Cybrpnk's Rantings

I like Thomas Friedman. I don't always agree with him, but I think he's got a really good perspective on the Arab world. I also like the fact that I've seen both liberals and conservatives using his columns to support their views. I never really got why he bought into the neocon fantasy about invading Iraq being a good technique for catalyzing positive change in the middle east, but I respect that he always conditionalized his support on things being done correctly. He was one of the first of the pro-war clique to sound the alarm about the mismanagement and incompetence of Bush, Rumsfeld and company. And he has consistently questioned whether Bush wanted to fix the middle east, or just advance his own career and agenda. It was Friedman who I first saw raise the question "If winning in Iraq is the most important thing for America shouldn't it be more important than Bush getting re-elected?" Consistently throughout the campaign we saw that in the eyes of the administration nothing was as important as protecting their own power. Even if it meant letting Iraq slide closer and closer to the precipice of civil war. So, when Friedman asks whether Bush is willing to torpedo Arab-driven reform of repressive governments if it involves criticism of US policy, it gets my attention.

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In announcing his administration's commitment to a strong dollar today, our so-called president offered some deep insight into his grasp of economics, foreign trade, and globalization. It turns out that there is a simple solution to the trade deficit, and he has it for us: ``That's easy to resolve, people can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit.'' Thanks W., wouldn't have thought of that. Any suggestions about the apparent lack of interest most people have towards the trade deficit? Or ideas about how to find products made in America? Didn't think so. Truth is that if we leave the solution of hard economic problems to be solved by the buying patterns of those people who both care about the issues and have the resources (both money and time) to change their behavior based on those concerns, the problems will not get solved.

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After listening to years of whining from the Republicans in Congress about waste in government, bloated government, etc. we are now being treated by the spectacle of these self-proclaimed men and women of high standards covering themselves in mud in pursuit of as much pork as they can stuff down their greedy gullets. No surprise really, given the rapidity with which they have allowed power to corrupt their high and mighty selves. It was only ten years ago that the hungry, minority, GOP was decrying the moral decay wrought on the Democrats by nearly forty years of control of the house. Clearly the Democrats of old were made of sterner stuff than these modern Republicans who have descended into the muck and mire in a mere ten years.

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Just back from a fabulous week in New York. Doing the family thang and all that. Saw one mediocre play (Reckless) and one fabulous show (Cookin'). Too many great meals to list. Thanksgiving vegetarian creation for this year: Pumpkin Ravioli in Cinnamon Brown Butter. Very easy. Cook ravioli. Brown butter - just throw some butter in a sauce pan, heat over a medium-low flame, skim off foam as it develops, cook until nicely brown. Add some cinnamon to taste, toss in some dried cranberries. Serve with toasted walnuts and pepitas. Yum. Also got together with my college don (faculty advisor to you poor souls who attended neither Sarah Lawrence nor Oxford). Really great time all around.

One sour note: discussion of impending bear hunt in New Jersey. I understand the issues about managing wildlife on the human/nature interface, and it is quite complex.

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The title of this entry is a paraphrase of the title of David Foster Wallace's article 'Consider The Lobster' published in Gourmet Magazine. They don't seem to have the essay on their site, but there is an interesting article about it on The Boston Globe's website. In a similar spirit (but without footnotes) I would like to question the assumptions of those who wish to legislate against abortion. It strikes me that part of the problem with the whole abortion question is the lack of scientific answers to the core questions in the debate. To date we have not yet figured out what consciousness is, nor do we know how to determine whether or not a creature lacking language skill is or is not conscious. We have this strong intuition that there is some continuum from single-cell creatures up to higher primates, but can't assert with any certainty whether we really are more advanced than some number of our fellow creatures here on earth. In fact, it is unclear that attaining consciousness really does make us more advanced. Bruce Sterling has posited in some of his writing that hive minds could actually be more advanced than individual consciousness. So while we have some understanding about what makes one physically homo sapiens we have no clear definition for what makes one human.

