Think our founding fathers wanted anything like this two party system? Think again.

Here is an article by Patrick J. Buchanan talking about the furor over the speech Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave at Columbia University.

It's been a while. STOP. I been busy. STOP. Here is the transcript from the speech Ahmadinejad made at Columbia University yesterday. STOP.

Ron Paul owns someone who asked him about the war on drugs. Also below is one of the comments someone made on reddit where this video was posted.

I found this post over at wonkette a little interesting. It talks about a former marine who has the audacity to appose the Iraq war. To paraphrase wonkette, since those for the war cant attack him, because he is a veteran who was discharged honorably, they have devised a way to back draft him back into the marines then discharge him dishonorably.As always, however, I like to bring both sides of the story when I can. So I started to read through the comments on reddit (where I originally found the post) and right now the top comment there describes the reality of whats going on.

Here is a snip of the John Kerry vs. Newt Gingrich debate on global warming I found here.

quoteKERRY: I'm excited to hear you talk about the urgency - I really am. And given that - albeit you still sort of have a different approach - what would you say to Sen. Inhofe and to others in the Senate who are resisting even the science? What's your message to them here today?

GINGRICH: My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere.

KERRY: And to it urgently - and now...

GINGRICH: And do it urgently. Yes.

If I can, let me explain partly why this is a very challenging thing to do if you're a conservative. For most of the last 30 years, the environment has been a powerful emotional tool for bigger government and higher taxes. And therefore, if you're a conservative, the minute you start hearing these arguments, you know what's coming next: which is bigger government and higher taxes.

So even though it may be the right thing to do, you end up fighting it because you don't want big government and higher taxes. And so you end up in these kinds of cycles. And part of the reason I was delighted to accept this invitation and I'm delighted to be here with Sen. Kerry is I think there has to be a if you will a "green conservatism" - there has to be a willingness to stand up and say alright here's the right way to solve these as seen by our value system./quote

That is Newt admitting that conservatives have been fighting against the evidence of Global warming because it leads to bigger government and higher taxes in spite of the danger and the truth!

Democrats may have won but they better get the mandate right or they will lose in 2008 just as surely as the republicans lost this election. Psycho Dave over at kuro5hin has some ideas on what the Democrats should do.

No only do we definately torture but we also no longer have habeas corpus.

I was doing some routine surfing when I came across these two articles on the web one about the results of Hamdan vs Rumsfeld in the Supreme Court. The other an article about how the republicans war on terror hurt our freedoms.

So the US Senate isn't completely stupid. They did block the gay marriage ban that was floating through the senate floor.

Sen. Pat Roberts said yesterday during the CIA nomination briefing yesterday "There are no civil liberties when you are dead." To which I say, if you have no civil liberties you might as well be dead.

Tom Delay doesn't think the Judicial branch is a check and balance over the Legislative branch, George W. Bush thinks he is above congress and its laws. What's going on in this country? Are we slowly loosing the checks and balances that keep this country great and stable?

As always I rail against the notion of DRM and the media industries use of copyright to limit the rights of consumers. I thought this piece on the BBC had an interesting overview of how DRM won't work and the realities that the media industries need to wake up to unless they want to die.

Gaming is good for you! For every article out there about game violence and ADD there's an article about military applications for gaming and hand eye coordination.

The US space exploits continues to depress.

Round 5
everyone else 5, Microsoft 0
Microsoft delays Windows Vista again.

On another tech note you can read this interview of Tim Berners-Lee.

Notable: Chatology

Getting this out late, was busy all weekend.

I listen to a couple podcasts and one of my favorite is the Gillmor Gang. I was listening to his latest one when yet again Steve Gillmor mentioned that we should show respect for Earthlink, which he advertises at the beginning of each podcast. The problem isn't that we should have respect for Earthlink, it is his constant reminder at the beginning of every podcast. He needs to let the advertisement stand on its own now, possibly he should diversify to other advertisers. I'm all for advertisements on podcasts and blogs, I have google ads on my site, but I think the advertisements have matured enough that we don't need a constant reminder about them. What needs to happen now is the continuation of the advertisement movement for the correct context. This leads things to intention vs attention and google ads.

