Political Winners and Losers

To me the biggest loser of the election is the divisive politics which were brought to America by Karl Rove through Bush. Obama's win shows that a 50 state ground game is successful long term strategy that doesn't get derailed by appealing to only a certain base of voters. It was a strong statement by voters that they want to be united in hope, and not picked apart into constituencies.

The Republican party needs to seriously regroup and figure out how they are going to appeal to a bigger percentage of today's voters. I feel sorry for McCain because he followed a campaign path similar to what was successful for Bush and in doing so really dampened his appeal to independents. I don't blame him for believing it would work because it had worked so well for Bush. But there were just too many factors leading voters to demand change.

Electronic voting experience

I forgot to mention yesterday that I tried one of the newfangled electronic voting machines. I hesitated for a second, but the polling official assured me that there was a paper trail. The interface was a bit odd, but overall it was pretty painless.

The interface consisted of a scrollwheel, an "Enter" button, a "Next Page" button and a "Previous Page" button. Each page would have a a couple of different seats and propositions. You could use the scrollwheel to move through the candidates and propositions. You could scroll to the next/previous page or use the scrollwheel the whole way through. When you were done, it'd print out to a small, closed printer on the side and you could see your final choices before you confirm it.

Whew.

Well it looks like the Democrats have at least taken control of the House. It'd be pretty depressing if it hadn't.

I'm pretty convinced that as a country we make the most progress when one party controls the executive branch and the other controls the legislative branches. It just makes it difficult to get laws enacted so that means the few laws that do get enacted are actually worthwhile.

It seems odd for so many people like myself to see the Clinton years as the pinnacle of the Democratic party in my lifetime.

Honestly I don't think America is ready for Hillary in 2008. I think 2012 would be a better idea, but the problem is who would you put up for one just term? So I'm guessing we'll see Hillary in 2008. I think the Clinton/Obama ticket I'm hearing about is a long shot. If people are going to elect a female President, the party will almost certainly put a white man as the VP.

What's the objective in Iraq?

I read the following about Iraq: "You've got a situation where it's not possible to lose militarily," Rumsfeld said. "It's also going to require more than military power to prevail."

This quote for Rummy is talking about how the administration needs to work Sunnis and Shiites to win the war. But for the Bush administration it's even more important to win the political battle at home.

It reminds me of what one my college professors said when I took a course in the history of the Vietnam War. His hypothesis was that every presidential administration except for the last one succeeded in Vietnam. However the goal of each president was not to win the war, the true goals were to minimize the number of troops in Vietnam and not lose the war. This is a strategy for disaster and one of many reasons that Vietnam was not a decisive victory. My professor believed that a true victory in Vietnam was possible at the cost of occupying Vietnam for another decade, hundreds of thousands of troops, and billions of dollars.

At this point, cut and run looks pretty viable to me.

WTF are you thinking?

Usually I think of politicians as smart, cunning and deceitful. Apparently I'm giving them too much credit. Mark Foley's recent resignation after being caught sending sexually suggestive email and instant messages to 16 year old congressional pages is a new level of idiocy. Did he think that no one would find out? And now it turns out that his party leader Dennis Hastert knew about it more than a year ago and did nothing about it. What is the logic is there? You'll be able to bury it forever? You'll wait until he re-secures his congressional seat and then have him resign?

I wish we could do that

Here's what the new government of Thailand said after their recent military coup.

"The armed forces commander and the national police commander have successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," the new leaders said in a statement on national television.

"We ask for the co-operation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience."

If only it were that easy to do here in America. They didn't even have to resort to violating human rights with torture or imprisonment without trials.

Election stealing

Wow this article really scared me. I don't believe in a national election fraud, but the evidence makes me think that there has to be something wrong in Ohio. I'm impressed with the level of dirty politics that Republicans are going to. Lying and questionable ethical behavior are just not good enough anymore. Now they have to go to outright felonies.

In another political rant... I hate how people think of terrorism as a real threat to America. I'm not saying that we should do nothing, but spending money on security always has a low ROI. It's about risk tolerance. We should just accept that these things can happen. It would suck yes, but we've spent trillions to fight the war on terror. Couldn't we have saved a million lives with that money instead of maybe preventing a terrorist attack?

Ugh. I prefer not to think about politics anymore, it just gets me depressed. I want the Democrats win some seats in the November election, but I am going to stay cynical until the election is called.

Freedom hating

One of the more amusing memes is the idea that Islamic fundamentalists hate freedom and everything associated with it. This idea was made popular in a Bush statement that just seems silly to me. It's not like they really hate freedom. They do however hate American imperialism and foreign policy. I like how Bush framed it by making it an us versus them battle. Now he can try to portray everything that is anti-Bush as an anti-freedom and therefore anti-American. When you look at it that way, pretty much everyone hates freedom.

Why Bush is scary even to Republicans

It's not a secret that I've never been a fan of the Republicans. But this administation is the scariest I've ever seen. There are two thing in particular about the Bush administration that I think would make even staunch Republicans uneasy.

The first is an assault on science. Whether it's NASA, the FDA, or the EPA. The Bush administration has consistently marginalized the views of scientists. The net effect is that scientists are being silenced and the government is dispensing incorrect or inaccurate information which is slanted with a political point of view.

The second dangerous thing that the Bush administration reaches for more power than any administration I have known(granted I'm not that old). In numerous situations like NSA wiretapping, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib even Republicans think the Bush administration has overstepped executive powers.

