Category Archive

But if you must vote, vote for Nader.

Names unnamed, sources unsourced, a CMU professor told me the other day that the best way to identify the party affiliation of political blogs is to find out who the blogger talks about all the time. Republicans spend their time, not bolstering their own candidates, but denegrating the Democrats. Ditto the Democrats. This is perhaps true on average, but you will undoubtedly find counterexamples the instant you start looking. So what about blogs that are leftist that criticize Democrats and Republicans? I suppose there are the right-wing counterparts, but I avoid those since I suspect they are mostly crackpot cults, white-power activists, and warmongers. Or Ron Paul supporters.

Which leads me to my next point. Ron Paul supporters got really motivated this primary season. It was at first inspiring, followed by slightly disturbing. The last time I saw that kind of fanaticism in white suburban males was when Star Wars Episode 1 came out. And like after Episode 1, their hopes were left like fish to die washed up on the rocks of failure beneath an unyielding sun. The so-called revolution did not come. Nor could it.

Next comes the Obamagasm. He talks a pretty talk, but like all mainstream candidates he has sacrificed a number of his ideals. While a little guy in Chicago, Obama met with the Arab community to discuss the issue of Palestinian liberation. Now he has cozied up to America’s client-state, Israel in an effort to improve his electability. I’m trying to rid myself of the feeling that “a candidate has to stick to one position for his entire career or else he has lost his integrity.” It’s just not human to do that and would represent a serious character flaw if the guy in the next cubicle did it. So why must politicians? Pre-Iraq War I was a Republican, but as I grew older and learned new things, that stance has shifted wildly. Shouldn’t I forgive such wishy-washyness in candidates? One might say it is important for a candidate to know himself, which I clearly did not, but new data comes along and sometimes you just have to change.

Every election of importance since 9/11 brings me to an eventual state of despair. Think of the lines of power in a political system. George R. R. Martin, my favorite fantasy author, has a great illustration in one of his books (which I will now present from memory, so consider this a semi-direct quotation with noise). The Master of Whisperers comes to the newly minted Hand of the King (the guy who does the day-to-day running of the kingdom) and presents him this riddle (paraphrased): “A rich man, a priest, a king, and a soldier are all in a room. The rich man says, kill them and I will give you half of all my wealth. The priest says, kill them in the name of the gods. The king says, kill them in the name of your king. Who does he kill?” The Hand in the story ponders the question, which has no answer (or rather, too many). It depends on the soldier. Who has the power? The man with the sword is nobody.

In a democratic society, are we the man with the sword? What is our allegiance? Are we greedy and side with the rich man, or pious and side with the priest? Are we loyal subjects and obey the king? Who taught us that each of these figures (and feel free to add your own) has power over us? Are these teachers the ones with the real power? Or are they just the front for the people with the real power? Where do the lines lead or is it just a jumbled graph that leads nowhere and everywhere? Maybe the power is an emergent behavior of the system — Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Either way, can we ever hope to change it?

My longtime friend over at the Wrathful Dove has an excellent post today on the lack of superness in this so-called Super Tuesday, and I wanted to give it a plug.  Here is a brief excerpt that I thought sheds light on the charade that we call “elections” in America:

I was reading the “issues” section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sunday where there was an entire article devoted to comparing the musical selections of the candidates to see what exciting insights this exercise might provide. The same article also subtly observed the importance of selecting a candidate who seems likely to win in November, effectively reducing elections down to the horse race terms in which it is often framed in the corporate media.

These elections are a sham and an obscene circus.

Every four years the American public gets to select its master-in-chief from a narrow field of candidates who fiercely compete and debate within a very narrow range so as to give the illusion of choice and dialog while keeping the true options fixed to those acceptable and profitable to corporate America.

Check out his blog for the rest of the post.

