federal debt. The statistics that I trust (shadowstats) are saying that the monetary base jumped 16.8% over the past year (and roughly the same the previous year) and according to the M3, that almost all of that expansion, up to august, came from international sources.

This indicates, strongly, that foreigners now hold well over 50% of the US debt. (I await confirmation from other sources)

What we have is an untenable situation. Governments have piled up so much debt that even a modest increase of interest rates would break their budgets, so out come the guns and tanks.

The independent evaluators of risk are scared silly. That includes me.

Yet, I also think that the size of the gold market - physical gold - is now so small as to be a hedge only for the most lucky and connected of individuals. Gold, despite its cachet among gold bugs, is just another commodity now, its glory days are long past, and, still, getting hold of physical gold is harder than buying liquor, which has more intrinsic value.

I'm stocking up on scotch. I don't think wuffie will pay for anything any time soon.

If I had a trillion dollars

(apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies for appropriating their song)

If I had a trillion dollars (instead of the Treasury)
If I had a trillion dollars, I'd buy an RV (and tow a Tesla off the back)
If I had a trillion dollars, I'd fix the roads and bridges (but I might focus more on trains)
If I had a trillion dollars, I'd walk away from my house
If I had a trillion dollars, I'd build a whole bunch of nuclear plants (and a lot of solar panels too)
If I had a trillion dollars, I'd buy everyone, absolutely everyone a beer (one of those nice micro-brews)

I still have a few more lyrics to add to that.

---

I still plan to fiddle while Rome burns, knowing full well what Nero accomplished on his return to Rome. There's absolutely nothing I can do to affect whatever happens next, so I plan to keep my head down, write no long term contracts, keep my own house in order and contribute to my local (Nicaraguan) economy as much as possible. I don't really want to participate in an economy where terry childs is still in jail and his management isn't. There seems to be a long way left to go before that happens.

Jamie Johnson was so inspired by his stay in San Juan Del Sur to have gone right into the studio, and lay down 5 songs. My favorite is Rainstorm, because it accidentally ties into a lot of my own story. Have a listen, on headphones.

Labels: banking, Barack Obama, chuck baldwin, economy, gold, John Mccain, msm, music, nicaragua, Ron Paul

  ¶ 6:50 AM 6 comments

  Mccain proposes 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030

As reported in the NYT, McCain just proposed that the US build 45 new nuclear power plants before 2030.

The article - and apparently McCain - failed to note that nearly all of the existing 109 nuclear power plants in the US will be past their design life by then. So - if we were a sane country and actually paid attention to what engineers and mechanics told us about hardware - we'd actually retire those 109, leaving us with a net deficit from where we stand today of 64 plants, which (stay with me here, I know that basic addition and subtraction are hard for the average politician or reporter) leaves us with more oil and coal dependence than what we have today.

I anticipate that we will run the existing plants past obsolescence until another accident inevitably occurs.

This reminds me of something of something McCain said during the debates earlier in this electoral season. he said:

"We have got to achieve energy independence, oil independence in this nation. I will make it a Manhattan Project, and we will in five years become oil independent."

This statement is not only absurd on its face, but the Manhattan project is the wrong metaphor. The Manhattan project spent billions of dollars, and labored for 5 years to produce two - count 'em - two bombs - that ultimately capped world war II. The aftermath and spin-offs from that research and development led to the first commercial nuclear power plants, but it took a very long time to ramp up, with the peak of construction in the late 60s.

I'd prefer a politician propose something more like the Liberty ship construction project, where, by constant refinement of the production techniques, Henry Kaiser and teams of engineers throughout the country cut the manufacturing time from 230 to only 42 days, over less than 3 years. That was just the time from start to finish - as ships were being laid down in parallel, by 1943 we rolled 3 new ships off the quay every day.

We need to get away from custom designs and into mass production.

Mass production used to be an American virtue. Perhaps it isn't anymore. Perhaps all we are capable of anymore is massive, wasteful, one-shot projects, full of sound and fury, accomplishing nothing. A few hundred handmade fighters here, a few dozen bombers there...

A mere 45 new nuclear power plants won't help.

About my only hope for this energy "debate" would be for Obama to propose a reasonable number of nuclear power plants, like, 1000... and to truly retain the American lifestyle, one with a high performance electric car in every garage, 10,000 might be the right number.

Some level of realism regarding our energy requirements is called for. I'm not expecting any until we are reduced to watching television by candlelight.

There are alternatives - like solar and wind - that would benefit also from a "Liberty Ship" approach. Right now, solar cell production is being impacted by chip manufacturing more than anything else. Although the silicon shortage is easing - demand outstrips supply. If the cost of supply were to drop from its present level, solar power would become far more competitive.

I note that any nation could (theoretically) get into the silicon manufacturing business. I wish more would try - after manufacturing, the biggest expense is transport - every nation, particularly those located near the equator, should have sufficient supplies of sand to start with. Creating solar cell grade silicon is less demanding than chip quality...

I do wish we could invent a machine that could be powered by a politician's promises, but more, I wish Americans still understood the advantages of mass manufacturing.

