On the first debate: Kerry 1, Bush -1

Well I have to say, tonight Kerry came off pretty well. The debate was much more debate like than I ever expected and that certainly favoured the candidate who could think and speak on his feet i.e. Kerry. Better still not only did Kerry come off well, Bush came off weak. So many times he just couldn't say or do anything other than stare all teary eyed and emphatically emplore us, the debate listener to believe him. Not only was the signal to noise ratio low, the signal was also repetative and low in substance - as Kerry put it, his only message is four words: more of the same.

Yes Kerry missed a few golden opportunities to stick the knife in and twist - personaly I wish he had, but I guess the considered opinion is that this would alienate too many of the swing voters. There was also the issue that if you stick it to the Shrub too much for his failure in Iraq it will inevitably be construed by the mentally defective mass media as a slight against the troops in Iraq and cheapen the lives of those who died. That's certainly how Bush span it - no matter how much Iraq is screwed up, the last people we can tell is the troops. No sir, there's no way we can tell them "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time". I guess kinds words and fairy tales from the command-in-chief will always be just what they need to stop those bullets with their names on.

Its a tricky line to tread, and personally I wish that Kerry would stride boldy over it - doing the right thing going forward is more important than being afraid of admiting mistakes of the past. The blood is not on his hands but of those who never admit fault and always take the moral high ground that is not rightfully theirs. I've always believed that this policy "to boldy go" might persuade more non-voters to get their oar and vote in than it would swing voters to defect, but hey, what do I know?

So for now I'll just call it: Kerry 1, Bush -1

I can't wait to see how that well known shill for Haliburton and corporate interests, Cheney, does next week.

This time its war - civil war!

Did you ever wonder what it was those assault rifle toting NRA libertarians were getting so upset about? If I recall I think its the second amendment which says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Now its always been my opinion that the aforementioned libertarians thought their militia was to defend themselves from the government. That's why they always got so upset when the government tried to take away their right to bear arms. But isn't this amendment really about enabling the people to defend the freedom of the State?

Maybe I'm a little confused about what it means by "the State", is it "State" as in one of the States in the United States, or State as in the nation State also know as The United States of America? Regardless, doesn't it mean the people have carte blanche to do what it needs to do to defend the country from all threats to it? If a cabal of misanthropes and corporations conspires together to bring down the State then shouldn't the people be ready to bear arms to defend it?

Well, call me a radical but having just read Garrison Keillor's "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore" that was the impression I got. He says:

"The Union is what needs defending this year ... This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger."

Now if that wasn't a call to arms then I don't know what is.

Moore on the moron

I got a great little nugget from Michael Moore's latest email blast. In summarizing Bush's many stances on Iraq and Saddam he concluded:

And you have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with what you call the "many positions" he has taken on Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed you. That was his position. You told him and the rest of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he -- and the vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote for you -- believed you. You see, Americans, like John Kerry, want to live in a country where they can believe their president.

I think that's a very strong point to make and well made too. I just wish Kerry had been quick enough to turn out such a compelling response months ago when Bush Co. first started trying to paint Kerry and others as flip-floppers when their only sin was to have actually believed and supported the President, and then later realized he's the untrustworthy little weasel (from the Axis of Weasel) that he is.

All hail the prophet George Bush Snr.

Sounds an unlikely title doesn't it? Well check this quote from Papa Shrub:

"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

-- From "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam"
by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 1998

Doesn't that make his son sound like a dumbass? I know, it should go without saying, but really it does show how far a little intelligence goes and far from having any GWB is. And now the National Intelligence Estimate predicts three scenarios for Iraq which range from a tenuous stability to political fragmentation to the most negative assessment of civil war. And what does Bush say about this?

"The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like,"

Excuse me? How does three predicted scenarios ranging from bad, to worse to really bad change into lousy, ok, and better? Its just another insert head up ass and lie through teeth 180-spin on reality. And who is Bush to accuse poeple of "guessing" as to what the conditions might be? When has Bush given the American people anything other than his off the cuff guesses about reality? When did he ever listen to the scads of studies who told him that WOMD evidence was tenuous at best, that conditions after invasion would be exactly as just predicted and that basically he never should have gone there at all.

Spinning The Shrub as The Gipper

Earlier this year when I was taking my economics class I thought I was perhaps the first person to think of the term "Bushanomics". Well it was just too obvious to have remained outside the anti-Bush Zeitgeist for that long. However it turns out that the GOP is now deliberately trying to remold Bush into some ghastly image of Reagan in other ways.

Alternet has an article on this, but there is of course one fly in the ointment for them - for the most part the Reagan family currently wants nothing to do with Bush. Only their adopted son has deemed to stand proud on the GOP platform, while his other son is campaigning with the Democrats, and Nancy is holding the GOPs feet to the fire on Bush's ban of stem-cell research which is widely believed could hold an answer to curing Alzheimer's.

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has apparently been involved in the Bush as Reagan makeover. When asked about the lack Reagans at the RNC she said:

Michael was there to speak with love and admiration of his father. He did it. Appropriate and right. Ron Reagan showed up at Dem convention not to laud his dad but to use his dad's memory to make political points with his like-minded liberals and leftists. Fair? Sure. Classy? No.