Well, Edwards is all set to announce he is dropping out of the democratic race and Ghouliani has withdrawn from the republican side. Of the mainstream democrat candidates, Edwards was the least likely to become corporate lapdog of the year. He had some unfortunate things against him, which made me less than meh about his bid, but I would have preferred him to Clinton or Obama. My prediction is Obama will take it. As for the Republicans, I was terribly wrong about McCain’s prospects. Which evil would be worse? McCain or Romney in the White House? I must say, though, I am so, so glad that Ghouliani was a miserable failure. If he had been made president, the world would have been a much darker place.

At this point, no one is heading to the White House that I support. I refuse to support the lesser of two evils and so will almost certainly be voting Green as a protest.

Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for president. I liked him on Law and Order, not so much as a presidential candidate. Now he can go back to doing something he’s relatively good at. I’d feel more secure if Ghouliani dropped out (kudos for the name). His continued presence gives me shivers. He’s probably waiting for McCain to screw up and drive the electorate into his arms.

There is a fine line between conspiracy theory and reasonable deduction. Most would agree it is insane to believe that a group of elite men have existed since before the founding of the United States with the purpose of ruling the world from secret. Most would agree that it is insane to believe that 9/11 was staged by people in the US government. But there are all these little coincidences out there that hint at something deeper going on. When we place them all side by side it seems almost reasonable to believe in the conspiracy theory, but the problem is that we have access to a limited set of the data. If we sampled from the distribution of coincidences again, we might come to a completely different conclusion. This is part of the difference between believing in a conspiracy theory and coming to a reasonable conclusion from the facts.

So consider these “coincidences” [source]:

• The owner of MSNBC and NBC is General Electric, who also owns Raytheon
• Raytheon is a defense contractor
• General Electric has a vested stake in Yucca Mountain
• GE and its affiliates have contributed to the main democratic contenders (Clinton, Obama, Edwards)
• GE and its affiliate employees have individually contributed nearly $70,000 to those candidates
• NBC has consistently excluded Kucinich from presidential debates
• Kucinich opposes the War in Iraq and opening Yucca Mountain

In the latest presidential debate, NBC stated its criteria for selecting candidates was being ranked in the top four. Since Bill Richardson exited the race, much to my pleasure, Kucinich was now in the top four. NBC extended him an invitation only to rescind it two days later. Kucinich sued on violation of contract and won. NBC appealed and Kucinich lost. NBC claimed their first amendment rights were infringed by being forced to include Kucinich. Corporations have first amendment rights?

So is it right to conclude from these series of “coincidences” that NBC and its corporate masters have conspired to affect the election by removing from consideration candidates who would not be financially beneficial to them? Or is it a reasonable deduction to conclude from the facts that GE has a vested interest in making sure candidates who will support their goals are given media attention, which translates directly into votes? If you will not agree with that, then surely you must agree that by excluding Kucinich, they materially affect the distribution of votes in the election.

I’ve been following the progress of Wonkosphere and talking about it for a while now [here, here, and here].  If you’re not familiar with Wonkosphere, it’s a website that tracks the buzz generated by candidates on political blogs.  It reports buzz as a percentage of the total buzz by conservative, liberal, and independent bloggers.  It also reports the tone of the posts, so you get more than just who is being talked about.  So it appears that the buzz share is a predicter of national polling results According to Kevin Dooley of Wonkosphere, it’s not the total percentage of buzz share that is predictive of polling results, but the change in buzz share that predicts where national numbers are going.  So are blogs affecting politics (as many have suggested) or are they just reflecting social trends?

Kucinich is doing fairly well today with buzz share, coming in at #3 among Democrats.  He spiked a few days ago when his UFO comments incited a conservative love fest of crazy-elf-hippy remarks.  Democracy for America held the 2008 Pulse Poll to gather data about people’s choice for who should be the 2008 Democratic contender.  The results put Kucinich at a fairly decisive #1, beating out the phantom Al Gore (aka Newest Nobel Turd) and John Edwards.  DFA consists primarily of Progressive Democrats, though, so you can’t generalize it to the population at large.  However, these people tend to be rather vocal and active politically, so they may start to rub off.  It’s a daunting task, though, counteracting the media brick-brain effect (i.e. making your brain into a gray brick).

