] If I told you tonight, Let's leave the Fleet Center, we're
] in danger, and when you get outside, you ask me, Reverend
] Al, What is the danger? and I say, It don't matter. We
] just needed some fresh air, I have misled you and we were
] misled.

Sharpton varied greatly from his prepared speech and many of the networks apparently cut him off...

ABCNEWS.com : Text of Al Sharpton's Convention Speech

So now I'm disillusioned.

I haven't read Kerry's speech, but this comment resonated while my opinion of the essays on his website. Its pandering without a point. Like he is throwing a thousand lures into the water hoping that one resonates with you on an emotional level. The intellectual is left feeling empty. The only reason I'm voting for this guy is that I don't like some of Bush's policies. But what about the swing voter. The one whose not pissed off at Bush. I mean, is THIS GUY really going to be president of the United States? Does it REALLY make sense? Or is it going to come apart at the seams.

You'll be left at the voting booth in a very dejected state. You can vote for the conservative christian who damaged our relationship with Europe and invaded a country based on an incorrect set of assumptions, or you can vote for Mr. Wishy Washy, or you can vote for the third party candidate.

What you cannot vote for is what you want. A strong leader who can clearly articulate a plan for the war on Terror and the economy who also happens to have real respect for people who are different then he is.

All Things to All People

Republican Ketchup. Islamist Soda. Political product marketing is only a hair removed from the current "lifestyle" product differentiation that most industries engage in. Its only a matter of time before stuff like this appears in the supermarket.

] You don't support Democrats.
]
] Why should your ketchup?

Ketchup is nothing more than flavored tomato paste. Something that looks and tastes a lot like Heinz Ketchup can be made in your kitchen sink without so much as bending a copyright rule. It is effectively all freely-redistributable objects: tomatoes, vinegar, salt, and spices. So why don't we, as consumers, make ketchup in our kitchen sink, and how does Heinz have 80% of the ketchup market?

We don't make ketchup because it is cheaper and much more convenient to buy ketchup from Heinz, Hunts, or Del Monte than it is to make it. But convenience is only part of the story. Convenience alone would suggest that Heinz, Hunts, and Del Monte share the market equally because they offer roughly equivalent convenience. In fact, Heinz owns 80% of the market.

Heinz owns 80% of the market not because Heinz tastes better. If you go to the Third World and find 100 people who have never tasted ketchup before, you find out two things: one is that people don't actually like tomato ketchup, the other is that they dislike all ketchups equally.

Heinz has 80% of the ketchup market because they have been able to define the taste of ketchup in the mind of ketchup consumers. Now the Heinz Ketchup brand is so effective that as consumers we think that ketchup that will not come out of the bottle is somehow better than ketchup that pours easily!
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/young.html)

W Ketchup

] "It's a pretty big stretch for her to claim any ownership
] rights, since on the Internet those rights are only
] extended for commercial use," Internet law specialist
] John Dozier of the Virginia firm Dozier Internet Law.

If you take a company's name and register is as a personal domain name they can sue the piss out of you for it, but if a company takes your personal domain name and names a book or movie after it you have no recourse.

CNN.com - Owner of katie.com says she was victim, too -- of privacy invasion - Jul 27, 2004

] A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning. This
] differs from a factual error, which is simply being wrong
] about the facts. To be more specific, a fallacy is an
] "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion
] do not provide the needed degree of support.

A collection of clue sticks for your next political "discussion." Read number 41 (Straw Man) for a good example.

Fallacies

] I call it the Kerry trade, which is not to be confused
] with the "carry trade," a major position among hedge
] funds involving money borrowed at low U.S. interest rates
] and invested in products that pay higher rates.
]
] The Kerry trade has been rampant on Wall Street in the
] last several weeks as large investors sell their holdings
] to hedge against the possibility that the Massachusetts
] junior senator could actually, might possibly win in
] November.
]
] The theme behind it is that if a tax-and-spend Democrat
] wins the White House, the stock market will immediately
] tank, so better to sell now and be in cash as long as the
] polls indicate that it could be a close vote.
]
] But the theme is wrong for several reasons.

Unwinding the Kerry trade - Commentary: Sell Iraq, buy the economy

] As for the theories that DREs could be programmed to change
] an election outcome, Mr. Andrew dismissed them by saying,
] "the liberal Internet activists are bonkers." John Lott,
] an American Enterprise Institute economist who has
] studied election systems, adds that some of the obsession
] about DREs, "sounds a lot like an effort to anger some
] people into voting while providing the basis for lots of
] election litigation if the results are close."