That's pretty funny. It reminds me of the old joke about the Russian media putting a 180 spin on the Olympic Hockey final results (they lost to the USA team). According to the joke the Russians reported it like this: "In today's hockey final Russia were runners up, while the Americans came second to last".

Morford on the CXT

Many readers will know that at times, indeed much of the time, I don't half rant and ramble on and on. Well tough, this is the long dark tea-time. Get it? Anyway, when it comes to ranting about obscene things no one does it better, and often times, with more obscene satire than Michael Morford. So on the subject of the Navistar CXT I'm happy to defer to him and his commentary at SFGate. For those who aren't going to click the link, here's a summary...

So then. Let's do it. Let's just get it over with. Let's all get a CXT. I mean, what the hell, right? Let's just give in and stomp around like we own the goddamn place and burn up all the remaining oil a fast as possible, maul the roads and gag the air and wipe out all those silly Priuses and Mini Coopers and all those annoying gnatlike bicycles once and for all.

...

But you'll be OK. You'll be safely ensconced in your CXT, loving the fact that in Hell, it's all "off road."

Faux security strikes again

Just when I had been ranting elsewhere about the perils technology providing a false sense of security, along comes an article on Wired News detailing how Kryptonite (and other circular) locks can be defeated with, get this, a ballpoint pen. They even have a video to prove it.

Once again this a flaw in technology that has been known about and published for a long time, apparently for 12 years and has just come to light in the mainstream public consciousness. In the mean time hackers, in this case thieves, have been busy cracking Kryptonite locks with impunity or more accurately, their Bic pen. More surprisingly Kryptonite are only just coming out with a lock that is immune to the mighty ballpoint pen. You would have thought that a company that brags about the impenetrability (pun intended) would have known about the problem and fixed it a long time ago. It kind of reminds you how many software companies have relied of secrecy to avoid fixing vulnerabilities in their code, only to be outed at a later date when their software has become widely distributed.

Fortunately it appears that since the Wired article was written Kryptonite (as of writing their website is dreadfully overloaded) have launched a worldwide free upgrade offer to anyone owning one of their vulnerable locks. Now being the cynic I am I have to point out that while this may appear an overly generous offer, it is probably not being extended out of generosity, only in the interests of saving them a huge pile of money.

You see with the vulnerability now widely known, anyone can claim on Kryptonite's $3,500 replacement warranty saying that their bike has been stolen by someone using a ballpoint pen which (conveniently) leaves no visible sign of attack. Meanwhile they keep their old bike (or sell it on eBay) and make a healthy profit. So the cost to Kryptonite of not replacing locks could be being inundated by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of such fraudulent claims and cost them tens of millions of dollars or more. Even without fraudulent claims, imagine the number of thieves who are now trolling the streets specifically targeting any lock that says Kryptonite. It's too bad that people are as predictably dishonest and greedy as corporations - but then if they weren't we wouldn't need locks in the first place!

Iraqi death toll will soon top 15,000

After creating a version of the Star Spangled Banner with 1000 crosses on it to symbolize the 1,000 US military deaths in Iraq I realized it would be wrong not to do the same with the flag of Iraq. In this case I have put 14,600 crosses which is an approximate number since - unlike the Americans who have died during the invasion and subsequent occupation - no one knows exactly how many Iraqis have died since the invasion began. The best estimates come from the Iraq Body Count web site which as of today puts the maximum estimate at somewhat over 14,700.

Unfortunately 14,600 is such a large number that the only way to distinguish each individual cross is to reproduce the image actual size which just doesn't fit on the average screen horizontally. So forgive me for reproducing it here rotated through 90 degrees. Click on the image for a link to the original.

Colin Powell, its time to make the switch

After reading "Deserter at the Helm!" over at In These Times I'm given to wonder, "What the hell happened to Colin Powell?". According to the article, before joining the Bush administration Powell wrote in his memoirs:

"I can never forgive a leadership that said, in effect: 'These young men - poor, less educated, less privileged - are expendable (someone described them as 'economic cannon fodder'), but the rest are too good to risk."

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed - managed to wrangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."

So just what the hell happened to him? Also isn't this the exact same message that Michael Moore put across in Fahrenheit 9/11 - rich white guys putting poor fodder units (as Bush Snr calls the rest of us) in the line of fire for their own pocket books. I think that Powell actually still believes these things and he is another Richard Clarke waiting to happen. What error of judgment he made in joining the Bush administration could easily be reversed. Imagine this scenario: Bush is re-elected and with an additional 4 year mandate he is so cocky that he will decide he no longer needs that additional token black face in his administration and let Powell go. Then Powell will have plenty of time for revising his memoirs...

I say that the next time a question comes up for Kerry to answer about Swift boats or Bush's AWOL status, Kerry should read out Powell's quote in full and thank him for the inspiration. Then he should call on Powell to do the honorable thing and resign. In the same breath Kerry should make a public offer to Powell to come and do the same job for the Kerry administration.

20% utility, 80% useless

Today I heard the latest "f**k you" from the American auto manufacturers - coming at me from several directions (Gizmodo and Toddski.net blog) is the Navistar CXT as featured in CNN Money. Two feet taller than a Hummer H2 or F350 its an obscenity and exactly what I predicted would happen back in March last year. Go check the photo of the Kenworth truck and then the Navistar CXT and tell me I'm wrong.

