Category: current events

Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S.

Unbelievable. Their explanation is hackers? I call B.S.. Apparently no other U.S. Government sites are blocked, just the one for Americans living overseas to register to vote, and close to the deadline for registration as well. What are you afraid of, W?

I can’t believe that our government would sink so low. How do you justify cutting off millions of Americans living abroad, including several thousand members of our armed forces, many of whom are serving in war zones created by this President, from information they need in order to cast their votes?

This goes way over the line. Whoever approved this needs to be fired today, and charged under any applicable law. This is insane. How dare they. Have they no shame?

No matter who you support, trying to take away the right to vote from any American citizen who has that right should be seen as gross misconduct and treason. We’re not talking about a floor vote on the Senate. We’re not talking about buying influence. We’re talking about trying to take away a basic right guaranteed by the Constitution. You try to take that away from any citizen who has it, you’re not fit to work for my Government.

OK, if McCain, Luger and Graham are on the President’s side, and they’re being this rough on him, how bad is it really?

It’s time for something different. This Administration will obviously never admit a mistake, much less try to correct the ones staring them in the face, even when pointed out by the most experience generals, and politicians from their own party. Without new leadership, we have no hope of getting Iraq right, or escaping it before it explodes.

I go to meetings at Church most Wednesday nights. It’s one of the many joys of being the Executive Secretary. I take notes in meetings… lots and lots of notes. I didn’t have time to change after work, so went to my meetings in my Mozilla t-shirt, which got lots of funny looks and people asking me what a “Moe-zilla” was. I gave them funny looks, and wondered to myself, “What rock do you live under that you haven’t heard of Mozilla?”

It came to me very quickly that it’s me who lives under the rock. I’m a geek. I use a Wiki. I write a blog (you’re reading it now), and have since before 90% of the blogs in existance came to be (aaaall the way back in 2000). I’ve been online for ten years, and am online, on average, for ten hours a day. I’ve installed Linux more times than I wish to count, and know why I’m supposed to hate Microsoft. I don’t live in the regular world, where computers are used for homework, and a terminal is at the airport.

I’ve been doing this so long that I don’t remember not doing it. Some days, it doesn’t feel like I speak English anymore. When confronted with the fact that 99% of the people I know outside of work don’t know anything about my world, I get confused (I was asked Sunday morning what a blog was… I almost cried).

I accept it, and am moving on, learning to cope. I’m not normal. As someone said last night, “Kevin, you’re proof that the church has some diversity in it.” I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say, until I thought about it. Yeah, I’m diverse alright. I’m a progressive Mormon geek who’s never going to come down on the side of the Religious Right or be much of a social conservative. I support the idea of gay marriage. I don’t think it’s the government’s place to define morality, no matter how the majority of the country feels about it. The majority of the country was in favor of segregation and Jim Crow laws, and look how well that worked out. I don’t like Utah. I don’t like LDS Bookstores. I don’t like those sappy stories that people tell in church because they think they’re spiritual (they’re really just emotionally manipulative). But, with all of those things that make me a “weird” Mormon, I also believe the Church is true, and I support my local leaders. I do a lot of what I’m supposed to (really, who does everything they’re supposed to?), and I’m trying to be the best person I can be… how well I’m doing at that I can’t say.

So, instead of being freaked out by the fact that I’m obviously a “minority” member of the LDS Church, I’m going to embrace it. Vive Les Weirdos, man… vive les weirdos.

From Juan Cole, a great analysis of what’s happened since 9/11, and our response to Al Qaeda.

I, of course, have nothing to say.

This one’s for Reid.

Can’t decide who to vote for? Can’t pick between Bush or Kerry? Need more choices? You need to go check out the real list of who’s running for president. Personally, I’m drawn to the Anti-Hipocrasy Party’s candidate. That’s a party name I can get behind. There’s always Mike’s Party, or the Turtles.

As I’ve said before, I know who I’m voting for. But, if you don’t, and the two choices you’ve been given don’t work for you, then you gotta make your own.

“The politics of tax and spend are the politics of the past.” — George W. Bush

Ummm, Mr. President, isn’t it better to pay for what you get instead of running up huge debts? Like, oh, six trillion dollars with no end in sight? Yeah, i thought so.

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good… What worries you masters you. — John Locke

I found that quote in an article in the Post Magazine called Fear Itself, by Gene Weingarten. It’s an excellent review of terror, and our reaction to it, as human beings, Americans and how it compares to a country completely besieged by terror.

Life is fleeting, and death is always too close. As a country, we’ve collectively been faced with our own mortality in a shocking way. It’s been almost three years now, and that realization of our own possible end is always there, whether it’s a vague terror warning, or an airline flying just a little too low near work.

