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Still Plugging Away — Why Now?
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Still Plugging Away

I won’t be commenting on the election to any extent until what I can already see happening is obvious. There is no delusion like self-delusion, and the fairy tale is already being written.

Still fighting the good fight with three software packages which, when all is finally written provide exactly what I want, but which agree on almost nothing. It is a project that calls for someone with a multiple personality disorder so they can switch among three different people to bring this all together.

It would have been nice if there were some consistency in variables, defaults, typing, delimiters, error messages, or anything else, but this is why programmers, in theory, make the big bucks. I’m beginning to think that working in a cannery would have been more remunerative, when you factor in all of the expenses and the time spent producing a product. For some reason many clients think that programming is the same as typing, and programmers should be paid for by the page of source code, not for the knowledge to produce that page.

Это жизнь в большом городе.

17 comments

1 Kryten42 { 11.12.08 at 8:43 pm }

Это путь в мире

I just had a rare *jaw drop* experience, and one of those *out of the mouth’s of babes*! 😉

Ok, so what does a 7 year old boy think about Sarah Palin? From Stas’ blog, Planet Stas:

Here is why I’m asking grown-ups to vote for Barack Obama. I am 7 years old so I can’t vote……

My mom told me that I shouldn’t base my election analysis on “feelings” (I like him/her) or “beliefs” (I share his/her beliefs) but on logical arguments. She asked me to create my own rational explanations for my support of Obama. Here is one of my arguments:

McCain and Palin are not be qualified to be President / Vice President of the U.S. The President’s job is to do good for the country and the world. To do good for the country, the President must make smart decisions on important situations.

Governor Palin believes the world is 6000 years old. This is absurd. This is not a rational belief. This is a mistake. Scientists, experiments and evidence have shown this to be completely false. Therefore, she is not rational. If she is not rational, she should not be allowed to be President or Vice President.

Please vote for Barack Obama.

7-Year-Old Political Blogger Gets Obama Thank You Letter

When Stas is running for President (always assuming there is a World left by then) and I’m still around (very doubtful by then), I’ll be voting for him! 😉 😀

Restores my faith in sanity and intelligence. I’ve seen so little of both in recent years.

2 Bryan { 11.12.08 at 10:13 pm }

Stas is operating with incomplete information. I don’t remember anyone asking Obama if he were a creationist. He has talked about his faith on multiple occasions and there are many AA churches who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, just like the evangelicals.

Obama has not been forthcoming in a lot of areas, because he has never been asked about a lot of things that Palin was asked about. I don’t want to get into these issues because there are too many assumptions and not enough facts.

The campaign should have been about McCain and McCain’s fitness, but the media wants to talk about Palin. McCain wasn’t qualified to be President, and that should have been the issue, but everyone was afraid to deal with that. Wes Clark wanted to talk about it, and Obama exiled him.

I’m waiting to see what an Obama administration looks like and I’m ready to be pleasantly surprised if it is closer to center than I think it is going to be. I think the world may be unpleasantly surprised by what they get. This is not going to be a “Labour” government in January, and may well be what you think of as a “Liberal” government.

3 Kryten42 { 11.12.08 at 10:46 pm }

So? He’s 7! He just shown more intelligence and rational thought than most of the USA (and possibly the World). 🙂 He’s certainly more intelligent than Bushmoron and most of the GOP. 🙂

I’d give him a gold star at least! 🙂

BTW, There is a very interesting 7-part series reporting on the insides of both Obama & McCain’s campaigns for the past year. Newsweek had reporters embedded in both Camps with the proviso that they revealed nothing until the election was over. Part 1 is below, other parts are on a menu on the right of the page.

Ch. 1: Barack Obama: How He Did It

Highlights: Hackers and Spending Sprees

I saw this in ‘Think Progress’ today…

Palin also told Greta that she only asked for Todd’s opinion on whether to accept the VP slot at McCain’s suggestion. After McCain formally offered the job to her at his Sedona ranch, he had to remind Palin to consult her husband before agreeing:

PALIN: Just looking right in my eyes and saying, Are you ready for this? Would you like to do this? And I said, I would be honored to run with you. Absolutely. […]

VAN SUSTEREN: Todd wasn’t with you. Did you call Todd then?

