Recently in Politics Category

I know this is a month old, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the last couple of weeks for some reason.

On 10 June, Sean Dennehy gave a briefing at the Enterprise 2.0 conference about Intelink and how the DNI is providing tools to the US Intelligence Community and the US government in general to break down the barriers to communication and collaboration.

As part of the brief, Mr. Denehy brought up a recently declassified doc from OSS titled, "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" to help WWII occupied Europeans grind their organizations to a halt to reduce their contribution to the Axis' bottom line. Some of the highlights are:

• Insist on doing everything through "channels". Never permit shortcuts that would expedite decisions.
• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration.
• Haggle over precise wordings of communications.
• Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments.
• Question whether a decision lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

I bet we all work with people that are like this. How many of us work in organizations where the above is standard operating procedure for the whole organization? I bet there's more than a couple people even in the small number of people that read my lil blog.

There are a lot of good, smart people at great organizations that really get this Enterprise 2.0 stuff. There are also a lot of organizations full of good smart people that totally don't get it and I don't think they even realize it.

I don't have any real data to back this up or anything but when I talk with friends and family about work issues, it seems to me that in a lot of ways things are getting worse instead of better. Happy success stories of technology enabled collaboration seem to be few and far between.

I'm going to try to be more conscious of this and make more of an effort to go out of my way to help people break through barriers to openness and sharing where I can. Will you? Maybe we can make a difference...

Update: Corrected the timing of the E2,0 conference. It was on 10 June. I meant to post June but somehow it came out as January. Commenter John Lierdal pointed this out to me.

I'm not an economist or anything, but it seems to me that something's really wrong when our economy doesn't work unless people are being financially irresponsible.

We're having a subprime mortgage crisis in the US. To get to this point, when rates were low banks started selling adjustable rate mortgages to high-risk borrowers. As the rates went up, a lot of these mortgages defaulted. The housing market was crazy while this lending was going on and now, it's in the toilet. Wouldn't it have been better for the market if the lenders hadn't put out so many subprime loans?

Congress is working on sending out rebate checks to US taxpayers this year. The financially responsible thing for us to do with those rebate checks is save it. The reason the government is sending them out is for the opposite reason...they're expecting that everyone will immediately go out and spend that money. It dumps a bunch of cash into the system and hopefully gets things moving again.

I'm not one to go running around protesting "the system" but it just boggles my mind that reckless spending is the primary driver of our economy. How did this happen??

Wait, I don't want to know.

It's not as exciting, but wouldn't be a lot better for our economy if we all saved and invested the way we should? Some cash in the bank, some invested here and there? IRA's and 401(k)? How is that a bad thing? People struggling with debt and going bankrupt aren't good for the economy either.

I saw on Digg not too long ago a posting about using tag clouds to analyze candidates speeches during the Democratic debates. With a new album out, I was curious what a tag cloud for Nine Inch Nails would look like. Especially since Year Zero goes into new directions for Nine Inch Nails...being explicitly political and also not having a Parental Warning like all of the other albums have, excluding Pretty Hate Machine, I think. Feel free to interpret the results any way you like.

Tag cloud for all of the NIN albums (excluding EP's, singles, remixes, etc):

Here's the tag cloud for just the new Year Zero album:

Technorati Tags: Music, Politics

Looks like the FDA extended the deadline for comments on the proposed chocolate changes another month to May 25th so there's still plenty of time to comment.

Guittard set up a site called Don't Mess With Our Chocolate that takes it from the point of view of a maker of fine chocolate. There's a lot more information there on the issue.

Update: I caught a link to this site from Slashfood.

Updated Update: This is entry #200 on the current iteration of this site. Go me. I still have a backup of some of the older stuff that was lost in a previous cutover that I will get to adding this year. Nothing hugely interesting, but adding it for completeness.

Technorati Tags: Current Events, Food, Politics

Wow. Slashdot picked up the possible chocolate change.

Someone put in more effort than I did and got the FDA page for the change and a link where you can send in your comments by April 25th.

I'm not up for turning this space into a political soapbox but I'm posting the links in case someone reading this stuff loves chocolate and doesn't read Slashdot.

Technorati Tags: Current Events, Food, Politics

As always, no fuss, no trouble. 10 minutes in and out on the way to work (I pass my polling place on my commute anyway). Was too early for the political party reps to show up, I guess.

We have been using the WINVote machines in Fairfax county for the last several years. I've never had any problems. Shrug.

(Remember the days when making a statement like "I go to church" didn't tag you as a member of a particular political persuasion?)

Something new in Virginia's Senate race.

Over the last couple weeks, small signs started popping up next to George Allen signs pointing out that he has a record of agreeing with George W Bush 90% of the time. Interesting and definitely within their rights. I haven't seen modifier signs like that before. Not sure if it's a good idea necessarily, but we'll see on Tuesday.

Today, I saw something a bit more disturbing. Someone supporting Jim Webb is adding stickers to the Gorge Allen signs now. The stickers say things like "LIES" and "4WAR" and "=BUSH" and "HATES".

