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Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Election bits
A month or so back I proposed that I would post entries on the topics of this election that concern me, comparing the main party candidates. As should be obvious, I have not done so. The reasons for this are immaterial but should not imply a lack of interest in these topics. A simple example as to why is that I am on a flight to Iowa right now that I booked less than 4 hours ago.
The election is now less than two weeks away. The competition has brought about many suprises; the first African American is running for president, Virginia seems likely to vote Democratic, it seems likely both of our Senate seats will be held by Democrats. The presidential contest seems to represent a generational shift in politics. On my way to the airport I heard a statistic saying that the 18-24 demographic favors Senator Obama by a 56% to 32% margin. Quite an indicator as to the direction of the country. Something that makes me happy.
As my readers should know, this matches my feelings. While I respect Senator McCain (I supported him in the last Republican primary against Bush), I find that to become “electable” in the eyes of the Republican base, he has compromised the things he stood for. He has fallen to playing the game of “politics of fear” as it has been called. The tone of his campaign has turned so ugly it is just disrespectful; so much so that at times he even appears embarrassed by it.
I believe that it is time for the next generation of politicians to take the lead. That is not to say that they are perfect, they are human like the rest of us. I have hope that Senator Obama will be a good president. He needs to be as we have many challenges ahead of us.
Politics | Comments (1)
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Monday, August 18, 2008
Election 2008
With this year’s presidential election coming on fast, it is getting to the point where I am starting to think about more than just the general overtones of the presidential positions. While I am pretty sure where my decision will land, I don’t like the idea of an uninformed decision, or worse, a reactionary one. While talking with Tiffany on a longish drive yesterday, I realized that what I need to do is make a list of the issues that are important to me and then see where the candidates stood on each of them. This will force me to identify what I think is important rather than let the media, pundits, politicians, friends, whomever, dictate what is important.
That said, it struck me that actually writing this all down would be beneficial; and what better place than to blog about it. So that is my plan. To try to lay out the items that are important to me and see how each candidate’s positions make me feel about them. I will be almost exclusively relying on the positions that are outlined on the Obama and McCain websites. I make no promises on how often I will write about this, nor what topics I’ll cover as I have not decided myself. I think my first will be on technology issues, but that may change.
Stay tuned.
Politics | Comments (0)
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Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Election day 2006
Yeh, I’m a bit of a dork, but at least I’m a dork who votes.
Photos, Politics | Comments (2)
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Friday, September 9, 2005
There goes number 6
from the Washington Post:
A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.
Net result:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Freedom, Politics | Comments (0)
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Friday, March 11, 2005
What I’m reading
I haven’t been doing such a great job of posting what I’ve read lately, so here is a quick update.
Exploiting Software was a pretty good book that had quite a few odd coincidences with one of the authors (he is the CTO of the company some friends work for and in reading the foreword, I realized a guy I knew in college also worked for the company). The book was generally pretty good; it was definitely very technical and complete in it’s coverage of the topics. I felt it got a little bogged down in details near the center of the book, but it picked up by the end.
I’m about halfway through Smart Mobs and I am finding that the writing is a little inconsistent. There will be sections that I just can’t put down and others that are painful to make it through. Aside from that though, the subject matter is quite interesting. The way in which mobile computing is effecting the social structures over the last 10 years is amazing. At this point at least, I’m glad I picked it up.
Book Reviews, Geek, Politics | Comments (1)