Flailing about Mightily

Hundreds of tons of high explosives are stolen in Iraq after Hussein’s dictatorship collapses. Whose responsibility is it that this happened? According to Scott McClellan, spokesman for the White House, it is a problem that belongs to the interim Iraqi government, which came into power more than a year after this event occurred. Huh? Does this confuse you too?

As Josh Marshall puts it, “The president wants to determine what went wrong. This reminds me of when I wanted to know why my Palm Pilot stopped working after I dropped it in the bath tub.”

Meanwhile, Bush is trying to suppress voter turnout by raising fears of terrorism on or before election day. Good call, man. Way to uphold the ideals of democracy, and the American spirit, and all that.

GMA: “I am worried about it and we should be worried about it. On the other hand, I don’t want people to say, that he knows something I don’t know and therefore, something is imminent.”

I feel like he’s basically saying ’stay home and let me win so i can continue defending America against terrorism for another four years.’ Right…

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October 25, 2004

Useful Advice

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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October 24, 2004

A Recursive History Lesson

This is from James Wolcott by way of the always incredible William Gibson (yes, that one): “The savage Iraq insurgency, a tragedy for the Iraqi people and the Americans and other foreigners who have been victims there, has unwound the future in ways we still can’t understand.”

Incidentally, Josh Marshall goes into depth today on how an American planning SNAFU (i.e. something the White House and Pentagon are responsible for) led to militants getting access to 350 tons (TONS, jesus…) of high-powered explosives. Freaky stuff.

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October 24, 2004

Armchair Punditry

I feel like I’ve been engaging in armchair punditry for too long now. I’m going to play all my cards, and make my prediction for this election.

We’ll see how realistic my guesses are in another nine days. I’m not going to touch this entry, but I’ll post a comparison on November 3rd.

Kerry States:
Hawaii
Washington
Oregon
California
New Mexico
Illinois
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Jersey
Delaware
Maryland
Washington DC
Maine
Vermont

Two of the Three will go to Kerry:
Minnesota
Iowa
Wisconsin

This puts us at roughly 250 EVs out of the necessary 270 EVs.

Better than even odds that it goes to Kerry:
Florida
Ohio

If Kerry loses both Florida and Ohio, he’s done. Given where the race stands right now, I consider it fundamentally impossible for him to win without one of these two states.

If Kerry loses MN, IA, and WI, then he must win both Florida and Ohio. I don’t consider this a likely scenario.

The accepted wisdom is that anyone who is undecided at this stage in the game will break for the challenger more often than not. This is what we’re banking on right now. The President’s favorability/unfavorability polls don’t look good for him right now: 47% of people polled have a favorable opinion of Bush. It is extremely hard for an incumbent to win with numbers like this. Kerry’s down a little bit nationwide, but his numbers in battleground states have started pulling away from Bush’s.

Bottom Line:
I am going to hesitantly call this election for Kerry. There are a number of ways this could still go to Bush, but it’s getting less likely by the day.

One of the biggest potential stumbling blocks was a partisan hack ‘news program’ broadcast on Sinclair TV stations yesterday and over this weekend, but early responses suggest that the far-right feels like it was far too lenient towards Kerry. I must point out that it was originally far worse, and the changes were the result of a nationwide boycott of businesses which advertised on Sinclair TV stations.

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October 23, 2004

Fooled Around and Ready to Settle Down…

WesnerM writes today on a topic that concerns me occasionally: “By denying the customer a second chance to evaluate the software when they are likely ready to buy, I bet FeedDemon has lost a number of customers.”

How many customers for iRooster have I lost because they downloaded it months ago, and now decide that they may really want to buy the newest version, but can’t try it out first?

I think I have ameliorated some of these problems. iRooster 2.0 did a preferences update that would remove the key I used to prevent a re-try, so people who had decided that iRooster 1.1 wasn’t right for them can still give 2.0 the go-round for 14 days.

Additionally, I still do offer a 30-day money back guarantee on iRooster, no questions asked. There’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t take advantage of this.

Still, food for thought…

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October 23, 2004

iRooster 2.0.1

I have almost finished iRooster 2.0.1. As the name implies, it’s just a couple bug fixes. However, I have tossed in one extra thing. Now, if and when iRooster crashes, you will be able to send crash report information to me instead of Apple. I don’t collect anything that is potentially comprimising. In fact, I’ll post a sample error log just so you can see what it looks like. This information is invaluable to me since it allows me to actually figure out when and where iRooster crashes in real-world circumstances. This sort of work great improves the overall quality of my product over time.

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October 23, 2004

GO BOSTON!!!!!

I am not a huge baseball fan by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless, I was absolutely thrilled by watching the Red Sox crush the Yankees last night. I’m hoping for another Massachusetts win in a little under two weeks, too.

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October 21, 2004

Badnarik! Badnarik! Badnarik!

First off, what the heck is the deal with the Republican flipout over Kerry’s reference to Mary Cheney in the third debate? Sure, I can understand being a little peeved over such a personal reference, but to listen to Lynne and Dick telling it, Kerry may as well have outed Mary for the first time to the entire world in that debate (fact check: he didn’t; it’s common knowledge she’s a lesbian).

Second, the only thing that scares me more than a Bush victory is the possibility of an electoral vote tie. This is pretty unlikely, but it’s still a pretty horrifying scenario.

Third, Ralph Nader is a jerk.

Fourth, I would seriously considering donating money to Michael Badnarik’s campaign, except that this would make me just as bad as the Republicans donating money to Nader’s campaign (hey Ralph: bite me!).

Badnarik certainly doesn’t have the name recognition or appeal of Perot back in 1992, seeing as how he seems to be polling at the 1-2% mark, but considering how divided the electorate is, I don’t know if it really matters. I hope that some Nader voters get cold feet on the morning of November 2, but if a Bush voter pulled away to Badnarik for every potential Kerry voter lost to Nader, Kerry should still ultimately win.

Six, remember that Gore lost the Presidency by 538 votes in Florida back in 2000. Nader pulled in thousands. Every vote counts in every state. The number of remaining swing states right now is truly astonishing compared to the conventional wisdom even a month ago (which, I will admit, I shared).

Seven, as petty as it may sound, I refuse to give money to anyone I believe may spend that money on causes that conflict directly with my own. The authors of two of the recent feed readers for Mac OS X have made it very clear on their weblogs where their political leanings are, and I can assure you that if and when I do buy a feed reader for OS X (I just use Newsgator right now, and I have no idea what Greg Reinacker’s political beliefs are) it will be NetNewsWire.

Eight, I don’t know if I can watch electoral returns on the second. I may just knock myself out with some over-the-counter sleeping pills and find out on the 3rd. It’ll be a little less nervewracking.

Sigh…

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October 17, 2004

Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade

I was as confused as everyone else during the last debate about what the hell Dubya meant when he started talking about Dred Scott. “Huh?” I asked myself, “I’m glad to hear he’s opposed to slavery…”

Bush wasn’t actually wandering off into some bizarre tangent. An article on Slate from Timothy Noah points out that it was actually a veiled threat towards Roe v. Wade. As Timothy Noah puts it, “if you happen to believe that abortion should remain legal in the United States, don’t even think about giving Bush your vote.”

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October 13, 2004

More on the Sinclair BG “Documentary”

From Josh Marshall today: “It’s not a ‘fairness’ or a free speech issue. It’s a massive and quite public case of election and campaign finance fraud.”

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October 11, 2004