Saturday, November 20, 2004

Although he lost, it doesn't look like John Kerry is going to drop off the face of the earth like Al Gore. He has a petition to help uninsured kids get health care. I signed it because it's an issue that I agree with him on. It's also nice to see that he's still around.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Bull Moose is a pretty good political blog. I just started reading it, but I think the Moose makes some good points here.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Franz Kafka would be so proud! "Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know." (From Metafilter)

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Ahhhh an ode to Dungeons and Dragons. It takes me back.....

Monday, November 15, 2004

This is from the penultimate round of Wimblehack, the competetion to decide America's worst political reporter. It also happens to be some of the finest writing about political reporting that I have ever read. And as a bonus, it's pretty funny at points.

Named after Karen Tumulty, who pioneered and perfected its use, the Tumulter-sault is a neat little literary device through which reporters refer to "details on the issues" without ever elaborating upon those actual details. The typical way the writer uses this one is to just slip it in, offhand-like, in between the more important details: "Candidate X, who boasts an impressive record on environmental issues, spent the weekend snowmobiling in Jackson Hole with a pair of one-armed Marine veterans..."




Friday, November 12, 2004

The Onion - Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich Ha .. ha ...... haha ....... hahhahahahahah ........ hahhahahahahhahah. As Homer Simpson might say "It's funny 'cuz it's true."

I don't really think I need to tell anyone that we are in a bad situation in Iraq. Well, I guess there is some debate about that, but in my opinion we have a mess on our hands. Giving Iraqis oil money could be a good way to start digging ourselves out of our hole.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Blogging As Typing, Not Journalism is a comment piece that I completely agree with. However, these days even most journalism isn't journalism. Blogs don't have any accountability. When CBS is found to have run a story based on fraudulent documents, there is a great deal of recrimination, and CBS retracts the story. If a blog runs the same story it is unlikely that the blogger will ever admit the error, and put out a retraction.

On the other hand, journalists are supposed to be our filter of the news, and ask the tough questions. They have completely abdicated the first responsibility for this since the days when OJ claimed about 50% of the journalism output on anyt given day. And they have completely abdicated the second responsibility since President Bush came to office. I'm not sure when journalism schools made an entire course on the softball question, but it's been getting worse and worse. The blogs don't live up to the standards of journalism, but they are engaged in asking some valid questions that the media ignores. The biggest problem with blogs is that to get a less partial view of any issue you have to go to a large variety of sources. Otherwise you run the risk of hearing only what you want to hear.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

TaxProf Blog: Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed I find this interesting, especially since a lot of the states that get the most money seem to be full of people who are against government spending.

Monday, November 08, 2004

An interesting article at Global Guerillas about the guerilla tactic of System Disruption Accelerates in Iraq I had wondered why Al Queda hasn't been more active in attacking the infrastructure of the US, then I remembered Al Queda got most of what they wanted from the US.

Minor update to an earlier post about Taiwan. Dollar expected to fall amid China's rumoured selling

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked, eh? Tinfoil hat anyone? I may get mine out of the closet.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Aljazeera.Net - Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech

Friday, November 05, 2004

Here's a kind of old Instapundit post commenting on Colin Powell's remarks about Taiwan. Basically, Colin Powell said that Taiwan is a province of China. The US has always danced around this issue, and although we probably have some kind of moral obligation to stand up for Taiwan we really can't afford to take a stand against China. Should they decide to sell the large portion of our national debt that they own it would completely ruin the US economy.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Black Box Voting - Bev Harris - one of the leading groups doing voting machine investigations. A nonpartisan, nonprofit, consumer protection group for elections. I don't believe that there was widespread fraud in the past election. But the project of making FOIA requests regarding the past election sets an important precedent. I think that as the voting process becomes more obscured by technology it's important that the process be watched more closely.

Some funny questions that I wish someone would have asked Pete Coors (who ran for Congress in Colorado.)

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Part of 9/11 Report Remains Unreleased; An Inquiry Is Begun (NYT registration required) highlights the fact that there is an unreleased chapter of the 9/11 commission report.