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I've been mulling over the recent death of Jacques Derrida, and contemplating why it is that the conservatives I know are so hostile towards the ideas he developed during his lifetime. Some of it certainly is their discomfort with his dismissal of moral absolutism, which they are very open about. Some of it, one suspects, is just envy: Derrida makes them feel stupid. They just don't get what he's on about, and they are very bad at admitting that they don't know everything. And don't take that as an arrogant allusion to my own presumed brilliance. Everything I know about Derrida I have learned from others. I just happen to be fortunate enough to have an academic philosopher in my family. But I digress. I believe that at the real heart of why the American conservatives hate Derrida is that not only is he so on to them he makes them look like half-wits (which they most assuredly are not, except perhaps relative to him), but embracing his teachings provides people with a way out of the linguistic net they have been casting over our society in the course of the last thirty-plus years. In Derrida is the seed of the Conservatives' destruction. No wonder they were eager to bury him years before he died.

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Providence has decreed that my current consumption of literature is centered on Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, a work of historical fiction that takes place during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in England and around Europe. One of the central themes running through both that period of history and Stephenson's novel is the horrific human cost exacted by the periods' many religious wars and plots. Protestants vs. Puritans. Catholics vs. Protestants. And, to borrow a line from Tom Lehrer, "everybody hates the jews." Remembering this as the backdrop against which our Founding Fathers enshrined the principle of separation of church and state helps to illustrate the grave disservice and threat to our country posed by the Republican strategy of fashioning George W. Bush's second administration as a religious institution.

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I don't know about the rest of you out there, but I am mad. No, not mad, furious. It's bad enough that so many people in America apparently want George W. Bush to remain president. But their reasoning makes it appalling, atrocious, scary, horrible. In particular I speak of the people who voted for him based solely on the belief that they were fulfilling their religious duty. They really piss me off. The message these people seem to be sending is that they are indifferent to the position of this country in the rest of the world, they don't care about their own material well-being, all they care about is having a president who shares their religious beliefs and will act to codify them in US law. And it isn't just legislation. These people are likely to have the opportunity to remake the US Supreme Court into a body that may well sanction this sanctification of America. Well, I have a message to all of you people out there in those Red States, you don't care about anything but your spiritual well-being in the next world, than stop taking money from those of us who you despise. Let's remake federal expenditures into some sort of nice tax parity: if your state pays N dollars into the federal budget, you get at most N dollars back. Some of that money has to pay down the debt, and I bet that a lot of us in those big blue states are sick of carrying your deadweight. You don't like the way we live, see how you do without us.

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Just when many people were relegating Osama bin Laden to the 'vanished, presumed dead' dustbin of history he has reappeared on videotape just in time for our presidential election. Many people see his reappearance as a cause for fear, others anger. for me, it's more about vindication. Not in his actual reappearance, but in what he had to say. It's creepy, really creepy (fitting for this Halloween night entry) but the texts I have seen of this latest video suggest that my analysis of the meaning behind the 9/11 attacks is correct. Almost immediately after the attacks our so-called president denounced the acts as the work of crazed killers who hate freedom, and has never wavered from that stance. I have long contended that this simple-minded interpretation was both wrong and dangerous. My reasoning was that the reason for these attacks was not to destroy America, but to send us a message. More importantly, our refusal to accept these attacks as a message would be interpreted as a sign that something bigger must be done to get our attention.

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Okay, gotta be honest here, part of why I haven't been writing lately is that not only have I been so wrapped up following the Red Sox amazing post-season, but have been worried about jinxing them by breaking that silence. But, now, after last night's victory there is no longer any such threat. Not going to get any politics out of me today, just basking in the happiness over the Red Sox actually winning the world series. I was ten years old in 1975 and vividly remember the heartbreak of that year. In my heart Pete Rose should be kept out of the hall of fame just because of his being part of the team that won that year. Flash forward to 1986, watching on my roommate's TV in our darkened Brooklyn apartment daring to believe that I was actually going to see the Red Sox win the world series, followed by the crushing collapse. Heartbreak redux. Then came this year.

