Patriotism

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. -- Hermann Goering

(From politico.com, click image for larger version)

Respect

I came to Ron Paul because he was for libertarian ideals, a change in our foreign policy and sound fiscal policy. The latter position is a breath of fresh air when the two major parties are locked in a battle to the death over whether we should spend recklessly on the military or whether we should spend recklessly on social programs. Essentially, which set of corporations and special interest groups should get the pork. Paul is running as a Republican because he supports what they claim to stand for on paper, though not at all in practice. This page shows the conventional wisdom that the Republicans are fiscally conservative to be complete fiction.

Given that McCain seems certain to win the Republican nomination and Paul has ruled out a third party run, I ask myself who, among McCain, Hillary and Obama, I'd prefer as president. None have made fiscal restraint as central to their campaign as I think is warranted to avoid long-term damage to the economy (though I'm sure they all pay lip service to it.) On foreign policy, however, Obama is by far the best choice.

We should engage the friendly nations of the world instead of demanding they follow our lead. We should talk openly with Iran and Cuba. They are both the victims of acknowledged U.S. plots to overthrow their government, yet we act indignant when they don't make such-and-such concessions as a precondition of negotiations. So their wary governments become radicalized against us. We should openly acknowledge mistakes made in Iraq and pain inflicted on its people. Instead we just blame the al Qaeda boogeyman for 100% of what's gone wrong like we are innocent bystanders. In short, we need to learn some humility and respect.

The culture of respect (or lack thereof) of people who think differently goes back to what I was saying in the last post. This video shows a long, but very good, speech by Obama about tolerance and respect in a democratic society. I defintely encourage you to watch it. If Paul is not on the ballot I will vote for either Obama or a third party candidate.

NBC is a bunch of pansies

Hillary had her daughter Chelsea make calls to some of the Democratic superdelegates asking for their support. That's fine...free country. An anchor on MSNBC expresses disapproval that Chelsea was 'pimped out' for political reasons. That's fine...free country. Hillary gets mad and threatens to remove herself from scheduled political debate on MSNBC. Sigh...free country. NBC makes multiple on-air apologies, forces anchor to apologize on-air, and suspends anchor. Grr...free country? (AP story)

Don't want your daughter to be in the media spotlight? Then don't use her for political means. At 27 she's a big girl now and can decide for herself.

I'm sick of politicians who can't tolerate any dissention. "You're either with us or against us!" If those are my two options, then I guess I'm against you. The other choice means giving into your coercion. There's a name for that. Terrorism. This attitude is why people don't stay informed or get active in politics. This attitude is why our foreign policy and reputation is in tatters.

I'm sick of news media that lacks any kind of balls or integrity. Instead of Woodward and Bernstein style investigative journalism we are led to believe the whole story can be covered by letting someone with an 'R' and someone with a 'D' after their name speak for 20 seconds each. FOX News, ever so efficient, eliminates the person with the 'D'.

Microsoft bids for Yahoo!

I often stumble on things on the internet that I find interesting but not quite enough to blog about. Today there were two such things: Microsoft's $44B offer to buy Yahoo! and the above snapshot of two men on the verge of giving in to exquisite carnal bliss. I decided the parallels between the two ran deeper than one might expect.

As both a nerd and a software professional, I've always found Microsoft to be distasteful and corrosive. They habitually behave in a way that restricts consumer choice and competition. They use their dominant position in one market to preempt competition in other markets despite producing low quality goods. There's nothing so annoying to an engineer than seeing manipulation get in the way of an optimal solution.

Given a long enough timeline, however, markets prevail. The growing technical superiority of Linux on one end and the design and polish of Apple on the other have started to bring back some good old competition. Microsoft is still giant, but mortal. Today MSFT trades at $30.45 which is the same price some people paid for it all the way back in 1998! Bill Gates is rich but not getting much richer.

The most pressing concern for Microsoft now is Google. On the Internet, Microsoft's dominance on the desktop counts for little and they are faced with competitors that actually want to serve their customers rather than treat them as captives. Money and power can't 'fix' that, especially when none of the nerds want to come work for you due to your track record.

Yahoo! was a plucky startup that made a lot of good choices as the internet was coming of age and then some not so good ones. Over time, they lost much of their spark, uniqueness and customer focus and fell behind Google despite a big head start. Given these problems, I find it implausible that joining with super-bland Microsoft will provide any benefit or even slow the decline.

As a libertarian and not being particularly gullible I've always found George Bush to be distasteful and corrosive. He trades in fear rather than reason and has no respect for civic debate or the rule of law. He completely disregards the half of the country that didn't vote for him and then went the extra step of disregarding many of the people who did vote for him, too. Over time his flaws caught up with him, leaving him politically weakened and discredited but still a viable force for his remaining year in office.

John McCain was a plucky politician at a time when people were growing tired of partisan politics. A maverick. Engineer of the Straight Talk Express. Respected for being above the fray. Over time he lost his independence. He became a cheerleader for the debacle that is the occupation of Iraq. Now he tells the public that the Surge is working and that he is prepared to dig into a hundred year war there. Yet even now our soldiers are dying at a rate of 'just' one a day. So expect another 350 deaths under Bush and 1500 under McCain were he to get four years in the White House. So much for the Straight Talk Express.

Well, it's late and I don't want to stretch this post's metaphor any further or invest time in the kind of tie-it-all-together concluding paragraph they teach you about in Composition 101. Plus my readers from the road trip posts are tired of me blabbing about politics by now. Peace out.