Speaking of which Doc Searls put words to a concept I've been trying to describe for a while now. The idea of attention vs attention vs intention. Where advertisers for a long time now have been spending billions to get our attention. Whether its a billboard or TV or spam alot can go into trying to get peoples attention and sell their product. However most of this money seems to me to be wasted, and in fact not only wastes money but wastes time. My time to view an advertisement for a product I will never buy and companies time in creating flashy advertisements to grab such a low percent of buyers who would otherwise not have bought their product where otherwise a very simple promotional advertisement or blurb that they exist would get a majority of their buyers to indeed buy their stuff.

In recent years we have seen two kinds of movements around attention. One side has been the context movement which is things like google advertisements where the advertisement is geared towards the content of the page itself thus perhaps leading to higher click rate. The other side, promoted by people such as Steve Gillmor and others over at attentiontrust.org, is a sort of vault where click streams or previous buys are recorded in a central place and the potential buyers can at their own will allow other companies to find out that information to be able to show advertisements or promotions that are very specific to that potential buyer.

The last piece to this evolution, as I see, is the idea of intention. When I know I want to buy something I can let vendors know my intention of buying something and they can then compete for my business. It can be as little as I am interested in buying an RPG game or a Java programming book or a plasma screen. It can be sorta vague or very specific and depending on that intention I might be a few advertisements and promotions or many. To me this should be where businesses are heading in the future of trying to get buyers.

On a different note reporters may need to watch out for Bush as he may be attacking reporters on the very idea that they report things.

Notable: Chatology

Fox News is sucking so much shit it makes my face hurt. I don't mean that in the oh they suck way, which they do, but in the they are so full of shit they are sucking shit out of other peoples asses way. God damn. Stop. Being. Such. Idiots.

Some people just don't get it. This war on terror is not like any war we've ever fought. Past powers given to the president during a time of war do not apply this time. This will be a long war, the longest war we've ever fought, if it ever ends. In some ways it is like the war on drugs. We may never 'win' the war on terror just like we will never win the war on drugs. It isn't about some end goal, its about a continuous goal. One in which we must strive to uphold by continuously being vigililant.

We can't give up civil liberties temporarily so we can fight the war on terror more effectively simply because we will be giving up these civil liberties for generations if not forever. We have to find ways to fight against terrorism effectively without hurting this country and turning our backs on the foundation on which this country stands. The war on terror is about not losing the things which make this country great: freedom, security, and equality.

When I talk about security I mean being secure in your home and possessions, and these days communication and discrimination against those who would take them or abuse. This includes freedom and security against government action. We are all equal under these privileges and duties. None are above the law.

Which is why the Congress needs to reign in the executive powers on this administration. The president cannot be allowed to go above the law and despite what others may say executive privilege when there are laws in place to limit the president do not trump the law.

Here's this weeks blogs I found interesting: That's right Christopher Walken seems to be running for president, Paul Montgomery complains about the Gillmor Gang podcast (my comments: 1), Human vs. Animal Charity (my comments: 1, 2), The Death of the Movie Blockbuster (my comments: 1), Wonkette: Chatology, Tech you didn't know you needed?, Daily Kos comments on FISA

Not withstanding the Presidents efforts in Iraq, I look forward to many of the other objectives the President outlined in his State of the Union. We are indeed addicted to oil, let's find some ways to fix that. He mentioned switch grass, which is perhaps might not at first glance seem like a plausable way to help solve our problem, but apparently it has some great energy potential. Of course there's been tons of talk before about biodiesel which can be made from corn.

I thought this was an interesting post John Hummel made of recent events about Bush and surveillance. You can find the digg post here.

Co-Worker: So, it was all right if Bush allowed wire taps, because he was only doing it to bad people!

Me: Interesting. You know, the other day, my daughter got in trouble for eating a piece of candy.

Co-Worker: OK. So what does that have to do with anything?

Me: Well, you see, she knows that after dinner, as long as she asks me, she'll be allowed a piece of candy for dessert. She knows that if she brings me the candy, I'll still probably tell her OK. All I ask is that she come ask me, and I'll tell her it's acceptable to have the candy. The other night, she didn't ask - she took a piece and ate it, and now she gets no candy for the next few days.

Co-worker: And?