The title "20% utility, 80% useless" is my latest idea for a rogue bumper sticker to slap on monster SUVs like the Hummer H2. I actually thought of it after driving around a city parking lot and noting the number of SUVs and pickups that were sticking out a couple of feet into the driving lanes. I'm wondering how many SUV rear-end side impact claims insurance companies are seeing that occurred in parking lots?

Although the jibe at "utility" in "sport utility" actually being "useless" doesn't work for regular pickups, I have to say that I find ones like the F350 particularly egregious. That big flat bed of monster pickups is there for all to see - and more often than not empty. Seriously how many times have you seen an giant pickup hauling around anything other than a giant ego? How about a law that allows you to commandeer any empty pickup parked on the street for hauling your shit around? Just dump your refrigerator, or drywall in the back and drive off with it...

Indeed it would be my favourite idea to force all pickups and SUVs that are claiming the heavy vehicle tax break to go through the weigh stations on freeway. This seems especially appropriate to the CXT since Navistar are bragging:

"So you get all the attributes of a commercial truck - but you don't need a commercial driver's license to drive it.".

When these monsters are given tax breaks intended for commercial vehicles why the heck shouldn't they be treated in the same way? Indeed how about a sliding scale of tax breaks with 100% of the regular commercial break if they are used 100% for commercial purposes, and 0% if they are entirely for show. Make the owners document every mile they travel with a commercial load if they want that tax break. Indeed since they are bigger and tearing up the road more lets just tax them more up front and give some of it back if you can prove it was used for commercial purposes. The delays on freeways stopping at weigh stations, and hassle of providing documentation for business use should soon drive down the demand for these monsters.

While Navistar may predict they will only make and sell about 50 CXTs a year I'm going to bet that they have already been flooded by orders and soon they will be selling several thousand a year. Lets just pray they never challenge the obscene sales figures of the Hummer H2 which apparently sold over 34,000 last year (no wonder I'm seeing them everywhere).

Why I stopped protesting

Thanks to Dave over at Chicken or Beef for reminding me why I stopped protesting against the invasion of Iraq. The article from Alternet that he highlighted pretty much summed it up for me. Having marched four times down Market Street in San Francisco carrying my "Born to drill, born to drill" placard I gave up after the bombs started falling. Literally, I gave up. As the article pointed out, all those marches proved was that peacefully protesting in the streets doesn't do a damned thing to government policy any more, at least not while Bush Co. is in power.

Bush already knew that a huge percentage of the country was against the war, and even if it wasn't a majority he should have taken note of their concerns. He should have double checked his information, double checked his rationale, and explored all non-violent alternatives. But because it wasn't representative of a majority he didn't care. Precisely 50% of the voting public could have turned out and he wouldn't have batted an eyelid before pressing the big red "Invade" button. And he didn't. So no matter what was going on in the streets of cities across the country he had his poll figures, he had his kabul of cloistered NeoCon adivsors and he was going to have his war.

So why should Bush have considered the opinions of what apparently was a minority voice anyway? Well maybe there's a significant number of people who are just lemmings - they'll do, say and vote along with what they believe everyone else is doing, saying and voting. If the image of the majority is whatever is projected on their TV every night, and those people surround themselves with like minded lemmings then they form a highly influenceable group that is just doing whatever the TV tells them to do. Its often the independent minority that expresses itself outside of the regular channels that represents the true good for the community as a whole. If their opinions are not given due consideration then valid discent will be buried at the expense of the common good.

If you think this is crazy talk ask yourself what percentage of American people would have voted to invade Iraq before Bush started up his drumbeat for war and launched his weapons of mass deception (otherwise known as lies, damned lies and Bush speak) on the unsuspecting American public. I would guess it would have been way less than a majority, maybe 20%? Probably the same 20% who would say "Yes" to invade almost any foreign country, especially a Muslem one, on any given day. So basically one tiny insignificant minority of men who just happened to have fenageled their way into positions of power, got it into their heads to manufacture an excuse to invade Iraq and persuade the majority of people it was a good idea. So why shouldn't a significant minority of the people protest on the streets and try to change the opinions of the rest? Why not? Why not indeed. It is (supposedly) a constitutionaly protected right after all.

But again as the Alternet article points out the media and the government have now found that for the most part demonstrating on the streets has been rendered ineffective to the point where you might just as well slap a bumper stick on your car and pray the people behind you all miracuously change their minds. Protesting has become a feel good expression of frustration like going into the woods and screaming. But its certainly no longer an effective means for change.

So there you have it (after my usual waffly reasoning), I stopped marching because I realized it just wasn't going to have any effect other than give me a false sense of feeling good about demonstrating. So now I quitely blog away, try to educate anyone and everyone I can about issues like corporate personhood, will stand my ground and argue against Bush policies to the best of my abilities with anyone that will listen, and try to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to playing my unavoidable roll in consumer society, or donating to various activist organizations.