Dennis Kucinich is not afraid to say the thing many people are wondering. Is Bush freakin nuts? Does he really think World War III is going to break out if Iran gains the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons? Who are the sides? The middle east versus the rest of the world? Oh and North Korea. Plus a couple countries in Africa so embroiled in their own civil wars, they’d be lucky to send 100 men to fight off this giant.

CNN’s political ticker has this:

“I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at a news conference earlier this month.

The Democratic presidential candidate later said he does not consider questioning the Bush’s mental health inappropriate, according [to] the Inquirer’s Web site. [emphasis mine]

I’m about 99.9999% sure that any nuclear weapon Iran acquired would be used for one purpose and one purpose only: deterrence. What Bush is actually saying here is “if you’re interested in avoiding a US invasion of your country, it seems like you ought to be interested in getting a nuclear weapon.” He really can’t see the connection between posturing to overthrow a government and that government’s desire to acquire a nuke to prevent that? This version of diplomacy is like the battered wife who kills her husband in order to escape. Only this husband thinks the wife is going to get a gun and is trying to kill her first.

As usual, Kucinich is the only one brave enough to speak out against this looming evil. The rest are off scrambling around in the dirt for the pennies tossed at them by the corporate patrons. Pelosi can barely look up long enough from the feast of pork-in-a-barrel to notice.

On a side note, I like the CNN editor’s rendering of the bolded sentence above. That’s a direct quote as of 10:00am Eastern time.

Probably would not be noticeably bad. Colbert certainly is attracting a massive amount of attention after declaring his desire to run as a candidate in South Carolina. Whereas Barrack Obama’s facebook group was haled as a success after gathering 384k+ members, Colbert’s group skyrocketed to over a million in just one week. So does he actually have a shot at the presidency if he decided to kick it up a notch and run in all 50? That certainly seems to be the case with younger voters at this point, but would it hold out at the actual election? On Wonkosphere, he’s got a buzz percentage of about 4%, roughly one-third of the buzz for the candidates the media is telling you to vote for (Hillary and Giuliani).

Better yet, he should run in 48 states, singling out 2 as “handicap” states to give the other candidates a fighting chance. I’m sure he could find a pair funnier than Alaska and Rhode Island, but that’s a start.

Also, for a good read about why the democratic leadership isn’t worth two farts in the wind, you should check out today’s article on Dissident Voice.

I received this email today from Dennis Kucinich’s election campaign (below the jump). It’s a quick poll where you choose your top 3 candidates (democratic) for president if you had to vote today. So I voted Kucinich, Gravel, and Edwards. The (optional) reason I gave was that Dennis is the only principled candidate and is neither a warhawk nor a corporate stooge. The only thing wrong with him is that he’s not good for advertising revenue and so mainstream media outlets ignore him completely. Considering the massive load of dung that constitutes 99.9% of NBC, ABC, and CBS, 100% of CNN and 110% of Fox’s news coverage, this probably isn’t such a bad thing. It should give people pause, at least, if the media allowed them to think for themselves for 8 seconds.

And we all know that ain’t gunna happen.

Anyhow, please Kucinich a hand and vote for him in that poll.

Read the rest of this entry »

The problem with our two-party system is that it encourages uniformity. I am becoming more and more convinced that the only difference between the parties is their rhetoric. An observation that led me to vote Green in the last presidential election. When the Democrats took control of the House in the last election, there was much rejoicing with people celebrating as if the Endless Summer had come at last. There would be no more pain and war and suffering. Total crap. I was happy, but my expectation was failure and weakness and I have not been disappointed.

So now Congress looks to be extending the Bush administration’s wiretapping privileges. Way to stand up for the so-called mandate you were touting, Dems. You suck. From the NY Times:

As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.

Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war, they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.  (emphasis mine)

A Democratic bill to be proposed on Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.

In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration plan, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications utilities that participated in the once-secret program to eavesdrop without court warrants.