Me: It's the same thing. Bush could have asked for permission to do the wire taps. It would have cost him nothing, it wouldn't have gotten him into trouble, and it would take hardly any effort since he could even do it after he started. But he couldn't even be bothered to follow the law. Couldn't be bothered to say "Hey, this is what I'm doing" to a third party just to make sure. Instead, he found it easier to keep it hidden from everything - including the people he swore he would serve when he swore an oath to the Constitution. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I didn't care that my daughter ate the candy - I cared the didn't respect me enough to ask first. I didn't care that Bush had people listening in to phone conversations - I cared he didn't respect us enough to ask first. Especially when the people he would have asked would have said "Yes."

Me: And if I can trust him with the little things - like getting a warrant even when he can wait until 3 days after he starts to get one, that a warrant for wiretaps has been denied only 4 times since 1976 so he's got no fear of someone saying "no" (far less than my daughter has than I will say "no" to candy) - if he can't even follow the law on such a simple and direct thing, how can I trust him to follow the law when it's hard? Like Dumbledore said: You have to choose between what is easy, and what is right. He choose the easy. I can no longer trust him with the right.

Sometimes I wonder if I shoulda named this site Politic Blog or something with all the time I spend thinking and posting about politics. I get sorta worked up when I hear about yet another crapy thing Bush or the republicans are doing. Thankfully I have a job and classes or maybe it might become depressing.

Anyway I have v2.3 of sparce out. Lately I've been thinking about link/bookmark management and how to incorporate something like del.icio.us with a compact front end like sparce that uses a plugin to both do what the del.icio.us firefox extension does and also record the number of clicks on those links to manage the order of display in each category. I've also thought of some new types of tags such as smart tags like most visited links (by you or other del.icio.us users) or most popular links (by you or other del.icio.us users).

In that same vein I have been thinking alot about the statistics of my music and web habits. I wonder what songs or albums or artists I listen to the most, or what web sites I visit the most. iTunes does have that information, though listening to music on many different computers its spread across them and it is a bit cumbersome to try and grab that information. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of doing that kind of tracking for firefox without making my own extension. The people over at Attention Trust seem to be going in that direction at least in terms of using that kind of data for something useful.

The debate seems to be for most people that time will tell whether George Bush was right in his decision to go to war. In the mean time it is 'irresponsible', Bush asserts in his veterans day speech, for democrats to claim that The White House lied to the country in its arguments to go to war with Iraq when everyone had access and saw the same information that the President and The White House saw and used. It may be true that those who did vote for the war shouldn't be claiming they were lied to and shouldn't themselves be held responsible for using bad judgment in allowing the President to conduct this war.

They should all be held responsible: The White House, the Senate, the House, the FBI, the CIA, for allowing this war to happen and for the conduct of the war. It may be that Iraq will lift itself up and become a beacon of light for the rest of area yet this Iraq war will never have been the right decision. There are any number of other things that could have been done in the fight against terrorism. The failure of the House and Senate to keep The White House in check is monumental, allowing The White House to conduct itself the way it has. Despite the decision to go to war it should have been handled better, and our representatives again show their inabilities every day.

I also want to mention that my heart goes out to the victims and their families of the bombings in Amman.

Wow so the Democrats finally seem to be showing a spine. Bushes failed nomination of Harriet Miers even seemed to have the Republican base angry. The indictment of Lewis Libby, the failures of the government and FEMA during Katrina, and the democrats seizing the moment to renew investigation into the run-up to the Iraq invasion are hammering the White House with bad news.

Once agian it's been a while since I posted anything, I've got some new material I hope to update the site with but I'm taking the hard classes at the university now and don't have nearly as much time anymore for the site. This MLP post was brought to you by the letter N.

One wonders when was the turning point. When did the lofty ideals of truth, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness turn into complacency, money, and the struggle for power? When did America stop being the brightest beacon of hope? Was it the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, McCarthyism, Bush? Or was it ever anything else? Maybe there were only a few leaps in time when colonists shrugged off their chains and flipped off the red coats, when heady times of free love and bra burning turned into a real rights movement, when blacks finally were given rights, when going to the moon was awesome. Seems like we enter times of crap and disease, where greed and intolerance reigns down seemingly endless, then just in the nick of time redeem ourselves somehow once we realize what idiots we were. One wonders when will be the next turning point.

