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

  It's 3AM

I haven't seen the Clinton ad about what she does at 3AM yet.

Thing is, I've had a nightmare thrice now about Hillary does at 3AM... it's kind of graphic and scary, and I refrained from publishing it the first two times I had it...

It's 3AM, she is up on the same desk as all the hotline phones are on, most are knocked askew, several are off the hook. She has her legs spread, skirt up, she's humping the nuclear football, come dripping down from both sides of the big red button, and she has her head thrown back with the same look on her face so satirized by Jon Stewart... the colors are vivid in the room, the red phone stark red, the football - silver streaked with white, the desk a hard brown, the flag almost day-glow in intensity.

And the camera pulls back to show snipers pointing guns at the crowd outside the oval office and further back to show the devastated streets of washington, under a grey sky... and then I wake up in a cold sweat.

Dreams are not rational expressions of what we are thinking, but this one ties into sex and lust for power, which are two of the most basic urges humans have.

I mean, everybody knows how Bill Clinton gets his orgasms... I think it's becoming a matter of national security to know how she gets hers.

I'd sleep better.

Labels: hillary clinton

  ¶ 4:47 PM 2 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

  Too tired to go on tonight

As of 10:11PM, the Ron Paul campaign has got 3.55 million in donations for the day. Odds are good they won't crack 4m by midnight, but I expect by morning that barrier, too, will have been exceeded.

I have blasted the MSM a lot in this blog lately, and I can imagine a few ways that the spin will go down tonight and tomorow, but I'm too tired to write more tonight. I confess to chuckling a little about what the talking heads will say without writers to back them up... Before I sign off, though, I just wanted to point to this google trends graph of interest in the top candidates from netizens. You'll note the wide disparity between demand (internet queries) and supply (news stories).

Earlier this week, I deleted the flash player from my machine because I couldn't stand filtering television anymore.

In the course of events today it was sadly easy to forget the imposition of martial law in Pakistan, the mass arrests of judges, and chaos there.

In the back of my mind today, I kept wondering, what would Ron Paul have done differently, there? He may well inherit that whirlwind one day.

Good night, and good luck.

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, John Mccain, Mitt Romney, msm, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 6:46 PM 0 comments

  Discourse danged by deficits

The American Thinker had published a few articles that intrigued me, such as a piece on depressogenic media, but I kind of blew my cool at this piece. Rick Moran selectively reprinting just his hate mail bothered me, and further claiming that that represented all the email he got, really bothered me. Maybe it's true. I don't know. He was certainly inflammatory enough with his opening sentences to trigger visceral responses. But: my impression (and I am going to go and be scientific about this later today) is that most reasoned articles about Ron Paul with public commentary on them contain a high percentage of civil, well thought out, reasoned, individual statements.

Not a lot of “spam” to be seen there, either. Most pieces seem to be written on the spot, by earnest individuals that care deeply about these issues. I will back this up with data shortly.

American Thinker doesn't take web comments, only emails. It would have been nice to evaluate Moran's negative responses for myself. Well, not nice. Unpleasant. But statistical accuracy would be nice.

I emailed Rick Moran about this, and he suggested I write a letter to the editor of The American Thinker. Any one way flow of correspondence like this frustrates me enormously, but I wrote that letter anyway.

I kept my email neutral, merely suggesting that their publication would be far more credible to me if they had an open comment system and trackbacks. I'll go a little further in my blog, however.

Self selective amplification annoys me. It's rude to the reader and rude to the independent thinker. I immediately discount the credibility, greatly, of any article that doesn't permit open commentary on it. More people should.

It's not just the broadcast media that's rude, though. Comments made by all sides in any issue can be intolerant, misleading, wrong, biased, violent, and/or just plain wacko.

Hillary Clinton just staged a “spontaneous” bus stop. Now THAT really gets under my skin. How is that preferable to open discourse? But I digress.

I vastly prefer open, civil discussion and a mutual search for truth, and rarely get it.

Back in the 80s it always astonished me how many USENET netizens would write wonderful articles on the various newsgroups on the various issues of the day, yet never bother to print one out and send it to an editor of a major newpaper. Maybe many did. Few were published.

To me, open, even uncivil, discourse is preferable to letting the columnist or corporation control both sides of the conversation.

Still, I'd read a couple comments on another news source friday that really turned my stomach.

I was so upset that I had to take a couple days off from writing. To ease my agony I emailed the rabbi that runs The Wall. He suggested I absorb some mesilat yesharim and he told me that one way to cope with the often dirty thing called politics is to break down the word into its constituent parts:

Poli = Many
Tics = Bloodsuckers

I got a good belly laugh, hung up my keyboard, and went surfing.