When these two things are added together it leads to a common theme: You can't trust the government, especially the executive branch. There's always been a distrust of government and executive abuses of power, particularly since Watergate. But now all actions and information are tainted by politics.

Masking the health of the economy

With so much focus today on the soaring home prices and how they are the foundation of the American economy, I found this article on Slate about mortgage default rates interesting. There are many contradictory indicators on the health of the US economy. Strong growth in consumer markets and home equity valuations have to be balanced against massive consumer and war waging deficits, soaring health care costs and the ever increasing wealth gap. If the mortgage companies are indeed being much more forgiving of bad debts then one of the few indicators of the strength of the economy may be in doubt, which is worrisome for everyone.

Tom DeLay and Visible Path

I'd like to think that I'm not one to revel in the misfortunes of others, but that'd be just a lie. So ha ha Tom DeLay. You got what you deserved.

Corruption is one area where the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. It's just so hard to trust that our politicians are working for our own good. It's what makes transparency critically important for our government. It feels like in the information age we may be able to understand how money and power flows and determine where the problems are. OK that's probably unrealistic, but we can dream about it.

Speaking of power flow, someone pointed out that my old VP of Blue Martini Bob Brown works at a company called Visible Path which is a company that attempts to manage what they call "Relationship Capital". They try and turn relationships and connections into something that a business can leverage and build upon(and presumably monetize). I have no idea if it is a company that can make real money(a quick glance makes me believe they sell software to scan through your corporate emails and figure out who know whom), but it's kind of an interesting idea.

What's wrong with health care in america

I saw this article the other day on overmedication in America, and it is exactly what I think is driving up health care costs. There's a prevailing attitude in this country that if there is something wrong with your health, you ought to to take some sort of pill or use some sort of medical procedure to fix it. People are relatively unwilling to take responsibility for their own health. And even healthy people think they need drugs. There are few incentives for health care providers to provide high quality preventative and primary care, because all the money is in specialties and drugs. Something has to change, this country will go broke unless it does. Time to invest in pharmaceutical companies I guess.

Environmental Pollution Agency

One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration is consistently appointing people to key positions based on political viewpoints instead of subject matter expertise. The EPA is perhaps the biggest victim of this policy. In an ironic twist of fate, environmentalists now are frequently suing the EPA in order to make the government enforce stricter environmental regulations. Most frightening are the fact that people who care about the environment have to sue to get the Clean Air and Clean Water acts enforced. Wasn't the EPA created to protect these things? Right now it feels like the EPA was created to help polluters.

I am on the left of the American mindset, I admit that. One of the few areas that the left and right wings agree on these days is civil liberties. The things that have happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib make me sick. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this recent case where a judge ruled that law enforcement could put a GPS tracking device on a suspect's car without a warrant. Here's a link to the article. Maybe we've thrown out the whole concept of "innocent until proven guilty" for the more acceptable "innocent until you do something suspiciously guilty". There was also a recent study which said that %43 of Americans think civil liberties of Muslims should be restricted. I guess we'll soon be getting rid of that pesky First Amendment too.

If you didn't notice, I made some tweaks to the style on my blog, just because I was bored with it. It's not really that much of a change and it's not that good. At some point I need to do a major site revamp, but HTML frustrates me so much that it takes a while. I also really need to make my site more modular so I can move it off my home server. The HTTP hits I'm getting on my home machine(which aren't really that many) sometimes interfere with my bandwidth when I am playing Counter-Strike.

I'm bitter, angry, and disappointed at the American public. I am astounded by the number of people who support Bush. I am frightened at the prospect of four more years. Here are the things that frighten me most about the things that Bush will do in the next four years:

• Bush will have the ability to nominate probably two or three Supreme Court Justices and I expect him to choose candidates as conservative as Scalia and Thomas.
• The continued assault on the environment, in particular Bush will attempt to open of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve for oil drilling, and roll back as many parts of the Clean Air Act as possible.
• The partisan science policies. Appointing scientists who only who have your agenda makes it difficult to have the best and brightest people.
• A woman's right to choose. It's clear that Bush wants to do as much as he possibly can to restrict a woman's right to choose.

Here are some of the things that I am less worried about.

• The war in Iraq: I believe that Bush will do his best to get us out of Iraq. No one wants the conflict in Iraq to last any longer than it should, but neither can we just abandon what we have started there. I believe Kerry would have done better getting us out for the simple reason that Kerry has never alienated all our allies.
• Gay rights. I fully support gay rights, but it's clear that American public does not. Bush will push harder to block gay rights, but he's just following the will of the people.

In his concession speech, Kerry talked about healing the rifts between the two parties. And I heard on NPR a former Bush speechwriter say that Bush honestly felt bad about the level of partisan politics which had divided the nation. I wish I could believe him, and I hope that the two parties do a better job of finding common ground in Bush's second term. But I'm pretty skeptical right now, so I'm not keeping my hopes up.

I can always move to Canada. A better solution would be to have California cede from the US. Oh and someone showed me this new map of North America which might be a bit more accurate.

Well its election time. You know where I stand. Vote Kerry/Edwards for a stronger America. Though I suspect no one who reads this hasn't already made up their minds. If Bush wins, I will blame my parents. It's still extremely tight, but I'm hoping voter turnout in the swing states will make the difference.

I am voting a pretty much straight Democratic ticket I think. Some of the minor propositions I might not fall into line with the party, but otherwise.

Ars technica had this article which was titled "The internet has made us all partisan wackos". It wasn't particularly interesting reading, aside from the title, which is true.