Who knew something with such a silly name as filibuster against a couple judicial nominations could create a showdown so important as what occurred a couple days ago. As I'm sure most people know by now a group of 7 democrats and 7 republicans "stole defeat from the jaws of victory" in creating a compromise literally moments before the "constitutional option" aka "nuclear option" aka 'end filibuster as we know it option' was going to be voted on. While I do believe that the filibuster was being overused and that judicial nominations that come out of the Judiciary Committee should have an up or down vote, I also know that republicans have used the filibuster and other ways to stop judicial nominations in their tracks. The funny thing about all this is no one seemed to mention that ending the filibuster would have essentially destroyed minority rights to keep a role in many important parts of legislation. Just because the republicans have a majority in both the house and the senate and practicaly every committee doesn't mean the democrats shouldn't get a say in anything. I heard a great suggestion about changing the way judicial nomications come through the senate by advice and consent.

Social Security reform has been the hot topic since the presidentﾒs inauguration, especially private accounts. Some democrats claiming there's no problem, some republicans crying death and destruction if we don't do anything. Those are of course just the extremists. Most people acknowledge that if do nothing at all social security will eventually collapse, whether that happens in 2018 or 2070 is up for argument, I personally think that day is closer to around 2045 (AARP, FEE, Bush). The president in his fifth State of the Union Address, while citing other possible remedies, advocated private accounts as a way to help social security and promote the ownership society he seems to advocate. There are numerous problems around the subject as I see it. Currently 12.4% of a worker's salary (half from the worker, half from the employer), up to $90,000 in 2005 goes towards social security. First, according to most news reports and people I've talked to only 4% of that 12.4% would be diverted into private accounts when in reality Bush is proposing that 4% out of 12.4% would be diverted (Bush). READ: 4 percentage points of 12.4%. This is the difference between $74 a year to $1000 a year. Second, this will actually exacerbate the problem of the upcoming shortfall by diverting funds going into social security somewhere else, around 32%. In doing this potentially trillions of dollars will need to be pulled out of the government's budget in transition, this of course depends entirely on the rate of adoption and how fast we get to the 4%. The reason for this transition cost is because, as the president said, those 55 or older will not have benefit cuts, the rest of us should expect at least somewhere around 32% cuts, which is fine because the private accounts cover it. By extension then private accounts actually do nothing to shore up social security but in fact can create a further burden on the government. Thirdly, as far as interest on the money that goes into I have huge misgivings on allowing people to move funds around at their whim like they would on the stock market, even if it is in conservative funds. You add in allowing brokerage firms to handle this and you run into costs. Assuming the funds in my private account does better than they would in social security, how much of that extra money will be eaten away by the costs of having firms handle my account? Of course thankfully congress has the foresight to at least discuss real solutions to keeping social security solvent. (Parsing the State of the Union)

I've been told that I can eat all my rants about the war in Iraq and that Bush is being proven right with the elections, and collapse of the Lebanese government, and the talk that Egypt will hold some elections. All I gotta say is mad props that at least something is going right for once and that this does nothing to change that the American people were misled about the original reasons to go to war and that the administration should be held liable for the utter lack of preparation and the horrible handling of the war. So good job for not completely screwing it up so that change can happen even despite the things he has screwed up.

So I read this interesting article in Wired magazine, which you can now read online here, about the idea of starting up the growth of nuclear power plants here in the States. The article did a good job of pointing out the problems of carbon emissions due to our reliance on coal plants for a majority of our power and the shortcomings of clean energy from wind, solar, water, etc. I urge those who are interested in at least reading ideas about curbing our reliance on coal and oil, and trying to stop pumping out so much carbon. Obviously we should try to conserve energy but realistically that only delays the inevitable need to find more energy. Clean energy costs more and still does not provide for enough energy reliably, per square mile they take up. I'm all for the US building nuclear power plants again. For more info on nuclear powers pros and cons you can visit these sites: FAQ, Economics of, more, wiki.

For those who don't know, I am not a democrat nor am I a bona-fide liberal. I come across that way because I defend passionately what I see as a concerted attack on the liberal ideals I do have. I am both a liberal and a conservative. I am liberal about some things and I am conservative about some things. Take for example abortion, I conservatively (though not based on any religion), am again abortion after 100 days of conception but liberally I both necessarily cannot tell other people what choices to make nor can I exactly say when it is a fertilized egg turns into a human being (the 100 days is a 'feeling' rather than a real scientifically backed up reason for when to ban abortions). Thus I defer most of the time to the judgment of the woman who is pregnant.

