Cybrpnk's Rantings

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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