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If nothing else is clear about the Sinclair broadcasting company's plans to have all of their TV stations broadcast an anti-Kerry propaganda film this close to the election, it is obvious that the American public is poorly served by Ronald Reagan's abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting. Considering that the airwaves are a public trust which broadcasters are allowed use of so long as they serve the public good, it is shameful that the FCC is prepared to stand idly by while this abuse of not only the airwaves, but of our electoral system, occurs. Presumably the FCC can't order that the documentary not be shown, as the Supreme Court has ruled in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) that prior restraint on publication is unconstitutional. However they could certainly offer an opinion on conditions under which stations could have their licenses revoked. Not that one seriously expects Colin Powell's son, Michael, to use his FCC chairmanship to stand in the way of the Bush re-election bid. BTW, there is some discussion over at The Left Coaster as to whether or not Sinclair will offer equal time, and what Kerry should do if such an offer is made.

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Apparently the best criticism the Republicans can come up with of Kerry's debate performance last night is that it was wrong of him to mention the well-known fact that Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian. Both Dick and his wife gave very huffy sounding interviews in which they decried this atrocious invasion of their family privacy. This is gall of the first order. First off, if they are so concerned about keeping Mary out of the public eye they might have chosen to not hire her to head up Dick's campaign team. According to Gay and Lesbian Times she is being paid slightly over $72,000 a year for this work. This certainly belies their feigned desire to keep her out of the public arena.

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This year's ballot in California once again illuminates how poorly the initiative process serves the cause of good governance. In going through the annual ritual of trying to decipher just what all of these initiatives mean, the question I found myself asking over and over again is 'is this good policy.' The answer, regrettably, was generally either 'no' or 'who can tell?' Given last year's widely followed public lynching of our sitting governor, who was replaced by a charismatic but politically ignorant movie star, one would have hoped that finally the electorate was ready to confront their own role in creating the mess for which Gray Davis was blamed. Sadly, but predictably, rather than introspection we see a renewed rush to inflict false populism's short-sightedness on the state government.

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As you can tell from the lag since my last posting this one has taken some time to formulate. But I've been thinking long and hard, and I have some conclusions about the sad state of discourse in America today. And I don't mean the media or the politicians. I mean we the people. Everyone who's paying any attention knows that we are a deeply divided country, and it is hard to miss the complete breakdown of civility in political discourse. I'm sure that I am not alone in having found myself in the situation where I was yelling at people who, political differences aside, are dear to me. Yet if I step back and ask myself, is anything being accomplished by such an exchange, clearly the answer is no. Underlying this tension and internecine warfare is, to be brutally honest, personal failing.

If we are truly honest, we must be taking the time to ask ourselves the sort of tough questions that we expect of our scientists. In general these questions start with 'what if' and usually take the form of acknowledging our own limited knowledge, experience, and expertise. What if brutal military repression is the only effective way to stop Al Qaeda and their ilk? What if the market really can solve poverty? What if entitlements really do cause more problems than they solve? What if we are wrong? What then? It's hard to write those, I'm sure it's hard to read them. Admit it, you are unconsciously recoiling from your screen, rejecting even the asking of these questions. But if you cannot ask those questions, you will never be able to have the sort of conversation with a conservative which might change their mind. And if you confront someone with this sort of honesty and openness and they still do not listen to you, nothing else you can do will get through to them.

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There has been a great deal of talk about polls lately. Steve Soto over at The Left Coaster has been writing a series of articles describing the poor methodology used by many of the polls getting lots of press. Apparently the samples they are using have disproportionately large numbers of self-identified Republicans. The result of the coverage of these polls is of course to discourage people who want to get rid of our Uncumbent and replace him with an elected president. Don't believe the polls. They are all based on the flawed premise that the voter turnout this year will match the pattern established in recent presidential elections. But the whole polling thing uncovers another flaw in our electoral system. As much as both candidates will claim that they don't pay attention to the polls, it is clear that in reality our elections have become massive marketing campaigns which are all about finding the right packaging, rather than sincere efforts to enable the electorate to get to know who the candidates are and what they stand for.

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A spectre is haunting the American Presidential election - the spectre of neo-conservatism. This is the philosophy of those within the Bush administration who argued most vociferously for the invasion of Iraq. Their rationale is the belief that people prefer freedom and democracy to autocracy, and that if the correct conditions are created people will insist on being free. A curious theory. Putting aside the question of how killing civilians and razing cities is creating the conditions necessary for democracy to thrive, let us examine the dissonance between this approach and the central message of the Bush/Cheney campaign for re-election. That message is: be afraid, the world is full of scary people, trust us to protect you. Don't ask too many questions. Allow us to curtail your freedoms to help fight the scary people. In short, while the neo-cons are intent on proving in Iraq that people will choose freedom, the Republicans here in America are intent on proving that people prefer the illusion of safety, and will willingly give up their freedom to attain it.