Last month the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, made a speech about the lack of woman in science. During the speech he made some remarks that one of the possibilities were the innate or biological differences between men and woman. It caused an uproar during the speech and since then many people have given their opinion about what he said. I myself had a debate with a friend of mine about the subject. I immediately defended the position that woman are no different than men, however over the course of the discussion I became the realize how naive this position is knowing what I do about biology. Putting aside differences there may or may not be between the male brain and female brain, there are definite differences physically between the average male and female. Puberty for instance starts sooner in females than males and often because of the rise in presence of estrogen brought on by puberty the growth spurt lasts a shorter amount of time in females than males. The potential in muscle mass may be no different between males and females but this is only by force of will, the average male has a greater body mass than the average female. As for the brain, this argument is ages old. While I believe each persons brains is fairly unique and thus hard to generalize many people think there is evidence that males and females do have some tendencies in differences in how they use their brains. more and more">more and more

Really what it comes down to for me is two things. One, it's possible that woman are less prone to liking science than men but that this is not a hard rule and does not mean that woman are worse at science than men. It is also possible that men merely feel woman are this way and have thus made woman feel uncomfortable in science, nurture versus nature. Two, woman and men are equal, their potential is equal, they must be treated equal. The merits of a job must always be with the individuals skill not their sex. Period.

Its been a little while since I last made a post. So what's happened between now and then? Apparently, George Bush has been loosing and gaining people in his cabinet (more). Most notibly Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State replacing Colin L. Powell and Alberto R. Gonzales for Secretary of Justice replacing John D. Ashcroft. Can't say I'm happy to have one of the architects for the war in Iraq (Rice) and the defender of the attrocious torture at Guantanamo (Gonzales) as Secretary of anything. George Bush was also sworn in at the Inauguration.

My heart and mind goes out to all the people who lost their loved ones and those who lost their lives in the tsunami which happened last month.

In personal news, the semester ended relatively well and over the Christmas vacation I was able to get some work done. It's now the second week of the new semster, the only class of note I am taking Chemestry and I hope to put up some of the tools I use to study as the semester goes on.

Finally it's over. Yes, I'm very disappointed. Not only in what I see as another 4 years of an ineffectual president but that 10(11?) states voted to ban gay marriage. I really have only one thing to say about it, your god and I are deeply disappointed in you.

I voted for Kerry, if that wasn't already very obvious. What might come as a surprise is I voted against Amendment 36. There were three main reasons for this. First, the primary reason, I think it is unconstitutional. This is obviously different from before where even if it was unconstitutional I wanted to send a message to our legislators. I guess if I want to get this passed id rather do it in a way that would make it constitutional, by getting legislators elected who will support and pass it. Second, it would have been retro-active. As much as I might not care about a smooth election I do care about using what I think of as an important idea as a purely political tool for either democrats or republicans. Finally, after discussing and reading a lot more about it I've changed my opinion. Not that I feel there doesn't need to be a change but that I think that change still has the electoral college in it. I've come to the conclusion that the electoral college needs to stay, while not in the form it currently is in and not for the same reasons as others might have, but for the primary reason that small states be given more say in the election. The form of electoral college I think would best fit is much like amendment 36 where the electoral votes would be split based on popular vote, but only the House Representative votes. The majority winner would take both the Senate votes.

On the good side as someone pointed out to me, at least now the democrats control the Colorado House and Ken Salazar beat Pete Coors. Though I did not much like Stan Matsunaka I very much like Marilyn Musgrave less and would have liked anything but Musgrave getting reelected.

Out of all this we can take a few things away from this election. We are a very deeply divided nation, as was the case after the 2000 election, and can look forward to this continuing. While this division has always been a part of American politics to a varying degree I think after an election the division was not quite so deep. The republicans control the presidency, the senate, and the house, dealing the democrats another resounding defeat. I hate the direction our country has been going in the last 4 years and I seriously doubt thats going to change in the next coming 4 years. George W. Bush said he would reach across the divide and try to bring the two parties together, he failed then and will likely fail now.

