Category: 2004 US Election

I do hope Zell Miller got paid upfront for his speech the other night, now that his masters are treating him like a rabid skunk. He even got disinvited from the Imperial Box for the acceptance speech.

The good people at snopes have pre-emptively debunked the claims that John Kerry never met a weapons system he liked: as it happens, he was in accord with then-Secretary of Defense Cheney on the value of the same expensive weapons systems Kerry is accused of cutting.

This whole “weapons killer” idea came from a piece of spam that has been making the rounds. It seems Senator Miller fell victim to it: did he fall prey to one of the African banking scams, too? Is that what motivated his near-demonic performance at the RNC?

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Weapon Killer):

Claim:   Senator John Kerry “voted to kill every military appropriation for the development and deployment of every weapons systems since 1988.”

Status:   False.

And you can see how each senator voted on these bills, of which these weapons systems were but a line-item:
* S. 3189 (1990)
* H.R. 5803 (1990)
* H.R. 2126 (1995)

The challenge for the internet community, and especially anyone who wants to make money online, is to make the internet a less evil place. Not in content, but in the struggle to get anywhere at all. Meanwhile, people who can’t filter spam, or block pop-ups, or prevent viruses from spreading, are themselves responsible for these things. There are two cultures growing – those who can filter, and those who can’t – and it may well be up to us who can to help those who can’t to join the modern world, lest they drag everyone back with them.

[Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent]

Dear John:

1. Bush is incompetent.

2. Bush is the biggest threat to core American principles of liberty in a century.

3. Bush and the Republican leadership are the most filthily dishonorable and hypocritical politicians of the last 25 years.

4. Bush and his men have no respect for evidence, for truth, for honest process.

5. Bush and his men are the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the past 25 years.

6. They’re pushing a moral crusade where it ought not, cannot be allowed to go.

McCain gets his walking papers from at least one conservative who’s had enough.

Albums in MP3 Format (Wed Sep 1 17:26:30 2004):

The below contains listings for 158 albums, comprising 1521 total tracks and was last generated Wed Sep 1 17:26:30 2004.

Well, doesn’t it just figure that I would learn about this after spending hours backfilling metadata in my existing library? Since I already have the bulk of my affiliate tags pointing to Amazon, what Apple should do is provide some web services gateway to bulk up the id3 tags in a library: given a track or selection of tracks, download cover art and insert the iTMS URL in the comment field, so when someone displays a tune in a post or details their whole collection, they stand to rake off a little something.

Let Down from the album OK Computer by Radiohead

Harper’s Index for August 2004 (Harpers.org):

Chance that a member of New York’s Army National Guard was in Iraq in June : 1 in 4 [New York Army National Guard (N.Y.C.) ]

Chance that a member of Texas’s Army National Guard was : 1 in 31 [Texas Army National Guard (Austin) ]

received:
* dome tent (used a couple of times already, after some repairs)
* beat-up adult bicycle (a work in progress but soon to be in service)
* nine kid’s bicycles (donated to others)
* string trimmer (no charger, so I freecycled it myself)
* Apple Stylewriter II (oops, I was hoping this was a DC model so I could get another old one working)
* bunch of kid’s school supplies (donated to others)

given:
* point and shoot camera
* underbed storage drawers
* string trimmer (the same one)
* sliding closet doors
* laptop battery charger
* glass outdoor table top
* Epson stylus printer
* HP deskjet printer
* camcorder

And more to go.

USATODAY.com – The GOP doesn’t reflect America:

I’ve often found that if I go down the list of “liberal” issues with people who say they’re Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don’t want America to be the world’s police officer and prefer peace to war. They applaud civil rights, believe all Americans should have health insurance and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don’t think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.

There’s a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don’t believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.

So why do they use the same label as those who back a status quo of women earning 75 cents to every dollar a man earns, 45 million people without health coverage and a president who has two more countries left on his axis-of-evil-regime-change list?

I asked my friend on the street. He said what I hear from all RINOs: “I don’t want the government taking my hard-earned money and taxing me to death. That’s what the Democrats do.”