[my company helped setup the webcam on the Wailing wall – 11 years and 25 million hits ago - sometimes I look at it for hours while I try to decide what to do, or what to think]

So, as of Friday I had been working for a while on two pieces, one on science and politics, the other on deficit spending and the economy. Neither was jelling. I looked up from my keyboard this morning to find that a random web commenter had made most of the points about the economy I was trying to make. Joy!

He commented (and DO click on this link, please, some good stuff here, and ask yourself, which wwas better, the article or the commentary):

The only reason we are not experiencing double, or even triple digit rates of price inflation is because of the willingness of foreigners to accept our debt and fiat dollars. Most of those trade deficit dollars go into U.S. government debt and -- THE STOCK MARKET, the rise of which is due to inflation, not economic prosperity. However, should foreigners tire of being loaded up with our debt and become too concerned because of the rapid rate at which our government is debauching our currency by massively inflating it, they will begin to disintermediate and flee out of dollars into other currencies or hard goods. If that trend accelerates, the dollar will collapse and you will suddenly find yourself paying several times as much for what you normally buy.

It happens rather frequently in the banana republics. It happened in the Weimar Republic in Germany just prior to the rise of the Nazis. It nearly happened here in the U.S. late in Jimmy Carter's term. The dollar was narrowly saved by a reduction in debt monetization and a skyrocketing prime interest rate that peaked at 20% in April of 1980.

The result of the 1980 dollar bailout was the devastating recession of 1982. Thanks to phony Republican conservatives like George Bush, along with the help of socialist Democrats, we are rapidly approaching the same dollar crises and resultant economic down-draft.

In addition, this long-term policy of deficit spending, facilitated by the Federal Reserve, has caused a steady deindustrialization of America. Our heavy industry has been decimated. How do we fight a full-fledged war without an industrial base? The deficit spending to support our world policing efforts is destroying our national defense capability.

Just to amplify that last point a little – without China and Mexico's computer manufacturing, the information economy would stop dead – and America would have few choices for chips to power all our military innovations.

With all due respect, I think if you look back, you will see that the federal budget was nearly balanced [in 2000] because of the gridlock between Clinton and Congress, not because Clinton was fiscally conservative. When there's a Democrat in the White House, Republican Congressmen tend to act more like Republicans. Conversely, when there is a RINO President, GOP Congressmen spend like they are in a contest to see how much of our money they can waste.

That's why the next best thing to having a true conservative like Ron Paul in the Oval Office is to have a Democrat President and a Republican Congress.

Gridlock is a GOOD thing.

I've long thought that Americans usually – unconsciously – voted for a representative government – one split between Democrats and Republicans – as a way to impose checks and balances no longer managed by the constitution. A one party state – of either Republicans, or Democrats – is minority rule. Broadcast media is also - too often – minority rule. It bugs me.

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, red state, rick moran, Ron Paul

  ¶ 11:38 AM 1 comments

  some statistics on the geographical distribution of those interested in Ron Paul

Due to my dissatisfaction with the MSM polls, I dug a bit more into google analytics today regarding the hits to my blog regarding Ron Paul. Here's the breakdown by state:



Pretty interesting. Fascinating how the 2nd largest total of unique reads (461) came from New York, the home state of the leading candidates of both parties. I also dug a bit more into where the blog hits came from:

lewrockwell.com (referral)	4,608	58.87%
google (organic)	1,355	17.31%
(direct) ((none))	570	7.28%
gumstix.org (referral)	323	4.13%
images.google.com (referral)	128	1.64%

I also found that over a third of my regular non-Paul reads this month came from a funny piece I'd written years ago about chair hanging sex. None of my other serious pieces come even close. I sure hope those readers go away satisfied, as that idea never turned into the career I'd humorously hoped for. Sigh.

The most interesting piece of data I've seen today regards the number of people that list their employer when making a campaign donation. What the author calls The Corruption Quotient is here.

And, if you care about the entire series of articles in this thread about the election, not just this little piece of it, click here

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, online polling, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 1:27 PM 4 comments

  Getting confrontational, remaining deadly serious about debt

Ordinarily I'm a quiet, unassuming guy. Really. My current outbursts are caused purely by a lack of surf to take out my aggressions on. I prefer to work together with people on a common quest for understanding.

I just asked a simple question of the right, in their own forum, redstate, About deficit spending.

And just to keep matters evenhanded, I'll ask the same question of the left, as soon as I find a suitable forum.

I look forward to any good explanations offered, because, frankly, I haven't a clear idea of why deficit spending is preferable to higher taxes.

Sure wish I could get my other questions answered by anyone in the race.

Labels: democrats, hillary clinton, Mitt Romney, national debt, republicans, Ron Paul, Rudy Giulliani

  ¶ 10:30 PM 0 comments