Now I have my opinions of Colorado Amendment 36, but it seems to me that instead of it being about the voters its being used as a political tool when it should be about votes. If it passes, which is to say if a majority vote for it, it will likely cause havoc on the presidential outcome as well later be deemed unconstitutional since only our lovely state legislatures are the ones who can decide how our electors are chosen. Not that it bloody matters because anything less then pure popular vote is fair. I am for this amendment for a few reasons. First to get the idea out to our legislatures (as if they would listen but we can try) that we want change, second because frankly I could give a damn if our election goes 'smoothly', third anything that breaks or encourages the end of the electoral college I'm all for, and finally because I like to see republicans and democrats squirm. Update 10-27: Here's a link that best explains why I think the Electorial College needs to go.

I thought this recent study about what people really understand about their presidential candidates was interesting. Regardless who wins I can't wait for this election to get over. I'm bloody tired of the incessant commercials, phone calls, fliers, and knowing that not a damn single one of those bloody candidates represents me correctly.

In case you hadn't noticed already I'm voting for Kerry this election, but regardless of who I may want to win, if you aren't voting at all this year you suck. Who's up for some old school MLP? I knew you were.

It seems AMD has been doing very well this year, seemingly beating Intel to the punch with their latest Athlon 64 4000+. One wonders what AMD will use to base their model numbers with as Intel starts focusing more on general preformance rather than GHZ. Apple also has been doing good lately. They released new iBooks and re-added their single G5 desktop today. One of these days, maybe when their next generation comes out, I need to get me an iPod. My favorate maven of the late night comedy fake news The Daily Show, John Stewart has been having an interesting month showing up at CNN's Crossfire calling one of the hosts a dick, talking to Bill O'Reilly on his show, and releasing a book which has now been banned at Walmart. If anyone doesn't know anything about Google these days they need to go Google it. Anyway they released a new Desktop Search program that can combine web searching with searching files on your hard drive. However some people have voiced concerns about it. I myself am not sure I want anything on my system that can search through some of my encrypted files as if they werent. One of my newest favorate authors Neal Stephenson was interviewed at Slashdot.

Wasn't that fun? I'm going to sleep.

I'm not normally one to be a doom sayer but the United States is headed down the road for a disaster. Can we endure another 4 years of Bush and his administration in The White House? If one follows the polls Kerry and Bush are sea-sawing from minor margins to dead heats and I ask the question, how can they still be tied? Who can honestly think that Bush has been doing a good job? I see people claiming that he's making America safer when its clear he isn't, that only he can win the war on terror when its also clear he's making a mess of a minor thing like the war on Iraq, that tax cuts are what we need and needed to help us out of the recession when it really wasn't a recession but more like a market correction after the entire countries pyramid scheme collapsed.

Let me expand on this economy business. I got something like a whopping 400 dollars, which meant jack shit, it was entirely meaningless. Another tax cut for me will also be meaningless. It won't but barely dent my expenses, anymore then it helps the millions of other middle class people in this country. And the idea that tax cuts for businesses and the rich helps make jobs is utterly insane. If the government wants to help with the unemployed it should do something equally insane like, employ them. Civil works and government projects would have helped heaps better than a tax cut. CEOs and Corporations are walking away with even more money yet workers are getting payed less and they are still laying people off. WTF? The worst may be over but the economy is by no means strong, and certainly not as strong as it could have been if someone with any amount of competence was in the Office.

If one knows anything about what the national debt really is its relatively meaningless unless it gets way out of hand. Yet we all know something about symbolism and the symbolism behind the strongest nation in the world having such an enormous burden of debt isn't good. It effects many things, and one of those is the value of the dollar which has been been at a steady decline for years now.

Speaking about symbols, how about the image that our current president presents to people in the international community. Sure the world doesn't dictate our lives, but who are we then to dictate their lives. We are also not alone in the world. Do we really want the entire world to hate our president? They may not all hate us yet, but if you think the hatred that half of Americas divided population has for the president is anything to hold against how the rest of the world feels about him take a look again.

This idea now that he's doing good in the war on terror when he had literally nothing more to do with the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars than pointing to a map and saying blow them up. He still doesn't even have an exit strategy for either of those wars. As president these are the things he's suppose to do, we have generals and officers for strategies in battle and a president for strategies in wars. What are the main goals, what are the timetables, how to enable the generals to get the jobs done?