Is it enough? Probably not. Can I do better? Probably. Will I? Well show me something that's working and I'll sign up for it but I have to tell you I haven't yet figured out what that is. And Dave, if you want to put on a uniform and chant in unison as we march up and down Market Street, sure why not! I think if we all started wearing uniform outfits it would certainly upset the apparel industry! We could call ourselves the unfashionistas... Its certainly better than Bush Co's name for the people - fodder units.

Do it yourself communities being challenged

There's a small chance that local communities may wake up to the insidious creeping prescence of global corporations in their neighborhood and lock onto the idea of "do it yourself". Unfortunately those that do will find it's going to be a battle as entrenched businesses fight back in every way they can to avoid local home-brew competition.

The story from Lake Tahoe is typical of what one can expect as the monopoly cable operator fights back against a city plan to provide its own broadband solution. Why did the city want to do that? Because the monopoly provider just wasn't serving the community's needs for reliable high speed broadband.

The legal argument used to try and block the city from rolling out its own service is quite laughable in that if used as a precedent setting case would block any city, municipality, county, state or even the government from funding any project. They argue that because the city is spending public money to kick start the project, if it fails then taxes will go up to recoup the losses and their business will be penalized by higher electricity costs (which are taxed by the city). In their opinion the cities business plan for broadband rollout isn't 100% guaranteed to make money therefore it should not go ahead. Basically the company is saying the city cannot spend any money on any project that isn't guaranteed to make money because tax payers will end up paying for it.

That kind of argument would mean that no city could fund projects that compete with an external business if they are not money making enterprises. It would mean for instance that no city could run its own public transportation if some private company was already running one. Indeed it would mean that no city could engage in any business where there is private sector competition because no business can be guaranteed to make money. It would also rule out any subsidies of any kind when there is private sector competition.

Like I said, this argument is laughable - if a community chooses to take action that it knows may raise its own taxes then why shouldn't it? Why should the private sector have a sole right to make money and operate in any market. And why should they feel they have an exemption from paying taxes that are the result of a community trying to supply is own public goods?

A business that operates within a community should abide by the rules set by that community, not dictate them to the community. Naturally if a community sets rules in which it is impossible for businesses to operate it will experience the cost of that decision, however it should be their right to do so and if they don't like the consequences of businesses leaving then they can change their minds later.

Analysis and rant in 8 easy paragraphs

FAIR has some good analysis of the absence of facts in statements about Kerry made at the RNC. FAIR is kind enough to frame this as a lack of fact checking, if only by the media. Less kind people might frame the comments made at the RNC as lies...

While discussing the media's complacency in doing fact checking before reporting RNC statements FAIR points out that it would be a "breach of media operating procedure" to bring up criticism of a politician during a live interview.

When MSNBC's Chris Matthews (9/1/04) questioned Miller about the fairness of his litany of weapons programs that Kerry "tried his best to shut down," he was following a line of debunking that was laid out six months ago by Slate's Fred Kaplan (2/25/04), who pointed out that Republicans were citing Kerry's "no" vote on the 1991 Defense appropriations bill as if it were an attempt to eliminate all Pentagon spending. What was remarkable was that Matthews was willing to bring up this criticism in a live interview-- a breach of media operating procedure so dramatic that it provoked Miller to say he "wish[ed] we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel."

That my friends is the difference between the media in the USA and the rest of the world and the reason that US politicians will never partake in an interview with a potentially "hostile" journalist. If you have never listened to politicians attacked and shredded by BBC interviewers then you should. You'll be left wondering a) why our media are such a bunch of pathetic sycophants when interviewing US politicians, and b) if any US politician could actually say even their ABCs without a script in front of them and a policy wonks hand up their backside telling them what to say.

I thoroughly recommend that you read the Kaplan article in Slate linked to by FAIR. It shows, as recent research on GOP smear tactics has also done, that as usual not only does the GOP have all their facts wrong about Kerry and defense cuts, they are also guilty of doing the exact thing they are accusing Kerry of. Oy. The remarkable thing is that Kerry isn't able to bury this disinformation effectively, instead he fumbles, he stumbles and he fails to put a stop to this death by a thousand lies that the GOP seems to have unleashed on him.

I would love to see Bush and Kerry in a real debate some day but I know that will never happen, and given Kerry's recent performance I think he's lost his ability to attack Bush the way he needs to. I mean why isn't he roasting Bush for not renewing the assault rifle ban? Unfortunately he's pandering to the same NRA vote that Bush is and doesn't want to offend them. Well how about telling them they are wrong and they need to grow up and get real about what is going on in this country.

Kerry should say "F**k the four million people who might think assault rifles are cool toys and necessary to overthrow the government, I don't need your vote - just what kind of a democracy do you think we're living in now where the gun is mightier than the vote?"

Do the assault rifle boosters think for a moment that Bush and his NeoCon cronies will let the government head in a direction that will allow them the freedom to rise up and overthrow the government? Why that would be giving into insurgency and terrorism. Allow that in America? No way would Bush ever allow that. The NRA need to be backing everything and anything that will enhance the will of the people so that guns are never necessary or a requirement for the maintenance of the Republic that they supposedly love so dearly. The only militia to be raised should be armed by the government to repel external forces - just like Iraqis are trying to do right now.

But of course that wont happen because Kerry has also become a campaign puppet who is too bland, too middle of the road and lets face it too afraid to speak his mind. Its this kind of realization that leads many to wonder if there is any point at all in voting for Kerry after all, even if he is the un-Bush alternative with a chance on the ballot.