PALIN: Well, before I said yes. That was Senator McCain’s recommendation. He says, Why don’t you call your husband and find out, you know, if he’s good with this also. I called Todd, and Todd, too, was no hesitation. He was like, Absolutely. This will be good. Yes, do this. And just good confirmation that, of course, we were to say yes.

I LOVE reading about Palin! Really… makes my day! LOL Not hard to guess who has the balls, and guns, and boots, and pants, and is the hunter/gatherer in that family! 😀

I saw this comment the other day… C&L maybe… Anyway, sums up Palin for me! 🙂

Sorry, but I don’t believe there has been any “serious” reporting on Sarah Palin – just as there has never been any serious culinary critique of a pop tart.

I mean, you can try, but the tart isn’t really deserving of such review, and the fans of the pop tart wouldn’t really appreciate the critique anyway.

The rest of us have had all the information we needed from the briefest of glances: the tart is sweet on the surface, contains nothing natural on the inside, and is flaky throughout.

Did we really need to know anything else?

4 hipparchia { 11.12.08 at 11:40 pm }

obama on evolution

kinda weasle-y, but could be worse.

5 Bryan { 11.12.08 at 11:54 pm }

If Democrats keep believing that crap they are going to get their asses kicked in 2012 because they economy may not have recovered a whole lot and Sarah Palin, campaigning as Sarah Palin, if she decides to run, is one hell of a populist politician.

I know people don’t believe that, but people believe a lot of odd things. I deal with facts, not the misogyny driven BS of bloggers. The Deomcratic Party of Alaska and the Republican Party of Alaska both lost to Sarah Palin. There is a reason, but no one is talking about why. When the only people you talk to are those that agree with your preconceptions, you are not going to find out what is going on. She is working the media now because they are her biggest problem, and she already figured that out.

I expect her next move will be to run for the Senate in 2010, and start her campaign from Washington. The “kids” have never seen anyone like Palin before, but I have, in more than one country, and she has the talent and the intelligence to make this happen. The media keeps talking about her “luck”, well, you make your own luck and she has been damn good at it.

I’m not going to deal with her until I see what the Dem do. If they do what I expect them to do, Palin could well win in 2012 because the Republicans don’t have anyone else who can get nominated and the voters will be pissed off with the Dems. I hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

6 Kryten42 { 11.13.08 at 1:13 am }

Hmmmm. I do hear what you say Bryan, and I understand, I just seriously do not think Palin will have much of a chance. She really only appeals to the most rabid base of people. And I really do not think she has the intelligence and the strength to swallow her pride long enough (an entire year at least on campaign) to convince many others her way. I’ve seen people like her before also. Supremely confident in their arrogance that they know better than everyone else. There are more than a few clues that point to that attitude, and it’s obvious to many. Thanks to Bush, I think it will be some time before she will have much of a chance. If not for the past 8 years, she would have had a definite chance to be Prez of the USA now. She just simply cannot campaign for a year without seriously pissing off people. 🙂

I think Americans owe it to Obama to give him a chance before writing him off. I know American’s (generally) have the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a flea, but hopefully the past 8 years have been so embedded in their psyche that they will at least get the ‘Homer Simpson’ type flashbacks if nothing else to prod them when required! 🙂

I don’t envy Obama a bit, and I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes for a $billion! He is going to have a hell of a 4 years, and I doubt he’s going to enjoy much of it. Perhaps if the American people actually start to pay attention and find out exactly who are running for congress and exactly who they are etc. over the next 4 years as elections come due and vote properly, Obama may just have a chance to do some good. The Dems in congress and the Senate are, for the most part, not much different from the Repugs. Because they know nobody will hold them accountable. If they are put on notice, maybe things will improve. It’s all very well talking about the lack of Government oversight, but the blame lays at the feet of the Citizens. There has been a definite lack of public oversight also.

That 7 year old kid knows more about what’s going on than most Americans. I would say that American’s should be ashamed, but that would be fantasizing.

7 Bryan { 11.13.08 at 11:11 am }

Palin is in the IQ “sweet spot” around 130 where most of the successful leaders are found. If she runs the same kind of campaign that she ran in Alaska, up close and personal, without all of the negative trash that the McCain staff were depending on, she can be extremely effective. She’s a populist and goes with the flow. She has the hardcore Republican base already behind her, so she doesn’t need to use all of the code words next time around.