I was thinking about John Mohammed this morning, and the terror he created around here. I remember standing at the gas station around the corner in the middle of the spree, and looking into the face of an older woman and seeing terror. She was just getting gas, something we’ve all done a thousand times or more. But, the simple act of filling up our tanks had been turned into a gauntlet.

Well, I give up. I’m not going to live my life concerned about the evil some nebulous, undefined and vague threat may carry out. In most cases, those who are victims of terror couldn’t have done anything to prepare differently that would have saved them. They were just doing every day things, like getting gas, going to work, getting food or meeting friends,when their lives were taken from them.

We should fight terror. But, “terror” is an emotion. The only way you can fight it is by not being afraid anymore. The only way our government can fight it is by not frightening us anymore with vague warnings we can’t do anything about. The only way our government can really fight terror is to fight the sources of terror, not the emotion. To fight terror, we have to provide hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless,and freedom to the enslaved. And by freedom, I don’t mean dropping bombs on them.

I was going to write about politics and the tactics of the Bush campaign (and their pals, who aren’t coordinating even though they share at least two members… because that would be illegal, and no member of the Bush Administration has ever done anything illegal… oh wait, they have), but I just can’t. I’m too upset about it to write coherently. Everyone else is doing a fine job of debunking the out and out lies of the Swift Boat Vets for Complete BS. But, people are still paying attention to what happened 35 years ago instead of focusing on the mess GW has gotten us into in our own country. Over the past three years, the number of uninsured Americans, and Americans living below the poverty line has increased every year. The tax burden has shifted from the upper class to the middle class (according to the non-partisan CBO, no less). The new jobs created this year average \$9,000 dollars less a year than the jobs they replaced. Over 900 soldiers have died in Iraq. 60,000 people have been injured in the conflict. There’s now news that children as young as ten were abused in Abu Ghraib, and two new reports out this week move the blame up the chain from a “few bad apples” on the scene to the bad apples in charge in the Pentagon. So… the news is really great for our country, and our President still thinks we’ve “turned the corner”. Yeah, we’ve turned a real nice corner, right into a dark, dead-end alley.

OK, maybe I am going to talk about it. Why am I voting for John Kerry? I’m tired of having a President and Administration I have to fear. What Bush touts as his greatest strength: his leadership, has gotten us into the most trouble. His “decisiveness” has led us into a war we didn’t need to fight, into a deficit we’ll spend decades repairing and a “war on terror” that’s not addressing either the causes or sources of terror.

John Kerry is intelligent, competant and steady. He doesn’t have the personal failings of Bill Clinton, or the incompetancies of George W. Bush. He has more foreign policy experience than almost anyone who’s ever held the office, and will be an effective Commander in Chief. He may not be spectacular, exciting or interesting, but he’s competant and reasonable, which is more than we have today.

How sad is it that we’re talking about what happened, or didn’t, in Vietnam? Why do we care? I wasn’t alive then, so I surely have no horse in the race of who deserves the medals they have. I do know that anyone who volunteers to serve his country in hostile territory earns more of my respect than someone who didn’t. Someone who was awarded three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star has more of my respect than someone who didn’t. Whether John Kerry was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968 or was just “really close” means nothing to me. I don’t care. Our President has failed us miserably when we needed an effective leader the most. His bravado is only matched by his incompetance. Look at where we are… occupying a people who will not rest until we’re gone or dead, fanning the flames of the very terrorism we’ve vowed to stamp out, dealing with an economy that’s losing good jobs and replacing them with inferior ones, building a deficit that towers over any in our country’s history, and a military that is guilty of war crimes and torture. We shouldn’t be here. Look at what George W. Bush has done to us. He doesn’t deserve to be our President anymore.

Reading this post about the Plame Affair from Josh Marshall made me wonder about something. Does the Bush camp run the risk of this exploding right before the election if they don’t come clean now? I think at this point everyone accepts that someone high up in the Administration leaked Plame’s name, and the only thing keeping that person from being publicly fingered is the fact that the Administration won’t budge, and the journalists involved are protecting their sources. This has been going on way too long, and the longer it goes on, the closer to the election we get. Now, I don’t have a problem with this blowing up in the Administration’s face as Mr. X gets marched out of the West Wing in handcuffs, but you’d think the Bushies would, wouldn’t you? It should be clear to them that this isn’t going away, and it’s going to come out eventually. Why not take their lumps now when they can reasonably hope that people will forget about it before 11/2?

Can’t decide who to vote for? Because Jim asked so nice in the comments to my post about voting, here’s a tip. Check out Presidential Match. It was a lot of fun during the primaries because there were more people to match against, but it’s still useful. It’s kind of Presidential politics mixed with a dating service.

And I’m sorry I said you were in a coma… that was rude.

And… nonDependant is still there, and it still works. If you start posting there and asking questions, it’ll live again. It’s all up to you