Nice. Isn't that illegal under the election laws? Quite unethical at least. I hope that it's not someone directly working for the Webb campaign or the local Democrats.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Since I'm on another theme....

On a whim, I decided to look up the book Reading Mastery - Level 2 Storybook 1 which contains "The Pet Goat"...the story that President Bush was reading to those schoolchildren the morning of September 11, 2001.

Considering the level that the political discussions in this country has sunk to in recent years, I shouldn't have been surprised by the reviews of this book but I was anyway. This book didn't have anything to do with politics at all...the president happened to be reading it at the beginning of a crisis, and this is what's written about the book:

George W. Dimwit and the tale of the goat, October 6, 2006
Reviewer: George W. - See all my reviews
This may be one of the greatest literarly classics ever! I have been able to read some of ther greatest writers ever, but this one truly is amazing. It is so amazing that it even amazed Georgey!! While the worst attack on American soil took place, Georgey was sitting in his happy chair in Florida having kids read the book to him (I would say he was reading, but he was probably looking at the pictures.). This book is a true clasic!

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

A literary masterpiece, July 12, 2006
Reviewer: Georgy (TexAss USA) - See all my reviews
My Pet Goat is a werk of pure jeen-yus. When Andy told me that them "terr'ists" was crashin' planes into buildings, all I could think about was how I wanted a pet goat of my very own. But then ol' Dick sayed I couldn't have one, 'cuz taking care of pets is a huge responsibilility.
Goats is smart and they like to eat stuff. Remember back in 2000, that big ol' hullaballoo down there in Florida with the funny ballots? Well, my brother Jeb just fed a buncha them ballots to his pet goats, which made it so the Supreme Court made me Dictater-er--Commander in Cheef.
Anyways, this book helped me through a very stressful time, and I reccomend it to everyone, even though Condi says it's "above my reading level" whatever that means. I have to go now though, because Dick says my interweb time is up. You should all bye this book.
Your frend,
Georgy in TexAss

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

Interesting, but tough book to understand, June 28, 2006
Reviewer: St. Louis Book Lover (Edwardsville, IL United States) - See all my reviews
I really really liked this book (a lot, in other words) but the problem is, My Friend Andy interrupted me while I was reading this book, so it was tough for me to concentrate long enough to get what the book was saying, but I think the book had something to do with Iraq and making money from a lemonade stand or oil or something like that. It was a real good book though, but I wish my other friend (her name is Laura, and she's my wife because I'm straight, and the constitution allows me to be married to a girl--cool!) hadn't told me that it was mostly a picture book because the truth is, there were A LOT of words in there too. But sometimes when there are a lot of words in something, you can get somebody (like my other friend, who is not my wife, Condi) to read it out loud to you, though that doesn't mean you'll always pay attention to what she's reading, especially not when you're on VACATION!! No homework during vacation, no way!

Anyway, you should (everyone should, it's your patriotic duty) read more books about goats and stuff, and even if your house is on fire or something, DON'T STOP READING THE BOOK because that would PANIC everybody! And we all know that people shouldn't react like it's an emergency when the house is on fire or stuff.

So -- real cool book, but very very tough book. And I can honestly say, when people ask me, yes, our children is learning, and I am kind of learning too, but not so much people will make fun of me for being one of those bookworms who are SO WEIRD!

4 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

Kerry, Kerry, quite contrary, June 26, 2006
Reviewer: Rick Cox "cdman47" (Anaheim, CA USA) - See all my reviews

While the head of office read to kids in Florida, Johnny sat in his office for over an hour in D.C. If United Flight 93 had taken off on time and been hijacked as planned to destroy Capiital Hill, Johnny would not be around to this day... he'd be gone since most others on Capital Hill left to the basement (i.e. bunkers) while the beloved Senator just sat in his office.

What a dope!!!

There are a bunch of others just like these. Posting reviews like that about a book because someone you don't like has read it? Note the "29 of 29 people found the following review helpful" stats. People are rating the reviews up because they're agreeing with the political statement that someone had to make on a children's book.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Technorati Tags: Politics, Stupidity

Lovely. I'm posting about politics on Halloween. sigh.

As important as the 2004 elections were supposed to have been, I don't recall being contacted by either party during that whole cycle.

As of yesterday evening, I have been contacted by the local Democrats and Republicans about their respective candidates. In the Virginia senate race, George Allen is the Republican incumbent and Jim Webb is the Democratic challenger. I live in the 10th congressional district so for the House race, the Republican incumbent is Frank Wolf and the Democratic challenger is Judy Feder. Both races are polling pretty close and with the Republicans needing every seat they can keep to maintain their hold on congress, it's been a very active campaign so far. Lots of ads. Lots of nasty negative flyers in the mail on both sides.