Ironically for the exact same reasons Bush wont do it either even though he knows he should. He'll put his own political career ahead of doing what's right, and what the will of the people is because he's to chicken to risk loosing a single one of those 4 million votes as well.

Bush and Kerry united by assault rifles - who would have thought?

US military death toll in Iraq passes 1000

History crime

There's an entry over at GuvWurld that asks of Orwell's 1984 - "Do they read it in schools anymore?"

Well I read it in school, but that was back in 1980 when we all assumed computers and robots would soon free the world of drudgery, and lasers, fiber optics and velcro were only just the begining of a whole series of wonder technologies that would bring a utopian paradise just around the corner...

Back then the year 2000 problem hadn't even been thought of, and indeed that year when I'd be comfortably into my fourth decade seemed impossibly far ahead. No one ever suspected that the next century could usher in steady flow of backward footsteps in the direction of Orwell's 1984.

Those footsteps may seem innocent and ineffective, like Arcata's writing off Harty's questioning of McKinley's reputation as revisionist nonsense. However as GuvWurld points out, no matter how you look at it the revisionists pen is actually firmly in the hands of government now. It should come as now surprise that the words "History is always written by the winners" are droning constantly in the back of my head...

Imagine for a moment, the scene: its summer 2003 and American troops have just arrived in Baghdad and are busy staging the toppling of Saddam's statue. What, I ask myself, would have been their reply if someone had said "Saddam may have had a dodgy past, he may have waged the occasional misguided war against foreign powers, and perhaps at times was overly influenced and aided by external powers, but actually we'd quite like to keep his statue there. You know, its been there for twenty years already so really we should just leave it - for history's sake? I mean, isn't it in keeping with the fine western tradition of honoring dead, or soon to be dead men who's only distinction was being the winner at one time or another. Just because they were killed, assasinated, deposed, or later discredited is no reason at all to topple their place in history..."

In an infinite universe anything is possible...

Yes folks, in an infinite universe anything is possible - even Republicans changing the constitution to allow non-American born citizens to become President with the intent to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to become President. While on one hand I do feel that the "American born" vs. naturalized criterion for Presidency is a discriminatory one, one that preserves some arcane prejudice against immigrant Americans vs. "I was born here" Americans. It's the same thing that lead early invaders of the American continent to believe they were superior to the indigenous populations because they weren't born here, and then that they were superior to later invaders because they were born here. As you can see, it has little to do with where you were born and all to do with how many guns you are packing, how much wealth you have and quite a bit to do with the color of your skin.

However in this particular case I know what its all about. Its nothing to do with opening up the Presidency and removing this discriminatory clause. No, its all about getting one particular guy into the Whitehouse with a landslide and keeping him there for as long as possible while he does as much as possible to change American irrevocably - that one guy is Arnold Schwarzenegger. If it were anyone else - from Mexico, or Asia, or Russia, or heaven forbid, the middle East - there would be a cats chance in hell of anyone backing changing the constitution to usher them into the white mans house on the hill. But I just know, if Arnold were on the ticket, states would crumble like a pack of cards and change the constitution over night.

Americans, regardless of party allegiance, would line up to vote for him in droves if only out of curiosity to see what he'd do. I mean, wasn't that really what happened with Reagan the first time around? Remember that Reagan, a candidate that democrats were deeply suspicious if not afraid of, won by 10% of the popular vote in 1980 and then 18% in 1984. With Schwarzenegger on the ticket I'm afraid to say that women would vote for him because he's a macho hunk, men and young kids would vote for him because he's a cult hero of some of their favorite movies, and no one would be focusing on the issues. He's a campaign marketers wet dream and judging by the California recall result nothing bad whatsoever would stick on him.

Oh sure there would be many women who'd protest his misogynistic attitudes (which no matter how hard he tries have shown they were not just a trivial dalliance confined to the past). Many men and women who would protest his simple minded sales pitch on how he's going to solve everything by locking the doors and then banging heads together until they agree (it never worked).

Regardless, the Terminator President would prevail and no doubt be wonderfully popular no matter what he did. Hummers would proudly display their Presidential Seal of Appoval and driving monster trucks would now become an simple issue of patriotism. Decrying monster trucks and cars would become unpatriotic, and American the country would be born again under the "Bigger, stronger, better!" slogan.

I would not be at all surprised if the Republicans and middle of the road voters would love him so much that they would also amend the constitution back again to allow more than two terms as President. Knowing our luck old Arnold would go on like a machine, never stopping until the flesh finally rotted off his bones. In fact at that point the GOP would probably amend the constitution yet again to allow a dead person to be elected and American would be officially run by the mere cult of a personality ad-infinitum.

Like I said, in an infinite universe anything is possible.

The Great European population decline

This evening I learned that Scotland is very concerned about its declining population as it reaches the lowest level in 100 years. Now various politicians are proposing radical ideas to increase immigration in the absence of legislation being able to get the Scots to breed like, well... rabbits.