Reminds me of those Hefty trash bag commercials: “wimpy wimpy wimpy.” I think that makes for a good analogy, because it’s time to take out the trash. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, I am giving up on the Democratic party. Dennis is the last principled person there. The rest are Republicans in donkey’s clothing. From here on out, I’m voting straight Green (though actually this isn’t much of a change since I never had much faith in the Sheepocrats and voted Green when I could anyway).

WonkoKevin over on WonkoBlog for — you guessed it — WonkoSphere posted a little quiz about the ideal supporter today. I figured I’d respond with what sort of supporter (of a political candidate) I am. Would anyone want me?

1. b. I don’t even know what a straw poll is. If they had strawberries, though, I’d be there. (just kidding)
2. a. Much closer to (a), though obsession about a candidate is something I lack.
3. b. I don’t roll that way. Plus you get tazered 18 times by cops so the opponent isn’t forced to listen to you exercising your liberty of free speech.
4. c. Doesn’t give money except to charity.

So the thing I will do that I think should be on the poll is VOTE. And I’ll be voting in the primary for Dennis Kucinich.

I keep feeling the need to write about the battle of the media-darling corporate stooge warhawks. Everyday I see something about fundraising by this candidate or that (and by this I mean Clinton and by that I mean Obama). And everyday I am troubled. When I start to write about it, my thoughts on the subject lack cohesiveness.

Clinton had someone fundraising for her who turned about to be a fugitive of justice, wanted for grand theft. Norman Hsu used a fundraising tactic called bundling, which combines the contributions of many different donors to give it more weight. What does more weight mean?

Today Clinton’s blog is reporting that she raised $27 million for the third quarter, beating Obama in both gross money raised and number of new donors. Yesterday, the NY Times was going on about Obama’s link to a group of black entrepreneurs who supported him back in Illinois. They bailed his campaign out of hot water and he saw that their agenda got pushed in the state legislature. But it looks like their agenda wasn’t all bad (I certainly don’t know enough details to make that assessment), since he was working to remove some racial inequities they were facing. Or is that he was opening up opportunities? Again I was troubled, by his seeming willingness to take a buck and then turn those dollars into actual legislation.

John Edwards’ campaign sent an email a while back pointing the finger at Hillary over her fundraising practices. She hosted a dinner in DC where several congress people were in attendance. Cost of admission to this event was $2000 per plate, as is typical of these woo-the-rich-people functions (a mainstay of Republicans). So it seems she was trading quasi-political influence (here, look at all these Congressmen and women I can connect you too if you support me) for support. Washington business as usual.

Meanwhile principled men like Dennis Kucinich are struggling to raise dollars, because despite seeming to match the actual beliefs of voters much more closely, they haven’t been tapped by the big corporations and their media mouthpieces as electable. Doesn’t it bother people that the candidates the media has branded as electable are the only ones getting attention?

Came across this funny little video asking the simple question, where was Rudy? Rudy Giuliani had “scheduling issues” and so couldn’t make it to the Republican Debate discussing issues pertaining to “Black America.” The video explains exactly what he was doing.

1. Morning press conference announcing Pete Wilson supports him (more on Pete Wilson below the jump)
2. Evening fund raiser featuring Bo Derrick and Dennis Miller where he raised $100k.

The video leaves you with the question: “Where are his priorities?” Well, obviously not with Black America. And Republicans never really have bothered very much with Black America, so why start now. For a party that supposedly opposes abortion, they do very little to help the segment of the population who is forced into having the most of them. Black teens historically have twice as many abortions as hispanics and nearly three times as many as non-Hispanic whites. Of course, that doesn’t matter to Rudy either.

I sure hope this joker doesn’t get elected.

Read the rest of this entry »

This appears to be the policy of Blackwater USA, a security contracting firm providing services in Iraq to the State Department. The New York Times reported yesterday that the firm is under investigation in both Iraq and in Washington for a shooting on September 16th in which at least 11 Iraqis were killed. State department officials report that the incidence of violence by Blackwater personnel was at least double the rate of the other two security firms. The State department did go on to say that of the 1800+ missions that Blackwater personnel have been on, a very small percentage resulted in violence. While not quoting numbers, the department rep said there “dozens” of incidences. DynCorp, another security firm, reported 32 cases out of 3200 convoy missions, a rate of 1%. Blackwater’s rate is at least double that, so there were a minimum of 36 episodes.

