Sometime back, in an article I didn't actually read, the Washington post apparently reported that Sarah Palin and Joe Biden had had their respective Wikipedia pages edited at a higher rate then usual in the days leading up to their nominations. There were insinuations of foul play on the part of both parties because of this. So I've been going over the Wikipedia edit history, so that I can find some juicy tidbits and maybe the IP address of a campaign worker's sock-puppet.

I found nada on Biden's edit history. There is a spike in his edits, as reported, but this happened in the wake of Obama's text message for the VP announcement, combined with mainstream new reports that favored Biden's chances for VP, as well as a general cleanup of Biden's failed run for Presidency, now that the primaries were over. There was a great deal of bias in the edits as well, but this swung both ways. The only edits I could find that might actually be campaign workers were pretty innocuous, and mostly removed or changed by other editors within a day.

I did however, find a good deal out about the nature of how a Wikipedia article gets made, so not a complete waste of my time. No wait, YES IT WAS. Wikipedia editors need to pull their heads out of their collective ass, and stop arguing about how to word a sentence.

I'll be going over Palin's edit history next, I'm expecting better one way bias for this, since she was pretty unknown until the announcement was made.

Eisenhower

I'm watching Eisenhower give a speech at the 1956 Republican National Convention. I don't look on the 50s with fondness, I think of McCarthy, and Jim Crow laws, and war that was both hellish and ultimately useless. A lot like now actually, only without the crippled economy.

But Eisenhower is impressive. The man speaks with the full force of his education. He is eloquent and feels no need to assume the listener is too dumb to understand him. I listen as he describes a republican party controlled not by hate and superstition, but one that is taking the first steps in establishing civil rights. He is not confused between capitalism and corporatism, but speaks of a free market that has organized labor and small business owners. And Eisenhower, a man whose name is all but synonymous with war and military, speaks to me of achieving peace by talking to our enemies, and trying to achieve understanding. Never, not once, has it ever occurred to one of the people in charge to say that we can solve our problems with the middle east by inviting them to see our country, to talk to us and help them learn about us. Or to learn about them.

I cannot help but compare him to the current president the Republicans gave us. He seems to be the opposite of Bush in every way that matters. Nor can I help the knowledge that he could never win today, especially not as a republican. 50 years later and we have a president who can barely speak English, and whose idea of peace talks is to give ultimatums.

For every step forward this country took in the last 50 years, how many did we take backwards as well?

I will laugh.

I got fooled by Obama. So help me he seemed right. Obama ran on promises of transparency, and holding accountable those that participated in the raping of our liberties since pretty much before I was born. He had all the right positions on technology and the Patent system. Despite myself, I started to have hope in the system. That things really can change.

Hope tends to addle peoples brains like that.

Since then, I've watched as he gave up his position on campaign finance reform, so that he can rake in the benefit of massive donations, watched as he decided that changing the law to allow widespread wiretapping was more important then ensuring those complicit in the last 20 years of eavesdropping are held accountable.

So I'm back here, to rant into empty cyberspace once more, and to watch and to wait. And when the messiah turns out to be another compromised politician, who will give your money to the rich, and strip away what little rights haven't been taken already; I will laugh.

An open letter to the Boston University College Republicans

I have never been enthralled with the idea of affirmative action. I believe it will only slow down progress torwards a truly integrated country; and I fail to see how it does not fall under the same ethical concerns as traditional racism. While I do sympathize with concerns over the disadvantages of people born into communities of ethnic minorities, many of these scholarships end up in the hands of the few who managed to grow up outside these communities, avoiding the economic and educational disadvantages of those who truly need and deserve a helping hand. To this end, I have always felt that scholarships meant to assist the disenfranchised be targeted based on economic and situational considerations.

However, while the scholarship you now offer demonstrates quite well the unfairness of racially based awards, I would note that ethinicities other than Caucasian are left out when it comes to affirmative action. To this end, and to the end of removing any appearance of racism, I request that you extend the racial requirement to include those of Asian and Arabic descent.

I thank you for giving my request due consideration.

