5 posts tagged “politics”

Jackie Speier Disappoints Me

Aug 29, 2009
4 comments

My member of the U.S. House of Representatives is Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo). I have just returned from her Families and Health Care Forum Event at Burton Park in San Carlos, which was attended by a few hundred constituents of which only a handful were unruly and disorderly protestors. I have some news to report about what her press director told me personally at the meeting when I could not address my question directly to the congresswoman.

Before I tell you what I heard, and why I'm disappointed, let me first be fair to her. I should note the following points:

She supports HR. 3200, the compromised but still acceptable House reform package with the gutless public option and the slow phase-in.
She also supports HR. 676, the Kucinich amendment that would allow California and other states a way to implement single-payer systems.
She is one of 60 members who signed the Pelosi Letter, which declares that the Waxman deal with the Blue Dog Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee that would gut the House bill of the public option and many of the other important provisions to control health care administrative costs.

These are all good positions. I'm glad she's taken them. So, why am I disappointed?

Because it's clear to me that she's insincere. She's all in favor of real health insurance reform, but not up to the point where she has to take a real stand where it counts. How will she vote when the bill comes out of conference with the Senate, and it doesn't have a public option for controlling costs? When it doesn't have subsidies for low income families? When it has individual mandates for private health insurance with criminal penalties for compliance, but nothing to make private insurance either affordable or universal? How will she vote then?

I put that question directly to her press director, Mike Larsen, and I made it clear that I want an unequivocal public declaration, now, not later when the outcome of the conference committee is a fait accompli. He responded with two clear statements of the congresswoman's position:

She absolutely will not take the Firedoglake pledge to vote NO if the final bill does not contain a real public option.
If the final bill fails to comprise a public option or any of the other improvements that her public statements say she supports, but President Obama promises to sign it, then she will vote YES on the final bill.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier gives a decent slide deck, but I think we can safely say she isn't committed to real reform. When the final bill comes, and it turns out to be a wet sloppy kiss from Senator Grassley to the greedy and rapacious special interests in the health insurance industry, she is planning to sell out her constituents' health and families, while smiling and pretending that she did everything she could to prevent it. It will be a dirty lie, and I plan to remind all my neighbors and friends in her district of that tawdry fact every chance I get.

Yes, I am extremely disappointed. I gave the congresswoman money for her re-election in 2010 before I found out about this betrayal. I want my money back.

I'm Outraged By President Obama

Feb 10, 2009
2 comments

Glennzilla explains in his trademarked, exhaustively linked way what happened.

Basically, Mr. Obama campaigned on a promise to stop the abuse of the executive state secrets privilege initiated by President George W. Bush, and now we discover that he has broken this promise.

It's a big deal.

The abuse of the state secrets privilege that President Obama is now continuing is preventing the federal courts from hearing cases against the U.S. government that involve the illegal and morally bankrupt "extraordinary rendition" program that kidnapped people without warrant or due process and delivered them foreign countries where the reasonable expectation is that they would be tortured.

It's outrageous. No, I'm not surprised that President Obama has done this, but I'm no less outraged by it. If you're surprised, then consider this your wakeup call. The game was not over in November when you voted out the jackholes; now, you gotta MAKE them live up to their promises. It's time to start rotating and radiating again, people. President Obama needs to understand that he's going to have to walk back on this or there will be hell to pay. Start wailing in your senators. They're the people who can make him sweat over this. Do it now.

There is nothing more important for citizens than putting a stop to the U.S. torture state.

Do You See What Happens, Larry?

Mar 21, 2008
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I'm vastly amused by this.

When businesses want to communicate with their customers via e-mail, many send messages with a bogus return address, e.g. "somethinghere@donotreply.com." The practice is meant to communicate to recipients that any replies will go unread.

But when those messages are sent to an inactive e-mail address or the recipient ignores the instruction and replies anyway, the missives don't just disappear into the digital ether.

Instead, they land in Chet Faliszek's e-mail box.

There's a lesson here for protocol architects.

Some people will rely on the system your protocol enables without really understanding how it all works. Their ignorance can make it surprisingly easy for them to do things by mistake that have very serious security consequences for themselves and, potentially, for everyone.

Other people, who understand how the system works, and the protocols that enable it, will discovery these interesting vulnerabilities. They will then exploit them with varying degrees of malice aforethought.

Now, imagine for a moment that Chet Faliszek were one of these people, i.e. someone who does business with phishers and spam gangs, or who is a spammer or a phisher, instead of someone who seems to have taken an interest in trying to educate people who are otherwise dangerously ignorant. In a way, that would make it easier to rip the domain away from him by force and hand it over to some kind of regulated public entity. But, Chet Faliszek isn't doing anything wrong— yet— and, as a result, there is a continuing risk to the system posed by the dumbass convention of using donotreply.com as if it were a reserved domain name.

I don't know how to design protocols that don't have this kind of weakness in them. It seems like a real problem. Maybe, an intractable one. I wish there were a good system for minimizing the system risks inherent in a protocol architecture prior to its widespread adoption. I don't think there is one.

I think it's just a matter of making sure your architects aren't treated like dog-crap.

California Greens Blow Themselves Up

Feb 24, 2008
2 comments

Apparently, Ralph Nader won the California primary race for the top of the Green ticket this year, for the nomination as the party's candidate for President in the 2008 general election. This saddens me deeply. A more stupid choice I cannot imagine. I'm ready to give up on the Green Party now.

Great. Just What We Need...

May 5, 2007
2 comments

Remember in the recent GOP presidential debate when the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they didn't believe in evolution, and all but three of the candidates kept their hands down?

It turns out that "evolution" doesn't mean what you think it means. See, you thought it means the change in the inherited traits of a population from generation to generation caused by natural selection and genetic drift. Idjit… didn't you know that it's all about the design process?

Now we're going to have to ask them really annoying questions. "Do you believe evolution is the result of anything other than natural selection and genetic drift?" I can hear the snoring start before I even get past the first eight syllables.