So looking at the real numbers, you might think: “big deal.” The problem is that this could be representative of a culture at Blackwater that encourages a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality. Now, I am actually sympathetic of these guys. I can’t imagine the incredible stress you must be under as a security professional in Iraq. Every corner, every roadside bump, every window could be hiding the bomb or person that kills you. If I were there, I probably would have shot someone by accident a hundred times just from stress. Hell, when I play multiplayer war games I’m constantly shooting my teammates when they run around a corner or jump up in front of me. The situation has to be insane.

The reason I’m even talking about this is that I think this is a good example for what war does to people. The Blackwater people may be like me and get jumpy and shoot first rather than restraining themselves and waiting for cooler heads to prevail. Or they could be giving in to the power that a nearly lawless warzone enables. In either case, not only are more people dying, but these security personnel are suffering emotional damage. Losing your humanity to bloodlust or becoming more and more neurotic due to constant fear — either way it’s a losing prospect for these people. Also, if they are killing twice as many people and there is no significant increase in the danger factor for their missions, they could very well be killing innocent people. The regulation of contractors is attracting attention from the top brass, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is sending a team to Iraq to discuss the situation with General Petraeus. (It just struck me what an imperial-sounding name that is.)

So, bring these guys home and the soldiers who are suffering just as much or more. Vote for Dennis Kucinich.

I really don’t know just what to make of this guy. He recently gave a speech at Columbia University, as I’m sure everyone knows by now who follows such things (and for those that don’t, he’s the president of Iran). On the one hand, he talks a good game about peace and the dangers of scientists blindly pursuing technologies that are blatantly harmful to human existence. When this happens, he says, the scientists are being misused by oppressors. Scientists who are under the thumb of these oppressors (or are themselves oppressors) are withholding knowledge, as well. So far so good. It’s mildly paranoid, but seems like a reasonable opinion (perhaps because I am fairly paranoid myself?).

There was also a lot of stuff about the Koran’s version of the Garden of Eden story and a ridiculous number of religious platitudes and declarations of gratefulness and fidelity to Allah. This was all very boring and made it hard for me to want to keep going. Persevere I did.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I didn’t get a chance to listen to Edwards last night on MSNBC, since I apparently can’t work a TV anymore. I thought I was watching MSNBC, it was actually NBC and then after Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island made the Democratic response and there was no John Edwards, I realized my mistake. Thanks to the wonders of the giant tubes that make up the interwebs, I was able to watch his speech:

I was pretty happy about the speech, though it came off as disappointingly weak at the end. He made a convincing, fairly non-aggressive case against prolonging the war, arguing from simple practicality. It seems this approach could possibly be better at persuading conservatives and fence-sitters than saying that Bush and the military are terrorists (ala Rosie O’Donnell). And yes I know she didn’t actually say that. What was weak in Edwards’ speech was the whole “timeline” business. It annoys me whenever I hear it. It’s so open-ended. If by timeline, he means in three weeks, then I can live with that.

Another problem here is that while Edwards has come out on the side of peace, he still voted for the war: a serious failure in judgment. And I don’t even listen to Obama (aka Obomba) when he chastises other candidates for voting for the war. Based on his long history of voting to prolong W’s endless war, I have little doubt that Obama would have been right there with his “aye” raised high when called upon to vote to overthrow a sovereign nation whose leadership we installed.

It returns to the fact that there is only one choice: Dennis Kucinich. Electability is a term invented by the corporate-sponsored media. Real electability is what happens when you actually go out and vote with your mind and heart instead of voting because of what some plastic face on a TV screen tells you to do. Dennis Kucinich is the only one who has opposed this war at every turn, the only one who has a real plan to bring our troops home. Edwards was right when he said the only way to force a political solution between Shiites and Sunnis is for us to get out of there. Kucinich has been saying that all along. We should hold all of these democrats accountable and vote for the only one with the clarity of mind and morals to do what was right from the very beginning and elect Kucinich.