I'm lead to wonder, just where is the problem with decreasing population? Isn't there a big problem for the world if Western economics can only sustain steady or increasing population? Haven't we invested generations of technological innovation to decrease the amount of labour required to do everything and anything? So why can't they just get used to it - fewer kids to teach => fewer teachers, fewer mouths to feed => fewer farmers, etc. etc.

We have to start to plan on a future where populations can go down as well as up, otherwise the entire world is going to have a big problem. If a small place like Scotland of a couple of million people can't deal with decreasing population levels, then what the heck are we to suggest to China and India when they deal with eventual falling population levels?

Speaking of statistics...

Yesterday I was driving over to San Francisco in a time of medium traffic, something I try to avoid doing (both driving and driving in traffic). The lines to get past the toll boths was backed up about a quarter mile - nothing very significant, probably only five minutes wait or less. As I waited I noticed a steady trickle of people going way off the right in the car pool and buses only lane - however being the middle of the day car pooling wasn't effective. I can understand their though process entirely... I mean come on, who wants to wait five minutes on a blazing hot day to hand over $3 of toll? Hell no!

Of course I jest, they are of course dumb asses who think they are more important, more lucky and just more everything than the rest of us. The drive across that bridge all the time and know full well that lane is forbidden outside of car pool hours (and no excuses - it was a couple of hours pass the 10am cut off!).

So as I passed the toll boths I was happy to note that the cops were doing a little sting operation, oh shame on me for my private little moment of shadenfruede as I rolled by. Then I counted, one, two, three, four,... ten people had been pulled over and were waiting. Then I counted... one, two, three, four, .... nine of the vehicles were SUVs or minivans.

Now I ask myself, is that significant? What are the odds of that happening? I should be able to figure it out - how many cars cross the bridge in the perhaps 15 minute period that they had been snagged during. What percentage of all traffic is minivans and SUVs, and what the (im)probability of nine of that ten vehicle sample being minivans and SUVs by chance is. Its almost worth breaking out a statistics book for...

Until then I'll keep wondering if there's a correlation between driving an SUV or minivan and feeling that paying a toll and obeying posted lane restrictions is just an inconvenience that can be ignored. Maybe they all thought that the cops are dumb enough to fall for the line, "Oh I thought when it said "BUSES ONLY" that means minivans and SUVs too because my car is like, so large and has like, so many seats...". Or maybe its even simpler than that, maybe its not the cops that they thought would be dumb, maybe they actually believed that themselves...

Presidential election or presidential lucky draw?

While researching a forthcoming blog entry of the American (effectively) two-party political system I heard an interesting radio program about how error prone the US election system is. Citing a the Voting Technology Study by Caltech/MIT, the organization Election Watch is saying that in the 2000 election an estimated 4 to 6 million votes were simply lost for one reason or another.

This is indeed a pretty shocking number considering that the number of votes cast in 2000 was 100 million, so 4 to 6 million "lost" votes means an error of 4 to 6%. Think about it - Gore won the peoples (popular) vote by a margin of only 0.5%, and Bush won the electoral college vote by 0.9%. Both figures being well below the 4 to 6% of lost votes, so one could argue, as Election Watch has, that doing recounts to settle the issue of whether Bush really won by a few hundred votes in Florida is largely irrelevant compared to the larger problem of 4 to 6% of all votes being lost.

Add to this the impact of the electoral college system which converts even the slightest majority in a state's popular vote to a 100% win of the electoral college votes for that state. Not to mention the inbuilt bias of the electoral college system that gives many states a great say in the electoral college than their percentage of the nations population. For instance Wyoming gets 0.56% of the electoral college votes, but has only 0.19% of the voting age population. Whereas California gets 10% of votes for its 10% of voting age population.

In Florida 2000 the "win" of the state's popular vote by 537 votes, or just 0.009% converted into a winner-takes-all victory of Florida's 25 electoral college votes which is 4.7% of the total. That's quite some leverage achieved through the electoral college system: 0.009% to 4.7% - a more than five hundred fold amplification of the majority in Florida.

All these figures should serve to increase our alarm at a figure of 4 to 6% of all votes being lost in a national election. Now a statistician will tell you that even if not all votes are being counted then the ones counted are basically a large enough representative sample of all votes that would have been counted. Within the margin of error the vote result would have been the same. This is the same principle by which opinion polls and exit polls purport to determine the result of the election before any actual vote counting takes place - the just count a sample and a tiny one at that. Basic statistics will then predict the level of confidence in the result (probability of being right) for a given sample size and pollsters pick a sample large enough to give them a high enough confidence in being right - 95%, 99%, 99.9%... you name it. All the way to 100% by counting every single vote.

Of course pollsters don't count actual votes - people lie about whether they will really vote and who they will or have voted for. Also the sample of people they select is frequently biased - even calling people by telephone builds in a bias because democrats tend to hang up on pollsters, it takes a certain degree of wealth and credit worthiness to even have a phone, less affluent families are more likely to have a listed phone number (as opposed to paying for an unlisted one not available to pollsters). Plus its any guess as to how employment status affects the chance of being home at any particular time of day when the pollsters might ring. All these have to be considered and somehow "corrected" for with plenty of room for error.