OpinionJournal - WSJ thinks concerns about electronic voting are 'bonkers'

tina wrote:
] Derrr, anarchist?

No. Anarchist implies absense of government. For some it also implies left-socialist economics. I'm not arguing for either of those things either. These are both policital philosophies. I'm arguing against the idea of having a uniform phiosophy that you apply to particular political questions. You take each issue in kind and ask what works. You're not striving for any particular utopian system of organization. You're not associated with any particular thought group.

Consider how people approach questions of how the Universe came to be.

Religious people assume that their faith's story of creation is true. New information is either integrated into this beleif system or it is attacked as heretical. Never is the ultimate conclusion questioned.

Scientific people (at least, idealistically) do not assume to know what the answer to this question is. As new information becomes available they integrate it into their understanding. They can describe the story that their current information points to, but that story is always changing.

Its a question of whether the conclusions guide the interpretation of results or whether the interpretation of results guides the conclusions.

In politics everyone has religion. A proposal to, say shorten the length of time that people can receive welfare benefits is supported by the right, because they beleive in a smaller government, and opposed by the left, because they beleive that the poor ought to be supported by a safety net.

These reflexive conclusions really have nothing to do with whether or not, or at what level, welfare actually accomplishes the goal of fighting poverty. I want a more scientific approach. One that looks at actions and results rather then philosophies.

] I'd stick with neo-liberal. You believe that free-trade
] capitalism will lead to greater human rights and more advanced
] technology, correct? That was what I had gathered from our
] brief talks.

Thats because those are the questions that you asked me. That hardly sums up my political thinking. In fact, "free-trade capitalism" is not something that I spend a particularly large amount of time thinking about.

tina wrote:

] But not as hot as you, of course.

I'm too sexy for your party...

] Now, if you could just get
] that neo-liberal streak under control... ;)

Am I a neo-liberal? What does that mean? I've been considering declaring myself a political agnostic. I'm opposed to organized politics, for the same reason that I'm opposed to organized religion. Both produce people who are more interested in being right then understanding whats real, which inevitably leads to strife.

As long as you beleive that you are a particular thing... I AM a Republican... I AM a Catholic... Then you cannot think critically about that thing, because if its wrong, then you are wrong, and this undermines your self esteem.

By calling myself a political agnostic I get to oppose the entire spectrum of political thought without having difficulty explaining where I stand. I give my stance a name. A meme.

Unfortunately political agnostic seems to already be taken:

"A political Agnostic is someone that claims to not have enough knowledge about politics to make a decision about what party to vote for, what candidate to choose, or how to vote on an amendment."

While its fair that a religious agnostic might claim to not have enough knowledge about reality to select a view of how it works, this explanation is somewhat misleading. There is a difference between not knowing enough because you don't care to learn, and not knowing enough because you don't beleive its possible to know enough. In either case, neither definition describes what I'm talking about. Its not that I don't know enough to vote. I support and oppose laws and candidates all the time. Its that I don't agree with the idea of associating with a group versus making my own personal choices on an issue by issue basis.

Maybe I need a new word? Anocrat? Damnit. Already taken:

"The anocratic state is an intermediate state where elites maintain themselves in power despite the existence of democratic procedures."

Kind of what we have, isn't it?

Is it possible that the english language does not have a word for someone who is opposed to organized politics? Anyone got any suggestions?

Help, I need to invent a new word.

Rattle wrote:
] Decius wrote:
] ] UPDATE: There are some very interesting posts flying
] ] around about this guy being an ebay scam artist:

Sorry I forgot to turn off my bold there. You might want to fix that in your post...

] The Patriot Act being used is very disturbing. We were told
] that would not be used in domestic criminal matters. That at
] the very least implies that they could have gotten his ISP
] finical records another way, and they were just doing their
] records harvesting in the easiest way available (which I don't
] like). I would like more details on this.

Well, they did nothing wrong. There are certain provisions in the Patriot act that have to do with terrorism. Others don't. The provision in question doesn't. Whats important is that politically the Patriot act was sold as an anti-terrorism tool, and yet we see it here being used in a context that has nothing at all to do with it's purported justification. Politically there is room to be angry about this. Technically its not illegal, but its the sort of thing you ask Senators about. Why did they allow this law to be used in this context?

RE: Stargate Information Archive - Federal Charges Filed Against SG-1 Archive