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I was quite surprised by the contents of some email I received recently. The mail was from someone whom I know to be conservative but believe to be intelligent. The contents concerned the assertion that the facts clearly showed John Kerry to be a liar because, well, that whole Cambodia thing. I must confess that I haven't been paying all that much attention to the details of the whole Swift Boat nonsense, but was fairly sure that virtually all of their concrete assertions had been debunked. So I went off to Google and did a search for 'kerry cambodia' which turned up quite a few hits. A quick glance would lead one to believe that it was a proven fact that Kerry had made up the whole thing about Cambodia. The problem is that when you start looking closely at those hits it becomes apparent that none of them are factual. Lots of blogs, a lot of references to and variations on an Op-Ed piece written by someone from the American Enterprise Institute. No journalism. Not until you get eight or nine pages into the search results. There you find a couple of news articles, none of which have any evidence that Kerry is not telling the truth. On the contrary, they present evidence which suggest that it is completely credible that Kerry is telling the truth here.

This presents an interesting cautionary tale about internet sources, credibility, and noise; and serves as an excellent example of the dangers of basing one's arguments on purported facts presented on someone's website. It also illustrates that direct links into a reputable source (such as a newspaper) might obfuscate the fact the information being viewed is opinion, not journalism. Disturbingly many people seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between legitimate and questionable sources when making online arguments. This seems to suggest that the internet is encouraging, or at least facilitating bad scholarship in public discourse.

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Conservatives like to tout their belief that the best way to fight the war on terror is by killing as many terrorists as we can. Any attempt to understand the social forces that create extremism is weakness. Any suggestion that perhaps our own foreign policy is contributing to the rise of terrorism is treason. We are told that we must create a tough, united front and demonstrate how steadfast we are in this war. This attitude closely matches the approach that Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army have been taking to the insurgency in Chechnya. Today's headlines show, as the standoff at the school in Beslan, Russia has ended in violence and death, it is not an approach without risk. Risks which our government refuses to acknowledge in any but the vaguest sense. Yet through their actions they are inviting terrorists to do in one of our schools what the Chechen rebels have just done in Russia. News reports are still unclear, but preliminary estimates are at least 120 dead, presumably including many children.

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Piercing The Bubble

The Fox News headline says it all so perfectly: Man Gets Within 10 Feet of Cheney. Presumably this put Cheney at risk of ending his nearly three years in complete isolation from actual human contact, most of it spent in an undisclosed secure location. The scary thing is, he's the guy who's supposed to be more in touch than Bush. Fortunately alert secret service agents were able to wrestle the man to the ground. He was then arrested and charged with some truly absurd violations: assaulting federal officers (presumably when he responded to being pushed by any action other than going completely limp), and the Kafkaesque ' impeding the operation of the Secret Service.' Well, the secret service are supposed to protect the vice-president. They arrested this guy because they thought he posed a threat. Sounds to me like they were operating just fine. More to the point is the question of whether anyone will think to suggest that the secret service should be arrested for impeding the operation of the first amendment.

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With echoes of Michael Huffington the forces of truth have once again rousted a demon from the halls of the US Congress. The 'Living a Lie' award for today goes to Ed Schrock formerly of the 2nd District of Virginia. A pity really, since Ed was rated quite highly by The National Journal. Why is Ed leaving the hallowed halls of Congress and fleeing back to Virginia Beach with his tail between his legs? Well it turns out that, his wife and sponsorship of the Defense of Marriage Amendment notwithstanding, Ed is apparently either gay or bi. According to various news sources Ed had left some voice mails on a phone service used by men to arrange sexual liasons with other men. Some gay activists somehow got ahold of at least one of his recordings and posted it on their website. Well Ed, You might enjoy getting together with Jack Ryan for a beer, maybe take in a sex show, although don't take it personally if he won't have public gay sex with you, that may just not be his thing. At least not the gay part....