Now the Voting Technology Project estimated that in the 2000 election 1.5 to 2 million votes were lost due to faulty equipment and confusing ballots, 1.5 to 3 million were lost because of voter registration problems (I know at least one person who had that problem), and one million were lost due to problems at the polling place like long lines or poor access to polls. In addition there was an unknown loss due to problems with absentee ballots.

So the question is if 100 million votes are counted, and another 4 to 6 million are not then is a win by 0.9% of the electoral college, or (loss by) 0.5% of the popular vote valid? Is the actually number of votes counted a large enough sample to ensure a very high degree of confidence? Indeed what should be the level of confidence attached to a presidential election result? 99%, 99.9% or 100%?

Even more importantly, what is the distribution of intended votes in those 4 to 6 million lost in the 2000 election? What if it had even a 10% bias to Democrats? We've already learned that in Florida an estimated 40,000 people were incorrectly purged from the electoral role, a group that had a strong bias towards democratic voting African-American voters. What if that bias were replicated elsewhere? What if its mostly poorer voters who are not able to find time to register to vote, or fill out the form wrongly due to literacy problems? What if it is people working the longest hours for least money who can't afford time off work to stand in line to vote?

Yes I'm sure there are biases in the other direction like too many rich republican voting white guys who said they wanted to vote but just couldn't be bothered to (in this case voter apathy probably goes both ways), but my strong feeling is biases probably lean toward excluding more DNC votes than GOP votes, and by a healthy margin too.

Think about it - if the 4 to 6% rate of lost votes were applied to Florida 2000 that means between 238,000 and 358,000 lost votes. So the Bush margin of "victory" in Florida by 537 votes could have been wiped out by counting the lost votes if they contained just 0.24% to 0.15% more Gore votes than Bush votes (depending on how many votes were actually lost). No wonder people wanted to recount the votes and no wonder people are getting excited and indeed very angry about the laughable status of our US voting system.

Yes it may be better than many third world nations, but really is it befitting a nation that claims to be #1 of everything in the world and the squeaky clean image for democracy that everyone should aspire to? Election results as in 2000 determined by tiny margins are hardly victories, they are more lucky draws plucked out from the political noise of closely divided nation.

Indeed what is up with a country that hands such power to a single person when he is elected by such a tiny margin? Why should one gang of politicians get supreme power for getting less than a 1% more votes in the electoral college? Why should that be converted to such a radical shift in power in the country? Should we insist on even a 10% majority or even larger before one gang gets to lord it over the other?

Remember if you have 100 people evenly split at 50:50 and five change their minds that results in a 55:45 split - a 10% lead even though only 5% of the voters changed their minds. Even with a 10% majority would you like to feel the nations future was at the whim of just one in twenty people changing their minds? Should we require something like a 2/3 majority before one party gets some massive advantage over the other like having their gangs leader being President of the whole nation? At least with the 2/3 requirement you have to change the minds of one in three people to reverse the result - a significant achievement.

Ultimately I believe this amplification of political power achieved by the presidential system, the electoral college and the effective two party system in the USA has lead to all parties dumming down their manifestos to muddled and misleading mediocrity. Likewise voters have similarly dummed down their personal ambitions and expectations for how the country should be run. In effect we have a mediocracy of government serving a mediocrity of citizens. But more on that in a future blog entry...

ATMs - double dipping for change

The ATM double-dip service charge: we all know we're being ripped off and that dishing out a few notes and pushing some bits around the bank networks costs a tiny fraction of the $2.00 to $4.00 you can get charge. We all know that banks survived for decades without these charges and that actually ATMs save them money and they are willing to pay you to use them by discounting accounts that exclusively use ATMs over real live tellers.

So how about if we could turn the whole issue of ATM fees on its head and make them do some good? How about if it said "Do you agree to this charge? Yes, No, or I'd like to donate it to a charity of my choosing" ???

How about that? I mean seriously, if someone is willing to pay up to $4 in double dip fees to get $100 or whatever out why doesn't some enterprising bank decide to donate its fees to charity (or at least a significant percentage of them). After all, we all know that when customer for Bank A uses an ATM from Bank B then Bank B will get some money from Bank A regardless of whether they add a double-dip charge. In general between all the big banks the interbank fees are probably a wash - over a year Bank A will charge Bank B as much as B charges A, the only people who lose are the customers and the little banks.

I have a feeling if some bold bank did the "Donate to charity thing" they would get more people using their ATMs, get free marketing and generally increase good karma all around. Sure it costs them some profits but customers love companies that do something bold to make a stand or stick their necks out for a good cause.

Barnes expresses shame for getting elite out of harms way

While the GOP is just finishing with its true lies campaign over in NYC, Ben Barnes, former Lieutenant Governor of Texas has made a public apology and admitted he was ashamed for getting so many "wealthy supporters and people with family names of importance" into the National Guard during the Vietnam War, a safe haven at the time. Michael Moore has a story on this as does CBS.

What did the rest of the media say about this most public confession by Barnes? Well, apparently not much at all since they were too busy sucking up the CoolAid at the GOP convention, giggling about purple bandaids and rolling with laughter over faux Bush hero movies.

To me the bigger story is Barnes actually having the humility to change his mind and publicly admit his mistake decades after the fact. Indeed his words are some of the sincerest I've heard in defence of Kerry - getting the rich white guys with influence out of any responsibility for their actions is about the worse thing one could do and he was brave to have the guts to tell it like it is.