The Computer and Communications Industry Assocation is a nonprofit organization with members including Google, Microsoft, RedHat, Sun, and the Linux Foundation. To boil it down: they’re a lobbying group for the computing industry. I’m not saying they are therefore bad: it’s the unfortunate state of Washington that everything and everyone has to have a lobbyist in order to get anything done. For the moment I consider this group to be one of the “ok” guys (I’m not sure I’ll call them the “good” guys yet).

So yesterday, they released a study that reports that fair use exceptions in US copyright law account for $4.5 trillion in revenue each year: 18% of US economic growth. I’m not sure what economic growth is referring to here exactly. It’s not GDP because GDP is $13.13 trillion per year, which would make that percentage about 34%. This $4.5 trillion compares to the $1.3 trillion estimated to be the value that copyright industries contribute [source]. The fair use exception value is growing at a fast rate too, 31% since 2002.

So if fair use is that much better for business, why not expand it? Would it only eat into that $1.3 trillion or would it expand the economy even further?

I happened on a political tracking website today that rocks. Wonkosphere scans the political blagoblag for buzz about presidential candidates. Blogs are classified as conservative (if they support a conservative candidate), liberal (if they support a liberal) or independent (if they don’t indicate support of anyone and choose to be considered as such). Scanning these blogs, they keep track of the buzz in the blogosphere that each candidate is generating. Each candidate’s page shows a graph of the amount of buzz amongst conservative and liberal blogs they are generating as well as the tone on those blogs. The tone is gauged by the language used on the blogs and it would seem that the average tone is slightly in the positive range (or else Wonkosphere needs to tweak its tone algorithm). This is some seriously cool analysis all done automatically. I wonder how well this will correlate with actual elections.

Sadly, Dennis Kucinich isn’t generating a whole lot of buzz at the moment. I submitted this blog to them and we’ll see if they accept me. I’m not exactly a political blog, but I don’t shy away from voicing my opinion here and there. Dennis appears to be largely ignored by liberals but is attracting some conservative attention. The negative levels in conservative blogs for him is definitely much higher than is typical, which means he’s doing something right.

I had a doctor’s appointment for 9am and got to the office a little early. A TV was on CNN in the waiting room and the first plane had just hit the north tower. People on the news were talking about whether it was a terrorist attack or an accident. Speculation was that it was a small plane and then others were saying a larger passenger plane. I remember thinking that it wasn’t over — that another plane was going to hit the other tower. I was having a physical done and it was taking a while and they were being especially slow. When they took me back for my blood to be drawn, the lab had an open door to a nurse’s station where another TV was on CNN. As I was sitting there watching it, the plane hit the South Tower.

After leaving the doctor’s office a little while later, I went to class but there were only about a half dozen people there — as opposed to the regular 30-ish. Word soon came from the university that school was closed for the day. Work that night passed by slowly and I was glued to NPR for the first of many times. I think they may have let us go home early, but I can’t remember.

Even though I was 700 miles away, 9/11 directly changed my life. Before that, I didn’t give a crap about politics of any kind or current events. That day completely changed that. I was vaguely Republican and then proceeded to become much more so until becoming much less so. What for me started out as justice, began to seem like vengeance and then like we were just repeating the same horrors on people completely unrelated to the event. So without 9/11 I might still be an apathetic conservative instead of a very concerned liberal.

I don’t go much for memorials in general. I have never watched them and have never felt inclined to. I think if we want to properly memorialize the event, we should do something about it. Like putting an end to the violence unleashed by the politicians who have used that day for political gain. Below the fold is a message from Dennis Kucinich that I think is worth reading.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reuters is reporting that the House passed a patent reform bill that aims to address a lot of problems in the current patent system. The Senate has a similar bill up for vote sometime soon. While it doesn’t address all the points laid out by the League for Programming Freedom back in 1991, it does at least advance things a bit. Of course the final law that is (maybe) passed will probably be even weaker and more useless, as is usual for Congress. I’ll list some brief details in a minute, but at first glance when companies like Google, Apple, and Yahoo! all support it and companies like General Electric, 3M and Johnson & Johnson oppose it — I think that’s a good thing.