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It is quite charming to hear our beloved Uncumbent, the usurper W. railing against the terrible impact of 'shadowy' groups running political ads without being bound by hard money limits. Particularly charming since presumably part of why the conservatives haven't really ramped up their 527s is they don't see the need; after all they have their own 'news' network. Our so-called president is concerned about these 'shadowy' groups and the effect they might have on our democracy. No worries about having a big swath of the public airwaves controlled by a conservative Australian who uses his media to either shill for the conservative cause, or to berate and belittle anyone to the left of King George III (that's not a typo, it's a reference to the British monarch we wrested independence from). All in the guise of 'journalism.' For those who don't know, real journalists actually do report stories from a neutral position, and actually do have a concept of fairness in how they represent different viewpoints.

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The classic conservative approach to most social ills is 'let the market sort it out.' This reckless invocation of the market is a severe abuse of a sometimes useful tool that obfuscates critical discussions of policy. An excellent example of improper use of the market is our current approach to energy policy. Sure it's true that as oil becomes scarcer the price will rise, and that there will be periodic spikes in the price. But by the time the market really starts signaling that it is time to start looking for other energy options it will be too late.

To seriously address the transformation of our entire economy and infrastructure from an oil-sucking monstrosity to a world leader in conservation, renewable energy production, and efficiency will take not just significant investment, but far-sighted planning and sponsorship of high-risk blue-sky research. Markets have not shown much of an ability to generate either of these types of activity. Markets also have a horrible track record of passing over high-quality science and engineering in favor of slickly-marketed inferior products.

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The so-called 'Swiftboat Veterans for Truth' are a bunch of scum-sucking un-American weasels. Why mince words about this? These people have launched a scurilous attack against a candidate for President. They have no evidence to back up their lies. they are clearly funded by George W. Bush's friends. They have no policy goal. They are political hatchet-men. If they really were concerned about the qualifications of a man asking to be commander-in-chief, why attack the guy who actually fought in combat, when the alcoholic with a rumoured history of cocaine use is clearly far less qualified? and in Bush's case we don't even need to go on his use of political influence to evade combat duty, his history of arrests, his numerous failed businesses. We can just look at his support of Donald Rumsfeld and the failed attempt to disprove the Powell doctrine. Just lay at Bush's feet the nearly one thousand American soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians he has gotten killed in Iraq, and clearly the man is unqualified to be commander in chief.

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The recent storm in Florida has me thinking of the disaster that is federal emergency management. Not that I have any complaint about FEMA and how they operate. My issue is at a policy level. For quite some time it has been clear to me that there should be a distinction between unlikely disasters and probable disasters. The poster boy of this is flooding in the Mississippi basin. Every few years we are treated to the site of people filling sandbags, submerged houses, people on rooftops refusing to be evacuated, etc. Why are all those houses where they are? It's great farmland. Why is it great farmland? It's very rich in nutrients from the alluvial mud that periodically gets dumped on it when the Mississippi river floods. Oh. Shouldn't these people live on higher ground, or build on stilts, or something, and just farm in the flood basin? The obvious response to that is: 'Why do the liberals always want government to tell people how to live their lives?'

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Globalisation, we are told by the conservatives, is good for America. Why? On the one hand it lowers the price of goods, on the other it is good for the overall economy because it frees up labor resources to do higher value work. A nice theory, but one with significant flaws. First off, an underlying assumption is that not only will there necessarily be higher-value work to be done, but that Americans will be uniquely suited to do that work. Secondly, there has not yet been any serious discussion of the future of people who are not capable of attaining higher-value skills.

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Not going to have much time to post this week. It's Siggraph time. For those who don't know this is THE computer graphics conference. All of my fellow visual effects production types, academics, tool vendors, etc. converge for one crazy week of presentations and parties. It's in LA this year (as it is about every other year) which is a bummer. Too much driving. When it's out of town it's always more fun.

Today I got to see the keynote speech which was given by Bruce Sterling. The gist of what he had to say was that our society is on a non-sustainable course, and that the technological leaders like us Siggraph types should take the initiative and try to make a difference. He talked quite a bit about technological innovation, sustainable manufacturing, and the preservation of democracy. Clearly some in the audience had been hoping for something more in the area of adoration of their technological selves, but if they'd read his books they shouldn't have been surprised at what he had to say. Most of the audience seemed to appreciate what he had to say as much as I did.