For some reason the boneheads at the GOP believe that "staying on target" and never wavering in your destiny, no matter how erroneous and stupid it is later proven to be, is the true path of righteousness. Most other people will agree that to learn from ones mistakes and have the guts to admit them is actually the higher path and requires a greater degree of intelligence, humility and courage to follow.

Do you trust Diebold ATMs?

Wells Fargo customers in California may have noticed the increasing prevalence of Diebold built ATMs in the streets. You can hardly miss them - they say "Diebold" in big letters on the front. For anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention to the news about electronic voting in the last year that name should set of loud warning bells. Do you really want to put your money into a Diebold build ATM? Shouldn't you count and recount the notes as they come out? What if it makes a mistake - who will believe you?

For my part I just want to walk down to my local Diebold ATM and slap a big bumper sticker on it that says: "Why trust your cash with a company that can't even count your vote?".

But there's something deeper there - why would a major bank like Wells Fargo buy Diebold built ATMs if they were untrustworthy? Surely if Diebold can build ATMs that handle financial transactions then they can handle ones that count your votes?

Think about it... and think about our financial system in general. Banks have computer systems that handle trillions of dollars in transactions every day. VISA merchants alone processes over 100 million transactions a day. The NASDAQ stock exchange handles an average of over 2 billion shares being traded every day. Worldwide just think how many times people go to an ATM and put money in or take it out every day. Now ask yourself, would banks trust their money to these systems if they were as insecure as Diebold voting machines? Would they?

Hell no!

Diebold is just one of thousands of other manufacturers make machines and software designed to process financial transactions and these systems are alarmingly secure and reliable handling billions of transactions per day. Every credit or debit card swipe, every ATM deposit or withdrawal, every check cashed, every wire transfer, every interest calculation. Day after day after day with a staggering degree of accuracy. Oh sure, there are errors but you know eventually they figure it out and there's an audit trail all the way to your bank account when its in your favour, just so they can get that money back. Just like the time I deposited a check and miskeyed giving myself a $1.2M bank balance - and it cleared. For two whole days I had a $1.2M balance... but it went away after that, sure as eggs is eggs. When someone wants to try and defraud the system and cover their trails they usually have to set up all kinds offshore accounts, front companies and laundering operations to do so and even then its usually just a matter of time and lack of international cooperation that is between them and the long arm of the banks looking for their money.

So when it comes to counting votes in the US election - just a measly 100 million votes in an average Presidential election - why is it that we have this antiquated, unreliable, easily defraudable system? Why can VISA Inc. process as many transaction per day as votes are cast in the presidential elections every four years and do it better?

I'll tell you why - its money. Its the same problem as finding energy alternatives to oil, or figuring out how to do sustainable development - there's just not enough money in it. No one really cares any more who gets into power be it tweedeledum or tweedledee, there's still just a few billion at stake and even then the bar for performance is set so low that once the contract is won its a cake walk all the way to bank. If every miscounted vote cost a million dollar penalty you can bet your life there would be an accurate vote count each and every election.

So here's my solution...

Every election every registered voter goes to an ATM and uses the existing ATM and banking infrastructure to vote. The exact details of how that works I haven't exactly figured out, but basically we're talking a one dollar one vote system. Maybe you deposit cash and get a refund later, maybe you are given cash on a card good for one day and deposit it, or maybe you take it out from the candidates account as a reward for being a good voter, maybe you just key in stuff on the screen and get your receipt. Whatever works and satisfies the criteria - when there's money to made companies will figure it out and make it work and the banking system will do the rest.

The important thing is you have the ATM infrastructure there already and its trusted each and every day by millions of users and more to the point by banks, so why not use it? You have smart cards, verification that's arguable more secure than that used at polling stations, plus photo records of each person who came up to vote (yes, ATMs have eyes!) and the bonus that ATMs are everywhere already and can be placed anywhere there is a phone line and power.

If Diebold and others can't figure out how to count votes using the ATM network then they sure as hell can't be trusted to count our money as it comes out of the machine - but maybe that's the point, maybe they can't be trusted at all with our money or our votes...

How geeks will end Bush

Well its logical isn't it, how else would a geek end Bush?

Sorry about the delay in posting this but living on the outskirts of the blogosphere it took me a while to hear about the original post via Collision Detection (no, I don't read Boing-Boing).

Now I think about it I do remember seeing the end Bush tag a long time ago on the geeky shirt by that bastion of good, bad and ugly shirt wear also known as T-Shirt Hell. Their photo contest pics are mostly of "adult" nature so beware, but one of them deserves a special prize (and is "workplace safe") for its very clever use of irony.

Darwin is my DJ

The latest story over at Wired News just goes to show that Darwin may be alive and well and working as a DJ in a club near you. Stories of ultra low frequency sound scrambling happless experimenters insides were assumed an urban legend when I was a kid.

Now we know better: the Army uses sonic weapons to preemptively disable those meddling insurgents, and now it seems that high power bass drivers are reaching into the guts of the music listening public with evolutionary impact. So next time you hear the home boys driving by with their 1000-watt sound system rattling da' hood perhaps you can slap on a Darwin fish sticker as they go by?