Ars Technica sums up some of the main points quite nicely:

• First to file: America will join the rest of the world and leave behind the current first to invent process
• Publication of all patents: most patents must be published within 18 months of being filed
• Damages: the amount of damages will be calculated based on the component being infringed instead of the value of the entire system
• Post-grant review: companies now have the chance to have a patent struck down within one year of being granted through a new review process
• Tax planning patents: patents on business practices that were intended as a way to reduce the tax burden — no more
• Venue shopping: infringment cases will no longer be filed anywhere the infringing company does business but only in the district where the plaintiff is headquartered

Well, hopefully this will cut back on the number of patent trolls trundling through the software jungles.

A friend of mine sent me an odd story about how Italian police officers are now spending their time: stopping the heinous crime of washing your car windows at a stoplight. At first, I thought, well that’s a bugger-all odd thing to be concerned about (I always think to myself in incorrect, bastardized British slang). Then it became clear:

“Foreigners are also blamed for much of the street crime in a relatively safe country. Most people wielding sponges on street corners are Romanian gypsies, often young women and children.”

And there we have it. The gypsies. For as long as there have been gypsies, the good people of Europe have shunned them. And now they have found one more way of making their lives that much harder. Anyone caught committing this godless act (window-washing) is subject to confiscation of the tools of the trade (sponge, rag, dirty water), fines, and imprisonment. The magnificent mayor of Rome justified these draconian regulations:

“People must realize that behind the window-washers there is exploitation of minors, which is a crime. Like prostitution this is a racket that must be smashed.”

I can just see him banging his fist down on a podium as he says that last bit. So now window washing is on the same level as prostitution, which is exactly what these gypsies might have to resort to if they want to eat.

If you don’t know which candidate agrees with you most, there is a great blind test that will match you with the candidate who most agrees with you (link sent to me by my good friend at the Wrathful Dove). You simply indicate whether you Support/Oppose/Other an issue and then whether that issue is no big deal (meh), important, or key. The test was quite accurate for me in choosing my top two, which I suppose is confirmation that I choose my candidate based on the issues.  I’m curious to see who really does agree with most Americans.

Take the test yourself and please drop me a comment with your results.

My results:

• Kucinich 68
• Gravel 54
• Obama 30
• Paul 29
• Edwards 28
• Clinton 28
• Richardson 25
• Biden 25
• Dodd 23
• Brownback -15
• Cox -22
• McCain -27
• Thompson -28
• Huckabee -28
• Tancredo -51
• Hunter -60
• Giuliani -60
• Romney -61

Sometimes journalists say the damnedest things. “Giuliani’s Gaza Analogy” caught my attention because I haven’t been following the Republican candidates very well and was curious what his take on Israel/Palestine was. Alec MacGillis goes through some moderately interesting points about Giuliani’s 17-page foreign policy proposal, trying to say that he will deviate from the neo-con stance that democracy should be established whenever and wherever we go, regardless of the cultural and political climate in the countries we (will) invade and/or influence unduly. Personally, I think this is whitewashing. Just because he recognizes that democracy won’t take root in a place like Iraq or that it will elect “terrorists” in a place like Palestine doesn’t mean he has left neo-con behind.

Read the rest of this entry »

Karl Rove to Resign

While this is good news, it’s not great news.  This is but one head of the hydra and she will live on.

My friend John (the Wrathful Dove) pointed me to a great article today about Barack Obama, who is turning into quite the warhawk. This comes as no surprise. All of the mainstream candidates are clones of W with a different set of pretty noises to placate one special interest or another (be those the religious right, gays, fiscal conservatives, pro-abortion, wev). War is a business and big business backs all of the mainstream candidates. By pocketing them all, they ensure a win-win.

Read the rest of this entry »