Putting aside the dubious No Child Left Behind debate, his disregard for stem cell research, the environment, sucking up to big business, doing nothing about health care, screwing up the war on terror, and plunging us into a huge national debt, he has the nerve to try to pass an amendment against gay marriage. That is as direct a violation of church and state if there ever was one. The idea that the government enforces even a few religions ideas of what marriage is, is fascist crap. What he really should do is remove all words of marriage from our constitution and only recognize Civil Unions as a law binding way to join people. By the way, the bill even tries to ban gays from having civil unions. Religions should be able to have marriages or whatever the heck they want to call it but the only time the government should step in is to formalize a Union between two people giving those two people the rights and benefits they deserve equally without discrimination.

I ask again, can we endure another 4 years of this?

One last bit about George W. Bush. Alright, so maybe I'm a little harsh to Bush. I don't hate him, like many other anti-bush people, but then again there's nothing that I like about him either. Bush and his administration have divided this country literally in half; alienated the black community, done nothing but hurt civil rights, health care, social security, and diluted the separation of church and state. I wouldn't use Fahrenheit 911 as propaganda against him though. I will be rooting for John Kerry and John Edwards this November. That is of course if Homeland Security don't manage to delay the elections.

I've been reading The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. It's a very interesting read. He has some interesting theories about Order and Chaos, The law of Increasing Returns, and evolutions next step into the age of machines. It's a definite read if your interested in what might happen in the 21st century.

The Destroyer of Worlds commanded me to reorganize my menu. What the Destroyer wants he gets. I finally saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and while I still have reservations about his motives and facts I think it was a very interesting documentary. As I've been reading more and more about Michael Moore and his films I think he is right about some things and wrong about others. George Bush is a calamity of bad decisions, horrible execution, and downright stupid policies. He may turn out to be the worst US President ever. I won't make claims about his dealings with companies and his connections to foreign families, that is for congress and others to investigate, it is his actions as president that I am so much against.

Eh, I don't mean to be the bearer of so much negativity. I do celebrate my country, even if it is fucked up. I wish these United States a happy fourth of July. Even if it was yesterday... There is always hope, we just need to remind ourselves that every now and then.

So I read on Slashdot that Affinity Engines Says Google Stole Orkut Code. This is kind of interesting because Orkut is not even close to being on par with what Google has done in the past so it might just be true. You'd think a company like Google would just write their own stuff.

It seems there's some good news about Guantanamo with the ruling from the United States Supreme Court. Kuro5hin also has a good article outlining more about the ruling and other things going on about the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case. I've also been keeping my eye on the Cassini mission which got close to Saturn this week. Fahrenheit 9/11 made a big wave last weekend, I guess I'll have to go see the movie. I've kinda flip flopped between skepticism and agreeing with Michael Moore.

In site related news, I'll be adding a mathematics section here shortly. It will mostly be focused on Calculus with limits as a kind of background for my philosophy section topic in objective observations.

So I'm surfing the web, as I'm prone to do from time to time, and I run across the Christian Exodus web site. These very few people are trying to organize thousands of people to emigrate into South Carolina to take over legislative districts. Their goal is to return the United States to the good old days of their christian fundamentalist bullshit views one state at a time and if they can't do that secede from the Union. Take a look at their bullet points of what is wrong with this country. Now take a look at the Free State Project web site where a bunch of libertarians have the same kinda of idea. Sad fucking people.

I been also reading the news from the Guardian UK web site. It's pretty sad when I have to go to a news site in another country to get real news about my own. They have some up to date news on Guantanamo Bay. For those of you who don't know anything about The Patriot Act you need to smack your head against the wall for 3 hours then read this. Also go here, here, and here.

Finally, on a brighter note the Daily Show is funny.

I listen to NPR a little almost every day that I can spare the time on my local radio station KUNC. While it is a part of the government funded Corporation For Public Broadcasting, it hardly seems to me to be a sort of government propagandist machine. Tune in one day and you might get a host of stories the steer plainly right, tune in another day you might get stories that lean left, most of the time it seems to be centrist. Regardless when I listen to that show I'm almost always greeted with pretty good factual reporting that shows all faces to an issue.