A couple of times over the last year I have been the target of what were intended to be devastating verbal assaults. These were blasts by people who were so certain that they had command of overwhelming verbal ability that they would be able to incinerate me with their attacks. While I salute their initiative and passion, I was left scratching my head at the showcase of poor reading skills, ignorance of logic, ad hominem attacks, and raw bluster. Where, I found myself wondering, did this come from. After some discussions with friends and colleagues, I have formulated a theory: these people, like so many of their fellow Americans, are simply incapable of participating in sophisticated discourse. Which is not just to say that they are not capable of contributing to the discussion, but that they are incapable of comprehending what the discussion is really about.

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When it comes to the middle east there are far more questions than answers, and more radical ideas than clear solutions. On the one side there are the conservatives and neo-conservatives who seem to think that some combination of force and nation-building will result in wide-spread democratization and an end to extremism. On the left there is a distaste for the use of force, a belief that there must be another solution, but no clear ideas that work with my understanding of the realpolitik of the region. So, I'm going to play a little bit of Devil's Advocate here.

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I have this belief, perhaps misguided, that I am starting to come out of the current time crunch I have been in. The programming work for the get-out-the-vote project is largely done, work is calm for the moment, hopefully for not too long though. My one other task for this week was to do a bunch of baking. My wife is on the board of the Liberty Hill Foundation board, and I am the board baker. They have their annual retreat this weekend, so I had to make a lot of cookies. That all got finished up tonight, so back to politics.

I've been spending some time lately hanging out on The Left Coaster. That's a collaborative blog, all political, all left-leaning. Good people, and less consuming to put in short comments over there rather than writing my own long pieces. Plus it helps keep me on my toes and thinking. Anyway, one of the themes that has come up is questions about voting integrity, and inevitably, the 2000 Presidential election in general, and Florida in particular. I had an epiphany about this election fiasco, and realized that it is a mistake to get caught up in the partisan aspects of it. Forget about arguing over whether Bush won or Gore won, there's a bigger issue here.

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I've been totally buried the last week splitting my time between my real job, and some pro bono programming I've been doing to help a get out the vote campaign. This has me short on sleep and time, but I really want to say something about the pathetic state of free speech in this country. With the political conventions approaching, and the campaigns in full swing, it is time to refocus on the question of dissent in America. The Bush administration has a horrible record of using goon tactics to suppress dissent whenever the president appears in public. The Bloomberg administration in New York is trying to marginalize anti-Bush protests during the Republican National Convention, and who knows what Boston will look like next week.

While the most frequently cited defense of the illegal quashing of free expression has been security, I'm not buying it. If a president needs to be kept away from outspoken citizens as a security measure, then it is a sure sign that it is time for that president to go. After all, which is more important: the individual who happens to be in office at any given time, or the US Constitution?

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Whenever the subject of global warming comes up, the two most persistent responses from conservatives are specious claims that there is no proof yet that global warming is real; and some high-toned rhetoric about the damage it could do to our economy were we to seriously address this issue. Their misuse of science is very much in line with Bush's faith-based logic: if it's something we don't like, the radical fringe should be granted as much, or more, credibility than the top scientists working in a field; if it's something we do like, anyone who has even a slightly different opinion from ours is a quack. Be assured that there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that global warming is real and strongly affected by human activity. Had we responded to the threat twenty years ago we would have been able to prevent climate change, now we can only hope to limit the damage it does. Today's topic, however, is the economy.

The basic gist of the economic argument against addressing global warming is that the cost to American businesses to address emissions problem would be so high that it would damage our national security. Remember this point: damage to the American economy is, according to the conservatives, damage to our national security. This means that if George W. Bush's policies are damaging to the long-term health of the US economy, then he is a threat to national security.