Labels: Barack Obama, election 2008, energy, John Mccain

  ¶ 8:01 AM 23 comments

  The Supply of candidate news vs demand

mitt romney

ron paul

hillary clinton

barack obama

mike huckabee

I wish I could mash up the issues of the day against these graphs. The rises of Huckabee and Obama in the polls are reflected in the upswing of queries for them, far more so than ratio of news articles for them would imply. And Mitt Romney is getting a lot of queries after his speech, but, as yet, no swing in news or polls is measured. Does this mean that news reporting is far less relevant or more elastic than many want us to think?

Labels: Barack Obama, election 2008, hillary clinton, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul

  ¶ 8:31 AM 0 comments

  Presidental politics and the LAMP stack

I was curious as to what software was powering the presidential campaigns this year, so I did a brief tour of the top websites with LWP's http HEAD command.

It's kind of neat that Romney's otherwise wealthy campaign is using Linux, and no wonder that Fred's technologically clueless one is using IIs, and perhaps I could draw an inference that Hillary's campaign is so uncool because it's not run on a Mac? (Why don't any of the campaigns use a Mac as a web server?) Obama's running on a Personal Web Server, whatever that is.

Democrats

www.hillaryclinton.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.barackobama.com Server: PWS/1.1.29
www.richardsonforpresident.com/ Server: Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1
www.dennis4president.comServer: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
johnedwards.com Server: Apache
joebiden.com Server: Zope/(Zope 2.7.8-final, python 2.3.5, linux2) ZServer/1.1

Republicans

www.mikehuckabee.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.mittromney.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.joinrudy08.com Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) PHP/5.2.0
www.ronpaul2008.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.johnmccain.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.fred08.com Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

The final tally: Of the top 6 Republican campaigns, half use a redhat derived Linux, half use IIS. Of the top 6 Democratic campaigns, 1 uses IIS, another uses PWS (Microsoft I think), the other 4 use Linux, or at least, Apache.

I could draw two conclusions from this. Either: Open source is a clear win in the presidential arena for all candidates - or: there is a marked preference for Microsoft in the top-ranked-by-the MSM contenders.

Now, of all the campaigns running, Ron Paul's is the most interactive and untinged by broadcast mediathink. Rudy Guilani's web page has, first on the page, "watch our new ad", and "get your Rudy bumper sticker, only 9.95", while Paul's has a flash message that circulates between donate, supporter messages, discover and imagine, who is Ron Paul, and pointers to videos, and even a supporter spotlight.

Ron Paul's campaign and supporters are almost entirely powered by at least three parts of LAMP - Linux, Apache, and PHP. I can't easily determine from here what the database back ends are, but I would assume it's either postgres or mysql on that side, too.

www.ronpaul2008.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
www.teaparty07.com: Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
www.ronpaulblimp.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)
www.ronpaulgraphs.com Server: Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS)
www.ronpaulforums.com Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)

Now, if I wanted to be truly fair and journalistic and geeky this morning, I'd survey a few other candidate's supporters' websites, and talk about how google news, myspace and youtube and technorati actually work to bring you the news you are looking for, but I have a few other things to write, and some Blimp handlers to find so I'll leave this at this for now.

Labels: Barack Obama, election 2008, Fred Thompson, hillary clinton, joe biden, John Mccain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 6:56 AM 0 comments

  The post-debate Ron Paul surge

In under two weeks, the Ron Paul Blimp got more than sufficient pledges to fly to Boston. The number was at 383 thousand dollars - 3 hours ago. I left this blog entry unfinished, went to lunch, and came back - pledges had cracked 474000 dollars! Nearly 100k was added to the effort, while I was out to lunch! The PAC to take donations hasn't even finished forming yet!

The New Republic, of all places - did a bit of serious analysis on abolishing the Fed. As always, the comments are better than the article.

While driving from Cape Coral, FL to Orlando yesterday (after spending Thanksgiving with my family), I saw 3 cars with Ron Paul bumper stickers (even a van with signs pasted in the window). I kept my eyes peeled for bumper stickers about other candidates (even old ones from 2004). The total, found, for all other candidates combined was: *0*. I pulled up to one car (containing an older gentleman and his wife) and honked, and gave 'em a thumbs up, they honked merrily back.....

At my Dad's golf club a couple days back I met a pair of Republicans weeping into their cups because they'd voted for Bush, twice, and they'd lost 2% of their investments on that day alone. I didn't mention Paul to them (as my Dad and I were kind of tired of discussing politics - we'd done that for the whole front 9), but it might have been interesting to get another viewpoint.

Today MSNBC did a decent bit on some more normal Paul supporters, and Salon talked to Paul about environmental issues.

And probably the best thing I've read all day came from a former Obama supporter, Marc Whittemore.

I lost interest in Obama as soon as his campaign and supporters revealed their control freak and property seizing nature in dealing with another volunteer, Joe Anthony.

I never did respond publicly to the commenter on the above posting that said:

I’m not sure what the controversy is about. The man is running a presidential campaign. You really think he should let a volunteer run the web site that comes up 4th when you Google his name?? Here’s the campaign side of the story...

My answer then, and now, was Yes!! the volunteer should keep his site, and his enthusiasm, and his energy, and his idealism, and his hope for America.

I hope that Whittemore and Anthony's stories remain a great cautionary tale for those paying attention.

The Teaparty is up to 21,798 committed donations planned for December 16th.

Labels: Barack Obama, citizen revolt, election 2008, Ron Paul

  ¶ 7:37 AM 0 comments