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September 6, 2004
It’s about freaking time Kerry said this!
Resolved: Howard Dean didn’t have enough influence on the Democratic candidate’s campaign.
Oh,, and, yes, Kerry’s statement is consistent with his vote to authorize the war.
September 5, 2004
W. David Stephenson blogs that the Dept. of Homeland Security …
… has chosen “Victim Relief Ministries”which The Baptist Standard calls “an interdenominational nonprofit organization related to Texas Baptist Men” to “take the lead in mobilizing the country’s faith community in the event of a terrorist attack or mass-casualty crisis.
What is this all about???..
It’s actually unclear what it’s about. The article David’s blog is based on (note the “postnuke” in its url) may be exaggerating a tad, since “taking the lead” may just be puffery. On the other hand, the article says “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security enlisted the national organization to train volunteer victim-relief chaplains during sessions in southern California, Dallas and New York City.” If this strikes you as perfectly ok, ask yourself how you’d feel if the DHS had tapped any other religion to train the rest of the nation’s “volunteer relief chaplains.” I’m not outraged, just slightly more depressed, if such a thing were possible.
But I’m perked up by the inappropriately cheery headline on the page the article links to:
Announcing Association Name Change &
Introducing New Category –
Victim Counselor!
September 2, 2004
My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.
He was once a lieutenant governor — but he didn’t stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.
In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.
Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.
John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Business Week magazine named him one of the top pro-technology legislators and made him a member of its “Digital Dozen.”
John was re-elected in 1990 and again in 1996 – when he defeated popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country.
John is a graduate of Yale University and was a gunboat officer in the Navy. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three awards of the Purple Heart for combat duty in Vietnam. He later co-founded the Vietnam Veterans of America.
He is married to Teresa Heinz and they have two daughters.
As many of you know, I have great affection — some might say an obsession — for my two Labrador retrievers, Gus and Woodrow. It turns out John is a fellow dog lover, too, and he better be. His German Shepherd, Kim, is about to have puppies. And I just want him to know … Gus and Woodrow had nothing to do with that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Senator John Kerry.
Zell Miller, introducing John Kerry, at the Democratic Party of Georgia’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, March 1, 2001
Philadelphia is considering investing $10M to blanket 135 square miles with wifi coverage.
Some people for whom I have the highest respect, and from whom I’ve learned a lot, I anticipate are going to denounce this. Their argument is that the government is exactly the wrong entity to make decisions best made by the market. Why? Because:
Government agencies are ill-equipped to make technical decisions.
Governments are corrupt. The incumbents have too much influence.
Even if Philadelphia makes the right decision, it will lock the city into one technology that will be hard to displace.
There is no such thing as “the” right solution. That’s why markets propose multiple solutions.
Providing government subsidized access kills innovation. New ideas won’t be able to compete.
Access prices are already dropping. The market will solve this problem without the corrupt and leaden hand of government.
If people want access, generally they can get it. Most of the country already is within range of a broadband access provider, and most people could afford it if they thought it were worthwhile.
No, providing broadband access is not like building highways. The nature and economics of real property are far different from the nature and economics of bits.
These are serious arguments (which I’ve abridged too much) and I find them persuasive. And yet, both my head and my heart say “Woohoo! Go, Philadelphia!”
I agree with my friends that free markets work better than governments when it comes to creating and delivering innovative technology. I take that as a rule of thumb, not a principle: It’s what we should assume is the case unless there are reasons to think otherwise, but there’s no taint to violating it when it makes sense to do so.
And in this case, I think delivering free (or very cheap) wifi to Philadelphia for $10M makes too much sense.
It would knock one rail off the fence of the digital divide. It would hurt the market’s ability to innovate at the infrastructure layer but give a huge boost to citizen innovation at the creative works layer. And, by the way, I bet there would still be market innovation in providing services that are economically feasible only if wifi is made a part of the assumed infrastructure of a city…just as the market will start providing infrastructure innovation that, yes, competes with free. Most of all, once a physical metropolis has virtual connectivity as part of its geography, we will see unpredictable, emergent effects, especially in group-forming.
I am certain that Philadelphia will make a sub-optimal decision about how to deliver on the promise. I am certain that the decision will be tainted by political considerations, including some marginally corrupt ones. I am certain that within 2 years, the market will have advanced significantly beyond how Philadelphia has implemented wifi. But the potential benefits are big enough to make this worthwhile. And I have enough faith in the market to believe it will jump in at the first chance to improve and extend the government-issue connectedness Philadelphia may provide its citizens.
September 1, 2004
Don’t you find it ludicrous that the Republicans put forth Arnold as a heartwarming example of how America welcomes immigrants? Ah, yes, Ahnuld who came from Austria as a poor, struggling Mr. Universe, and groped his way to the top.
David Isenberg circulated by email this morning a snip from Bev Harris at Black Box Voting:
The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole
Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator — 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.
By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
This program is not “stupidity” or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.
*snip*
The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch screen terminals. Think about it: If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines? Of course, the central tabulator is the most desirable target.
Unfortunately, the site is down at the moment.
It’s back up. So, now you can read how these double sets of books got implemented in the system. The news is very bad. The “feature” was put in by a convicted embezzler who was head of programming at Diebold during a time when … well, here’s what Bev says:
So now we have someone who’s admitted that he’s been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer over the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.
And just after he is hired, multiple sets of books appear in GEMS, which can be decoupled, so that they don’t need to match, by typing in a secret 2-digit code in a specific location.
Even the suspicion of fraud, even the possibility of fraud, will throw this country into chaos. Please get word out about this security hole so it can be patched locally.
August 31, 2004
Here’s a site that’s trying to “use up” the Republican’s virtual space by reloading “several Republican websites” automatically every 60 seconds. See, if we all leave the protest page up in our browser, we’ll show them Republican bastards … well, I’m really not sure what we’ll show them.
I’m confused enough about this that I am only reluctantly posting the protest page’s url: http://users.drew.edu/clotito/protest_rnc.htm. Maybe you can explain to me if this page is:
1. A sincere but misguided attempt to make a point no one understands through a protest that no one will notice
2. A devious attempt to drive up the hit count on several Republican websites
3. Retarded terrorism
August 30, 2004
Josh Marshall, whose blogging over the past couple of days has been extra special good, has been saying for a while that we’re going to be getting some interesting news about the Niger matter. Today he says it again, saying that news will be coming out in “weeks.” I wonder what it is that he knows…
GrannyD has posted some photos of the NYC protests…
By the way, the Boston Phoenix has an
excellent article by Adam Reilly on her Senate campaign and whether it’s good or bad for the Democrats.
I don’t think I’m going to have the fortitude to watch the Republican Convention. I know that makes me a small person, but I just can’t take it.
But reading the bloggery about it is a different matter. For example, Jay Rosen is nailing down ideas like a cabinet maker. And here’s Ken Mehlman – a guy who “gets” the Net as far as I can tell – spinning the Kerry campaign as Rip van Winkely. And Oxblog on the Log Cabin Republicans’ party (and on a talk with Koch). And here’s a photo of Ari “Shameless” Fleischer holding a Blogs for Bush bumpersticker.
But watch the gloat-fest on TV? I just can’t.
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