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It becomes increasingly clear that George W. Bush is incapable of acknowledging a mistake. His sociopathic delusions very effectively lock out any facts that disagree with his messianic view of the world, very much like the secret service so neatly isolates our so-called president from any who might dare to openly protest his crazed policies. And apparently his disease is contagious, as Tony Blair's reason seems similarly incapacitated regarding Iraq. In a scathing expose of this mania in The Guardian, former leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook devestatingly lays out how misguided pre-war statements were, and how amnesiacal current denials are.

In neat parallel with the inflation of pre-war intelligence by the Bush administration, Blair's government chose to highlight worst-case scenarios, discard caveats and qualifications, and hide evolving intelligence analysis when it conflicted with their script.

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In yet another piece of election-year cynicism, the social conservatives in Congress, egged on by our so-called President are pushing for Senate debate and vote on a constitutional amendment to legalize wife-beating. Oops, I mean legalize homophobia. Or was it religious discrimination? Well, they claim it's about protecting marriage, but is anyone really fooled by that? Not that they really think there is any chance that this monstrosity will pass, oh no, they just want people on the record as being against marriage. Or perhaps against God. For how else could one construe a vote against saving marriage? Bah. Fortunately, as of this writing very view senators seem enthusiastic about casting votes in favor of a constitutional amendment to extend the reach of discrimination.

Not only is this whole farce an affront to our bedrock principles of liberty and freedom, not to mention common decency, but it is also an assault on the division between church and state. We will all be hearing lots of high-toned rhetoric about the traditional nature of marriage, as well as hints that marriage is a universal concept that has always been the same in all cultures. This will surely come as news to the Mormons, who are not allowed to practice polygamy (a ban that will also be embodied in this proposed amendment). It will also come as a bit of a shock to historians who are aware that gay marriage occurred in ancient Rome. Not to mention all of the gay couples who are merely asking for equal protection under the law, as provided by the fourteenth amendment.

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I've been doing a bunch of reworking of this site, and wanted to highlight some of the changes. First off, the URL. I've fixed things so that you can get here just using http://www.maskit.net/cybrpnk. A little bit cleaner, and easier to tell people in a hurry. You can also use the full spelling of 'cyberpunk'. Next, I've gotten things organized into categories, which should make it easier to root through older posts. Also, I've gotten rid of the word 'writeback' which was just too obscure, and have replaced it with the word 'comment'. It should now be much more obvious how to add a comment.

I've also added some little widgets to brighten things up. There's a countdown to the election, which I wrote myself (not that it was terribly hard). That's adapted from the Iraq War Counter which is a little lower down. I've also added in a box to show what I am currently reading, as well as recommendations. The list of recommendations is pretty bare-bones right now, but will gradually grow.

I'm working on adding in a plugin which will allow for threaded discussions, but that may take a little bit longer to make happen. At some point I will also start adding in some links.

Well, it took the Republican party all of about three minutes to start slinging mud at Senator John Edwards. And what mud they have to sling. The most interesting charges are that Edwards is disingenuous and inexperienced. If those are such liabilities, why should Bush get another crack at the White House? It's important to remember that these charges are being levied by a party that ran W. as a unifying moderate. They then claimed that his inexperience didn't matter because he would surround himself with great advisors. Well, we all know how completely disingenuous W's campaign was. He has been an extreme right dangerous lunatic who has further polarized not just America, but the world. As for those advisors, that would be people like Donald 'Why plan for after the fall of Baghdad' Rumsfeld, Condi 'I'm a Russia expert, but let me tell you about how Saddam is responsible for 9/11' Rice, and John 'Civil rights are undermining America' Ashcroft. Well, W. did appoint one good advisor, Colin Powell, who he then allowed to be marginalized and ignored.

So, we are supposed to worry about Edwards being inexperienced or possibly disingenuous? How much harm could he do? He's running to replace an administration that has alienated our friends, invigorated our enemies, undermined our security, and assaulted our civil liberties. While at the same time doing nothing for our economy beyond funneling massive tax cuts to the rich. It won't take much to improve on that record.

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Conservatives are crowing about the fantastic economic news. Should they be? I think not. They predict the best economic growth in 20 years this year. But what does that really mean. They talk about all of the jobs that are being created, but just what are those jobs? The conservatives have been complaining that people are not recognizing how good the economy is, but perhaps the real truth is that people are trusting their personal experience ahead of statistics, as well they should.

