Exceive

Sales of political masks often predict the winner of the Presidential election.

My wife and I have a costume shop, and Bush masks are outselling Kerry.

But… Many buyers of Bush masks are also buying things to go with it. One bought a witch nose and said he was doing a Pinnochio thing. Others are doing blood and guts. People buying Kerry masks are just buying the mask.

One other thing: there is a Republican party headquarters a block away from the shop.

Back in the Spring, when the rest of us thought the nomination was wide open, our supplier was providing no Democratic masks but Kerry. I suspect a bit of bias - the old masks of Democrats, with the lone exception of Al Gore, are very, very ugly. The Republicans are not too bad, other than Nixon (still a decent seller). Yes, they are political caricature, and not pretty (except for Al Gore) but nowhere near as ugly as the Democrats.

Get out there and vote

“I don’t know about Kerry… whine whine whine…”

Forget Kerry. Should Bush keep his job or has he screwed up so bad my 2 year old grandson could do it better without knowing what the word “President” means? Real question. I have my own answer (I think you can guess) but even if you disagree, just get out there. Fire the bastard or keep the hero. Things have changed a lot lately, and if it’s all because of Osama, we are a bigger bunch of wimps than even I think we are. One thing Bush is not is a zero. You can’t have no opinion about his job performance.

Character is important, but this is about a President, not a God King, not a spouse, not a day care provider. Policy and competence are more directly relevant to the job. You can’t really know character by the other guy’s proxie’s slander, but the policies and competence of both candidates are matters of public record.

There is always the old “don’t vote, it only encourages them”, but pathetic voter turnout is what allows the major parties to nominate such flakes. They only have to get the people who are into politics to go for their guy, so they can pretty much ignore the half of the country that isn’t fascinated by the game.

If you want there to be candidates who represent your position, you have to get out of the non-voting half of tho country.

Undecided?

It’s kind of a mystery to me how anyone can still be undecided in this election. The facts are out there, the differences are large and obvious. I suppose if you vote entirely on character and are looking only at ads you might be disgusted with both, but relying on ads is stupid, whether you are talking about goods and services or democracy.

Policy

• Both will continue the war in Iraq. Bush is more likely to extend the conflict to other countries such as Iran and Syria. Kerry is more likely to expand the coalition. Neither will give allies or the UN a hard veto, but Kerry will give the opinions of allies more weight. Bush will have more freedom to act (but his emphasis on consistancy limits his options) while Kerry will have more cooperation from allies. Which do you think is more effective in fighting terrorism, military action with less restraint, or more international cooperation? Bush: more war. Kerry: more deals.
  Judgement call, in my opinion. But a definite difference.
• Bush will maintain and extend tax cuts at the top. Kerry will reduce the deficit and possibly reduce taxes at the lower end. Which do you think is better for the economy? Keep in mind that either way, spending must eventually be paid for, and neither candidate seems likely to reduce spending. Kerry is a Democrat, Bush spends like one.

Personal History

• Military stuff: there is a certain amount of deliberate confusion going on, but this much is clear: Kerry served Over There, Bush took the easier, safer option. Nobody on either side disagrees with that. There are arguments about exactly how heroic Kerry’s service was, and just how completely Bush satisfied the absolute minimum requirements. Assuming all accusations against Kerry are true, Kerry showed up in the general vicinity of combat. Assuming all accusations against Bush are false, Bush fulfilled the minimum requirements for an honerable discharge. Does this matter to you, or is it ancient history? For me, it isn’t directly relevant but speaks to character.
• Since then: Bush has been mostly in the private sector, with a few years in the executive position in Texas. Kerry has been mostly in politics, in the legislative section. Bush has more executive experience, Kerry more political. Which do you prefer? Each has value.

Style

• Bush takes a simple position and sticks to it. Kerry takes a detailed position and refines it as new facts come in. Bush focuses on principles, Kerry on facts.

Even if you ignore all the differences, there is still something to decide on: Bush’s job performance. If you consider it good or at least adequate, vote Bush. If not vote Kerry.

Personally, I see the Bush administration so far as a complete disaster. Even if Bush and Kerry were exactly the same, I’d vote Kerry, for three reasons:

1. The transition between administrations would at least be a little disruptive. On the highway to hell, a pothole is a blessing.
2. Having different branches of govornment controlled by different parties provides gridlock, also known as checks and balances.
3. An excuse to re-examine and correct the war effort and alliances. Allies who were blown off by Bush can approach Kerry without being perceived as backing down.

Mexico

Last night I dreamed we were driving in Mexico. We (my wife and some unspecified quiet subset of our children) had crossed the border, and were driving along, our intended destination Mexico City, discussing the option of going to Veracruz instead. Or maybe San Cristobal de las Casas.