This election was not the “miracle” that everyone was talking about. The Republicans didn’t turn out this year. If they turn out in 2012, nothing is certain. The Democrats have to do something with the power or they lose. Based on all the early chatter, I think they will be too timid to get anything done.

If Palin can plug into the Ron Paul geeks, she will have an Internet presence, that McCain lacked. McCain also lacked any 527 support that Bush had in 2004.

The Dems used Howard Dean’s infrastructure and MoveOn, but that has to be maintained, and I’m not sure it can be when it becomes part of the winning movement.

Women are the majority of voters in the US. The misogyny of Obama supporters is not going to help Democrats to maintain their majorities. Gays lost ground this election as Obama won, and they may be getting tired of being used. The Dems are fracturing, just like the Republicans. If there isn’t some shoring up done, they could join the Republicans in the wilderness as new alliances form.

8 Frederick { 11.13.08 at 4:07 pm }

Ron Paul people don’t like Palin. Not one bit. She’s making a fool of herself in the media, all by herself, just as she’s always done. There is no amount of rehabilitation that will help her. Just my opinion.

9 Bryan { 11.13.08 at 5:26 pm }

She got her name in media rolodexes and doesn’t have to do anything for two years. That is the sole reason for all of these interviews – making media contacts.

If she runs for the Senate in two years, then she will be on track to make another run at the White House. If she runs for governor, then she isn’t interested.

The major obstacle in the next two years is how Alaska makes out in the recession. That depends on what happens to the price of oil which is a definite unknown. In the current credit crisis I can’t see a funding source for the natural gas pipeline, which would be a major boost to the state. State bonds suck at the moment, and it will take a while for the bond market to improve.

10 hipparchia { 11.14.08 at 12:17 am }

ron paul people don’t like women. not that i can tell anyway.

11 Bryan { 11.14.08 at 11:30 am }

It is hard to find many people who do, based on the reaction to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

12 Kryten42 { 11.15.08 at 6:47 am }

At the risk of being seen to be beating this to death… 😉

Ordinarily, it’s pretty simple for reporters to judge a politician’s popularity. You look at the percentage of people who tell pollsters they have a “favorable” impression; you look at whether that number is rising or falling over time; and you look at whether the “favorable” number exceeds the “unfavorable” number.

But, seduced by big crowds, some pundits ignored the national surveys and waxed rhapsodic about Palin’s “middle-class magnetism.” They forgot that rallies are not representative of the general public. Barry Goldwater, George McGovern and Walter Mondale attracted passionately cheering throngs — and none of them cracked 42 percent of the vote.

According to CBS News polling, Palin never earned a majority favorable rating. From the Republican convention to Election Day — as more people got to know her — Palin’s favorable number dropped seven points, her unfavorable rating almost doubled, and her positive number finished no higher than her negative number. (By contrast, Barack Obama’s favorable rating surpassed his unfavorable rating by 15 points; Joe Biden’s positive-to-negative gap exceeded 20 points.)

By the end of the campaign, about one in seven Obama supporters had once backed John McCain. The biggest reason these mostly middle-class voters switched sides? The presence of Mrs. Middle-Class Magnetism on the Republican ticket.

Another way to judge Palin is by McCain’s own standards. He picked her to do two things: rally the Republican base, and attract key swing voters, including women, independents, suburbanites, and younger parents. By every conceivable measure, Palin failed.

Core Republican turnout declined 1.3 percent compared to four years ago, the Republican share of the electorate dropped five points from 2004 — and the depression of conservative voters was amplified in key states such as Ohio, where Obama won despite earning almost the same number of votes as John F. Kerry. The difference is that 300,000 people who showed up for Bush/Cheney decided to stay home for McCain/Palin.

The list goes on. Palin didn’t help among women — they went for Obama by 13 points. She didn’t help among independents — they went for Obama by 8 points. She didn’t help among suburbanites — they went for Obama by 2 points. She didn’t help among people with children under 18 — they went for Obama by 8 points. Among all these groups, the 2008 Republican ticket performed worse than any successful nominees in their party’s history.

