Category: Politics

The truth is that I have a three hour delay at JFK airport and I’m really bored.

But I have to say that the other McCain RSS feed has been very active. So the McCain team does understand RSS, they just need to update their page that lists their RSS feeds.

But I do have to make one comment. And with full disclosure I will state that I am a registered Democrat who did not vote for Obama in the primary but is very likely to in the general election. I will also state that I consider McCain to be an honorable politician (if that isn’t a total oxymoron). If I had voted in the Republican primary I would have voted for McCain (though I suppose if you are a true Republican that’s probably not a good endorsement – my point is that he’s a decent guy, which you can’t say about all politicians)

But his RSS feed is a bit icky.

From the feed, I would have no idea that McCain is running. Obama’s feed is a long list of “Obama was here. He said this. He’s in favor of that. Here’s his proposal on the other”. McCain’s feed is a long list of “Obama was at this stupid place. He said this stupid thing. He’s in favor of that stupid thing. Here’s is stupid proposal on the other”.

Honestly, my guess is that McCain has no idea what his web site blog is saying. He’s been very good about disowning highly negative statements. And I suppose that for the most part anyone subscribing to a candidate’s RSS feed is a supporter. So I’m probably making a big deal over nothing.

I just though McCain/Obama would be an unusually positive campaign. Perhaps that was naive…

OK, lots of reasons. But this article from the NY Times is really important to me. I am a First Amendment purist. With the “yelling fire in a crowded theater” exception (legally referred to as imminent violence) excluded, I believe that people should be legally allowed to say whatever stupid, hateful, awful thing they want.

I believe firmly in the marketplace of ideas. Stupid ideas need to be out in the open where they can be publicly mocked. I don’t believe that there should be no consequences to saying stupid, hateful, awful things (you might get fired, mocked, posted on YouTube, etc.), I just think it shouldn’t be illegal.

As a counter example, many countries have laws against denying the Holocaust. The Holocaust was unbelievably horrible and I understand that denying it can be hurtful to many people. But at the end of the day, to me it’s like saying the moon landings were fake or the Earth is flat. Intelligent people should be able to just dismiss it as folly. And when the government steps in to make it illegal, it actually creates more conspiracy theories and gives the stupidity more credence (what are they hiding? etc.).

A long time ago a very liberal magazine in Madison, Wisconsin (most liberal city in Wisconsin – Texans should think Austin) tried to publish an article that tried to explain the science behind the H-Bomb. This was in 1979, still cold war era. The author was an anti-nuclear weapons person largely criticizing the government for crazy secrecy (his main point being, if I can figure this out it’s not a secret so the government is clearly going crazy making things classified).

In one of the few examples of “prior restraint” on a news organization, the government prevented publication of this article. On appeal, the case began to unravel as it became clear that this information was in the public domain (a student’s encyclopedia already had presented it). The article was eventually published. You can get all of this information on Wikipedia.

Now, was it smart to write this article? Was it a good thing? Highly debatable. But at the time the government was more bent out of shape about this than anything we’ve seen lately in our terrorism conscious country. They took the almost unheard of step of preventing publication. Yet historically this was a complete non-event.

So ultimately my opinion is that the world can handle ideas and information, even stupid, dangerous, misguided ones. Trying to hide them doesn’t work. Uncovering and dispelling them does.

And this is fundamentally baked into our country’s DNA. Even when it makes us really uncomfortable. A big reason why our country rocks…

I try to keep politics out of this blog for the most part (most of you know my politics, but I’m not trying to push my political preferences). But this post on The Economist’s blog was hilarious for two lines:

You do have to wonder: Has anyone told Mr Kristol about this crazy new invention called “Google”?

and a sarcastic comment to the blog:

Mr Kristol has a debilitating handicap which causes him to be completely unable to see Mormons, and I will thank you for not mocking him for it.

The latter just cracked me up…

There’s really not that much to say about Spitzer other than, “what an idiot”.

But here’s a funny site…

I’m always somewhat amused how these two small states have such a disproportionate impact on our presidential race. I was looking up the population statistics and notices that Iowa is a tiny bit bigger than Brooklyn (about 2.9 MM vs. 2.5 MM) and New Hampshire is about half the size of Brooklyn.

This led me, as a Brooklynite to check on what the city population rankings would be in the U.S. if New York City were split into the five Boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island for those who didn’t know).

The rankings would be:

1. Los Angeles
2. Chicago
3. Brooklyn
4. Queens
5. Houston
6. Manhattan
7. Philadelphia
8. Phoenix
9. Bronx
10. San Antonio

If you were ranking US population density, by county (each NYC borough is also a county) it would be:

1. Manhattan
2. Brooklyn
3. Queens
4. Bronx

Still not sure why we care so much what Iowa thinks…