Now, I guess they both feel the need to actually reach out to the politically boring suburbs. I've never been interested in discussing politics with people. Especially these days with as angry as people tend to get with opposing points of view. I'm not a member of any political party either, so I tend to view elections like college football games...the competition is interesting but I don't have anyone to root for.

What's interesting to me is the different approaches of the two parties.

Saturday morning (11-12 sometime) someone comes knocking on my door. It turns out to be a probably local Democrat campaigning (mostly) for Judy Feder...campaign flyers and talking points in hand. I'm still absorbing my caffeine at this point so I'm less prone to chatting than normal so when he asks me what issues I'm most concerned about for this election cycle, I said something like "nothing, I'm good, thanks". He expressed his disbelief that I wasn't worried about the war (I am, but not in the way he's expecting), or healthcare (I have a job and insurance, thanks), or the economy (seems to be working alright to me, but I'm not an economist). Margo pipes up with the Northern Virginia complaint that our Democratic governor hasn't done a very good job with spending our tax dollars in our area but that was brushed off as not being important since that's not up to congresspeople (true, I guess). I stuck with my "everything's great, good luck" routine til he decided it was time to go.

I was a little annoyed by what I took as his disbelief that I didn't see the world the same way he did, but I do give him credit for at least trying. He was humping door to door trying to talk to people about the Democratic congressional candidates and either try to change minds or count what kind of voting trends are happening in my area.

Yesterday evening, I got a phone call from the Fairfax GOP. Margo answered the phone, but they asked for me so I got the phone. The volunteer quickly started in on her script about how important this election is and why I should be voting for Republicans. It was probably 2 minutes of script, then she thanked me and hung up. No pause for questions, no asking me what I thought or who I was going to vote for.

So now I've seen their pre-vote ground game. Very different approaches. I'm curious about what the differences means to the local party structures and what they're expecting to gain (or not lose) from these contacts.

Next week should be fun to watch.

Technorati Tags: Politics

I watched what I think is the most recent South Park episode this afternoon: Mystery of the Urinal Deuce

(sometimes it's hard to tell when something came out when you love your TiVo as much as we do)

The episode went into the 9/11 conspiracies out there that the government was behind the attacks and how stupid it all is. I got a different lesson though (maybe because I already knew that conspiracy theories are stupid).

If I post something on the internet that's stupid enough, and then wrap it up in enough false intellectualism and paranoia, maybe Trey Parker and Matt Stone will notice and put me in an episode and kill me twice too. That'd be cool. I've always wanted to be in a cartoon. Actually, I have a print out on my fridge from the South Park Studio already. All I need is animation and voice. And a stupid idea to turn into a conspiracy theory.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Television

This blog isn't ever going to become primarily political, but because it's mainly here to catch some of the things that get my attention sometimes it's going a little political this time.

I've been thinking about North Korea (er, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) the last couple of days with the whole nuke thing going on. It sucks, but it was inevitable that North Korea developed (maybe) and tested (maybe) a nuke.

I came across Songun Blog tonight and was fascinated by what was there. There are a bunch of videos hosted on Youtube that look like pretty good imitations of North Korea propaganda. There are videos about how great the DPRK is like Happiness is DPRK and Pyongyang Capital of Paradise, many about the Great Leader and Dear Leader such as Great Leader Kim Il Sung is Immortal (kinda scary) and General Kim Jong Il Son of Partisans and videos about how bad “capitalist” America is like US Imperialist War Crimes in Korea and Evidence of US Imperialist War Crimes in Korea.

A lot of these are fairly serious, and they're all pretty well put together. They tip their hand and show that they're not really serious though with US Imperialist War Crimes in Iraq if the quote about Bush from Ghandi on the blog wasn't enough.

It makes me wonder how much work was done with the other videos. One of the advantage of knowing that most of your potential audience doesn't understand the language of the source material, you can make the subtitles say whatever you want.

It's all pretty well done and made for an amusing couple of hours of Gootube time for me.

The full set of videos starts here if you're interested in what else is in the set.

Technorati Tags: Politics

This will be my first political post on the site. If you don't care, move along.

I emailed PETA on 24 Oct concerning their lack of any kind of statement about John Kerry's photo-op goose hunt in Ohio. The only response I ever got back was an automatic response saying that the email got to their system. There hasn't been any statement posted on the PETA site about it yet either. If there is one, it probably won't happen til after 2 Nov.

I'm posting the content of my email below. Not many people will see it, but it'll be out there and it'll show that at least someone tried.

From: Scott Gentzen
Date: October 24, 2004 10:18:45 PM EDT
To: info@peta.org
Subject: John Kerry Goose Hunt, where's PETA?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/21/kerry.guns.ap/

That's just the CNN link. There are many others. Take your pick.

John Kerry goes out on a hunting photo-op and comes back having shot and killed a goose with a couple other guys that did the same.

Where's PETA on this? Where was the protest? Where is the press release denouncing this pointless destruction of animal life? Mr Kerry's hunting trip was purely a campain photo-op...there isn't even the normal hunters' excuse of eating what they kill.

What happened to you guys on this?