As Palin prepares to speak to her fellow GOP governors — and to restart her political career — some Palin allies have taken to dismissing her entire performance as a national candidate. “None of it matters,” one told me. “This was McCain’s campaign, and Sarah didn’t have much to do with the outcome.” But according to an NBC News poll, Palin weighed down McCain’s candidacy more than President Bush, and more than the war in Iraq. How could that big an anchor not create a little ripple?

The rule is that nobody votes for vice president — but this may have been the year nobody voted for Sarah Palin.

Palin has reached her sell-by date

Ya know… McCain may well be a *has-been*, but Palin is a *never-was*! And she never will be! 🙂

IMNSHO! 😉 LOL

13 Bryan { 11.15.08 at 12:15 pm }

That’s a good way to lose an election, believing the media.

The media “Gore-ed” Sarah Palin, and that is coming out. The US media is almost uniformly misogynous and both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have suffered from this.

Palin was a Republican “excuse”, not a “reason”. She outdrew McCain at campaign events, and now some of the lies/misinformation that were used to attack her are falling before reality.

When Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy, the media said he would never run again. When Ronald Reagan lost his first bid for the Republican nomination, the media said he was out of it.

If Palin can swing the media, which is what all of these press events is really about, and she runs for the Senate, instead of re-election to governor, she will be the front runner for the Republican 2012 nomination.

The Republican Party loyalists select the candidates, not the public at large. Palin appeals to the Republican core as John McCain never did.

The whole “troopergate” investigation by the Alaskan legislature was a smear job, and was never intended to be anything else. The purpose was an attempt by the old line Republican politicians to weaken the Palin supporters who were running for office all over the state. The Alaska legislature only meets for 90 days, and this was conducted entirely during the recess. The report was originally timed for after the election to ensure it would be going on during the entire election cycle. There would be a new Alaska legislature after the election, so the entire process would have to be started from day one for the report to have any real validity and to go to the next stage which would be the equivalent of an indictment. A hit job, plain and simple, but that was never reported or explained.

It is up to Sarah Palin whether she decides to run for President, and up to the Republican Party “faithful” whether she is the candidate. There are 4 years to go, and there will be no real indications of intent for the first two years. I have enough to worry about with the obsessive secrecy of the current Democrat, which shadows the obsession of the current Republican.

The fact that the Democratic choice is a graduate of an exclusive prep school, who went to an Ivy League university, and on to a Harvard graduate school, just like the current President, does not fill me with joy. I look for patterns, and these patterns don’t inspire confidence in me.

14 Steve Bates { 11.16.08 at 11:12 pm }

Education and degrees aside, Palin ran on her folksy charm and hostile political cunning. In that respect, she resembles George W. Bush far more than Barack Obama. Not many people watching a candidate’s campaign speech come away remarking on his or her academic credentials, gosh-darn it, you betcha.

15 Bryan { 11.16.08 at 11:34 pm }

She’s a natural politician. There aren’t too many people in Arkansas who understood just how smart Bill Clinton is when they voted for him. Her major problem, from a political stand point is that she isn’t funny; she can’t tell a joke as near as I can see.

We should have a couple of years of silence while the GOP licks its wounds and decides what it’s going to do. If they really want to be a national party again they are going to have to break the lock the evangelicals have on their local organizations. You can’t win on the social issues alone anymore.

16 Kryten42 { 11.16.08 at 11:51 pm }

I’ll bet you a bag of the BEST Italian coffee that within 6 months people will really HATE the GOP for letting Palin out of her box and wishing she’d be run over by a snow plow or stampeding moose! LOL

She CANNOT keep her stupid extreme GOP talking points out of any conversation for 5 minutes!

Case in point:
Late Edition: Sarah Palin Is So Excited To Work With That Terrorist Lover!
I don’t give a rats WHAT her supposed IQ is! She’s a moron. 🙂

IMNSHO! LOL

17 Bryan { 11.17.08 at 12:34 pm }

And John Howard was the prime minister of Australia for how long?

These are moment conservatives and people elect them. They screw everything up, but after all too brief intervals, people will vote for them again.

Never underestimate the power of ignorance when it comes to elections. If you think Sarah Palin is bad, it is only because you don’t know much about the career of Strom Thurman.