Money. That’s what it comes down to for the RINOs. They do work hard and have been squeezed even harder to make ends meet. They blame Democrats for wanting to take their money. Never mind that it’s Republican tax cuts for the rich and billions spent on the Iraq war that have created the largest deficits in history and will put all of us in hock for years to come.

True enough. Perhaps it’s time to take the political compass again: I think everyone should take it. It’s a less pointed way to get at what Moore is getting at, but I sometimes wonder if people really vote the way they believe.

<update> Economic Left/Right: -5.88, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.54

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain:

“Everyone was rocking out,” Mr. Angus said. “Then Elton comes on and kills it – it was like strike No. 1 against my manhood.”

I have been playing with Shuffle mode on my ‘Pod since I read this last week: it has brought up some interesting juxtapositions. I guess I am surprised that people don’t know what it means to have everything in their collection potentially cued up to play. Still more surprising is how long it takes to learn from one’s mistakes:

Once when [Angus] and his girlfriend were together in his bedroom, he said, his iPod started blasting the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”

“I jumped out of bed as fast as I could,” he recalled. “But it had already wrecked the mood.” In the future, he said, he will try not to let his iPod run wild.

Mine is stocked with 1,523 tracks, on 156 albums, in 22 genres by 86 artists. So there’s a chance for some real taste collisions. But I haven’t anything really disastrous: worst case, something comes up that I have heard too recently and I fast forward past it.

What I have learned from this is that the iPod != the Walkman. The Walkman and its imitators, even today’s flash-memory-based players, let you carry some music around, but you had to think about what you wanted. Your study tunes might not be your workout tunes which might not be your make-out tunes. The iPod lets you out of the choice: given enough disk space, you take it all with you. I’m getting close to have to decide what will stay on the iPod and what will remain at home, but even then, I doubt I’ll ever find myself with nothing to listen to.

Nieman Watchdog > Ask This > What sort of ownership society?:

Economist Brad DeLong says that when Bush rolls out his plans for an “ownership society” this week, reporters should insist on details. Does he have any idea how he would actually accomplish any of these things? It’s the press corps’ job to find out.

Does it get any easier? A top-flight economist writes up the questions, supplies enough of a context to explain why they’re important, and I bet they still don’t get asked.

This is worth checking in on, and yes, they get it: they offer an RSS feed.

The goal of watchdog journalism is to see that people in power provide information the public should have.

The Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project grows from this premise and this goal: to help the press ask penetrating questions, critical questions, questions that matter, questions not yet asked about today’s news. NiemanWatchdog.org seeks to encourage more informed reporting by putting journalists in contact with authorities who can suggest appropriate, probing questions and who can serve as resources.

New York Daily News – Politics – Lloyd Grove’s Lowdown: GOP has dol-fun with Dems:

LOOSE-TONGUED SPEAKER? Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert – having already enraged some New Yorkers with his remarks about local office-holders’ “unseemly scramble” for federal money after 9/11 – yesterday opened a second front. On “Fox News Sunday,” the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier George Soros, who’s funding an independent media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting his big bucks from shady sources. “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where – if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from,” Hastert mused.

An astonished Chris Wallace asked: “Excuse me?”

The Speaker went on: “Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years – George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there.”

Wallace: “You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?”

Hastert: “I’m saying I don’t know where groups – could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.”

I don’t know for sure where Richard Mellon Scaife, the “funding father of the Right” got his money, either.

They must really be afraid of the guy if they’re prepared to bring up allegations like that. Say what you like about him, the only drug he can be accused of dealing in is currency. Seems to me the capitalist tools who create these GOP talking points should be OK with a guy who exploits market opportunities.

It’s noted elsewhere that Hastert bounced 44 checks in the House bank scandal of 1992[1]: these checks were essentially no interest loans, as they were cashed with no verification that there were funds backing them.

And it’s not like much has changed: apparently, it’s not uncommon for senators, former senators and other officials to “dine and dash” for a total of $189,545 in 2003. I’m not sure bringing how one gets and spends is a safe topic.

fn1. http://www.txstate.edu/cpm/hobbyscorner/house_banking.html