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News reports today on NPR discuss some of the findings of the 9/11 commission. The report that I heard made specific mention of the barriers in place to prevent sharing of information between private companies and the government, as well as the separation between domestic and foreign intelligence. The report made it sound as if these barriers were unfortunate, but things we can look forward to disposing of. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Most of these barriers are of a type known as Chinese Walls. Named after the Great Wall of China, a Chinese Wall is a set of policies and practices that prevent entities from having any knowledge of each other's activities. In theory all brokerage houses have Chinese Walls between their trading divisions and their analyst divisions. Anyone who followed the aftermath of the tech wreck will understand that not everyone has proper Chinese Walls in place. Clearly this can be very problematic.

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One of the truly surreal things about the current power of the Republican party is the way in which it has conned two groups with radically different philosophies into seeing past their cognitive dissonance and supporting the party which both promotes, and undermines, their goals. Talk about your devil's deals. The two groups are the free market, less government crowd, including the libertarians; and the religious right. Let's look at one side of this dissonance. Sure, the religious right is getting people in office that are willing to advance their narrow-minded bigoted agenda, but at what cost?

What is it that the religious right really seems to want? They seem intent on turning back the clock to a mythical past in which all children were born in wedlock; all women knew that their place was in the home and beneath their husbands (both physically and metaphorically); all sex was between husband and wife; people took responsibility for their own actions; and god had a central place in everyone's lives. I've read a lot of history, and I haven't run across even oblique references to any time and place that even vaguely approximated this vision. Not even Puritan New England in the 17th century, although that might have been as close as anything.

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Just got back from seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. Definitely recommend it, but that's not what I'm going to write about. Instead I would like to talk about this year's election, the insanity of voting for anyone but Kerry, and the importance of ridding the country of our political parties.

I heard Arianna Huffington give a speech at a Kerry fundraiser recently. She addressed the question of how people should deal with reservations they might have about Kerry with this line: 'when your house is on fire is not the time to be talking about remodeling.' I agree with that. Given our dysfunctional electoral system, it is simply fact that the only people who have a chance to be elected this year are Kerry and Bush. If you are thinking of casting a 'protest vote' for anyone else, do not be deceived, that vote can help no one but Bush. It may make no difference at all, but it will do no good.

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While our so-called president continues to attempt to explain just what he meant when he claims to have ruled out 'torture' by American troops, the vice-president has been having words on the senate floor. Again there appears to be some controversy over exactly what was said, but apparently Dick lived up to his name by aiming one of these three classic lines at Senate Patrick Leahy: 'fuck you' or 'fuck off' or possibly 'go fuck yourself.' Cheney, perhaps illustrating why he spends so much time out of the public eye, told Fox News: `I felt better after I said it.'' and ``A lot of my colleagues felt what I said badly needed to be said.'' As of this writing there has yet to be an outpouring of support for Cheney's claim from Republican senators, although one suspects that Cheney's real colleagues, that is to say Halliburton employees, are probably solidly behind him on this one.

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Okay, you people out there (I know there must be someone other than me who reads this stuff), I think it's time for me to start sprinkling in some more of that 'gee, this is actually a person and not a venom-spewing AI program' stuff. Today's topic, which is not wholly orthogonal to political ranting, is books. Figured I'd run down some of what I have been reading lately (complete with hyperlinks to Amazon, although I personally prefer actually buying things from your local independent bookseller).

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Some very reassuring news out of the White House today. The NY Times is reporting that President Bush issued orders that all prisoners taken in Afghanistan were to be treated humanely. Hello! Isn't that the default? Isn't that how our soldiers are trained? Did he issue orders that they should wear their uniforms and clean their rifles too? And if this is really the case, why lock them away in Guantanamo and keep the Red Cross away from them? And what about the prisoners that were turned over to the CIA? No mention is made of them in the White House disclosures. And Bush is claiming that he never authorized torture. Which would you rather have the president debating: the meaning of the word 'sex' or the meaning of the word 'torture.' Sure am glad W is bringing dignity back to the office of the president.

Meanwhile the Republican smear campaign is already nit-picking at Michael Moore's latest film. Fahrenheit 9/11 just opened in NY this week, and goes national on Frida