Toward the end of the dream, I realized that neither Mexico City nor Veracruz is close enough to the border for a leisurely day trip.

I think the dream was caused by a hibiscus tree I just moved into my bedroom - Mexico was in the hibiscus mode.

How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? And the answer I would give is not very damn many. - Dick Cheney

The world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein. And a more dangerous one with the United States at war. How many Americans did Saddam kill, how many has the war killed?

“Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society.” George Soros

It is a lot more than that.

It is the key to science - experimentation and research are nothing more than expressions of the recognition that an idea might be wrong.

In the Catholic tradition, It is one of the Seven Cardinal Virtues, the opposite of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and would have kept Lucifer out of Hell.

Socrates considered it the single most important part of wisdom.

In my own experience, it is the most common difference between a loser and a winner, between a jerk and a decent person, between a bore and a wit. Between a terrorist and a saint.

Nero

We here much about Nero fiddling while Rome burned. No one ever seems to wonder what tune he was playing. In a bizarre coincidence with modern events, that tune was a popular children’s tune of the day “meus capreolus domesticus”.

Swiped from an anonymous post in another blog (Eschaton).

Scam email

This morning, I had two different emails in my inbox that claimed to be from banks, informing me that I had to click a link to update some account information. Both were fakes. I don’t have accounts with either bank. The look was perfect - that’s not hard, stealing logos and layout from the bank’s web site is simple. The language on one was convincing, the other was a bit off. The second had vague references to possible terrorist activity. I didn’t bother to check the return addressesl, but in many cases that’s a good clue. Major banks have their own domain names and provide any of their employees who are authorized to communicate for the bank with email addresses. No official message from a major bank will have a return address at AOL or HotMail.

The most solid clue was that the links looked like bank web site links, but when I hovered the mouse cursor on them, the real links were quite different from the blue underlined text. If I had clicked on the links, I would have gone to a completely different site from the one I had expected. I suspect the site would have had a form on it, and had I entered the requested information, the bad guys would have had enough of my information to clean out any accounts I had with that bank, and probably open credit card accounts in my name.

Some things to watch for:

• Do you have a relationship with the organization? If you don’t have an account there, at best the email is a mistake.
• Is there some good reason why the organization is communicating with you by email and not regular mail or phone?
• Are they asking for information (like passwords) they promised they would never ask for by email?
• Does the return address match the organization? It should be name or function at organization (or something close - sometimes the domain name isn’t exactly the organization name) dot com, net, org, gov, or edu depending on the type of organization. Or dot two letter country code that makes sense for the organization. A big bank isn’t going to use an AOL or HotMail account for official communication.
• Does the name part of the return address look reasonable - it can be a person’s name, or something like ‘info’ or ‘verification’. Names like ‘Joe1902013′ are often bogus. A legitimate name can often contain a digit or two - I often add ‘99′ to the end of a username if the one I want is already taken. But a whole bunch of random numbers or letters means it is probably randomized to fool anti-spam software.
• Check links before you click them. If you hover the mouse cursor over a link (that means placing the mouse cursor on it and not moving for a while) in many email programs, the software shows you the real link. If the blue text looks like a URL but the real link is different, the message is almost certainly bogus.
• Is the link to an address that has four numbers separated by periods (like “http://12.34.567.12″, an IP address) instead of the usual www.something.com? Don’t click it. Sometimes it looks like “http://12.34.567.12:www.legitimatedomain.com” - the www.legitimatedomain.com part of that means nothing, you are going to wherever 12.34.567.12 is.
• Is the email supposedly from CitiBank? CitiBank is a real company, completely legitimate and reputable as far as I know. But most of the bogus bank email I receive claims to be from them. Just to be very, very clear - CitiBank is not the bad guy, CitiBank is a frequent victim through no fault of their own. They aren’t even guilty of sloppy security - there is no way to prevent bad guys from using your name. You can sue them afterward, if you can catch them, and I’m sure CitiBank does that every chance they get.

P.S. Norton Antivirus just blocked an attatchment on an email. The message was “I have visited this website and I found you in the spammer list. Is that true?” The “website” wasn’t a link, it was a virus. People are getting wise to offers of wealth, porn, cheap generic super viagra, and enlarged body parts, so the bad guys have taken to accusing people of spamming, fraud, and even suspicion of terrorist connections. When you attempt to answer the accusation, you get hit. Don’t answer, don’t defend yourself the way they demand. In most cases, ignore it. Don’t take it personally, you are one of several million email addresses on a list somewhere. If you think it looks real, contact the institution another way - phone, mail, fax, or even by email or the web - but by looking up the institution’s contact information yourself, not by using return information in the email.

Random art based on the work of Kandinski.

I like Kandinsky.

Starfish