A declaration

All the political parties out there suck. Seriously, the Libertarians want to close down public schools. The Socialist party is really full of commies. The Constitutionalists want to ram their religion down my (and your) throat. The Personal Choice party keeps me from right clicking on their website, so I can't open in tabs to find out the information they present to me. (Actually they lack a coherent foreign policy, turning off JavaScript gets rid of the right click block.) As for the Green party... well, I suppose /somebody/ has to cover the liberal position, but I want nothing to do with it.

At any rate, I have decided to form my own political party. I am now a Pragmatic Minimalist. As the only member of the party, this theoretically gives me an extraordinary amount of power. For one, I get to decide all the policies, and since any primaries that occur only involve my vote, I get to decide who runs on the ticket with that name as well.

This is a rather liberating feeling, and I highly recommend creating your own party (it's not like your vote was doing anything with the party you're in now).

In the meantime, I'm going to get out a soapbox and declare the broader beliefs and principles of the political party.

We are fiscally moderate, and both socially and politically permissive. This means a pragmatic (hence the name) view torwards how money should be spent, and a very open view torwards how people think feel and act, so long as their actions don't infringe upon the rights of others.

As far as the pragmatics go, while I believe that it is frequently better for government to let the people deal with their own problems, there are a number of cases where government interference creates a benefit for everybody involved.

I put forward commercial fishing restrictions as a primary example. If allowed to proceed unchecked, fishing fleets can rapidly deplete the fish in an area, while this produces a short term boon to the fishermen, there will eventually be too few fish remaining to produce a profit. However, with restrictions on fishing (the exact method varies greatly), the fish stocks will remain at a constant level, or even increase in previously unrestricted areas. Thus the restrictions benefit both fishermen (who get to keep their jobs), corporations (who get to continue exploiting the resources), and individuals (who get to keep eating fish).

The minimalist portion of the party name comes from the social and political permissiveness. This means that people have a right to vote, think, feel, and act in any manner which they desire, curbed only by the need to continue to allow others to act in the same manner, the capacity of the individual to consent, and the ability of the individual to prevent a burden to society. (It's one thing to be a drunk, it's another thing to be a drunk on welfare.)

I will have more on the goals and positions of the party as time goes on. For the moment though, I encourage you to think about what your own political views really are, as opposed to what you think they are. This site may be rather enlightening to that end.

This is a problem

So the local newspaper has decided to endorse Orrin Hatch (a man I despise) over Pete Ashdown (A man I just occasionally grumble about). I would not be quite so upset about the endorsement of Hatch, except the paper historically has despised him as much as I, and the few articles about Ashdown have been glowing.

So why did they endorse Hatch? Well, because he has seniority. This in turn gives him power with which to assist Utah. And screw over the rest of the country.

But let's stick to the 'power' part. As I understand this, they give more power to senators the longer they stay in office. Thus giving incumbents a /major/ advantage over opponents. Does this seem anti-democratic to anyone else?

It's not the only problem either. They've managed to set things up so tight, that the only election Tuesday that is actually in doubt is for sheriff. A position where I find the use of a vote dubious.

I have no vote. Not just no vote in some races, but literally no vote. There is nothing I can do, no campaign I can run, no candidate I might back, that might possibly change the outcome Tuesday.

So much for democracy,

I saw this movie once...

In it terrorists destroyed a major building, which burned to the ground. The government responded by passing laws that overrode the civil liberties of the country, and established a new agency to execute the new laws. A little while later the country ended up in a major war that lasted years.

The movie ends there, but I'm assured by various history teachers that the Allies won the war. Somehow they neglected to mention the other stuff.

In a bit lighter news, I read the military tribunal act (well, most of it), it's not near as bad as the opponents have made it out to be. In fact it explicitly requires humane treatment of the accused, that they have proper counsel, and most of the other stuff you're supposed to do for people on trial (no jury of peers though, instead you get a tribunal of officers). Really, all they want to do is allow hearsay evidence in death penalty cases.

Wait...

Almost more disturbing, is in the preamble, where they state that they recognize a need to comply with article 3 of the geneva convention, except section 1, part b and d. Now b is the part about proper trial, which given the nature of the bill, isn't suprising. But d says no taking hostages. Why would that one even be under discussion?