Thursday, November 09, 2006

RootsCamp in San Francisco (Nov 11-12), New York, Bloomington, Columbus and DC. 

A shredding truck was spotted at the VP's house. 

Jim Webb: "You don't have a strategy if you can't clearly articulate an endpoint." 

Meanwhile, as if to prove Webb's point, the Republicans are taking their leaders out back and shooting them in the head. 

Meanwhile, without a doubt, the turning point for the Democrats was when Clinton took off the gloves. He is still the leader of the party, Pelosi and Reid would be wise to use his credibility within their party, and the nostalgia we all feel for the days of his leadership, as flawed as it was. The flaws fade over time, he looks better every day.  

Coming out the lunch with Lakoff yesterday, an idea for a website of truth. Not quite a blog. Just a site that lists things that are self-evident. Not partisan truths, not truthiness, but True Truths. Such as: It's not a war, it's an occuption.  

So I bought another domain today. truetruths.org. 

NY Times editorial: "The wiretapping bill is simply outrageous, and it has no business being discussed in this lame duck session." 

Did the Kerry flap hurt the Demos? Seems not. Drawing Bush out hurt the Repubs, reminding the electorate, who had wised up (so it turns out), that they may have voted for the wrong guy in 2004. Big negatives for the press for not running the various verbal gaffes of the Decider-in-Chief, when he attacked Kerry. There was a chance to help US politics get out of Swift Boat mode. Yeah I do think it's their job to help our political system. Also, how about a survey of voters asking if they regret re-electing Bush? We put so much emphasis on the contrition of politicos, how about contrition for voters (who are ultimately responsible for the mess in Iraq). 

NY Times: "Senator George Allen of Virginia conceded today that he lost to the Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, ending the last undecided Senate contest and giving Democrats control of the full Congress for the first time in a dozen years." 

NY Times review of "Draft N" wireless routers. 

BTW, the powerline adapter kit arrived on Tuesday, and I had just a few minutes to try it out before the election returns started, and then Doc arrived, so I haven't been able to really be sure that the initial results are right. With that caveat, the throughput was inadequate, slower than what I was already getting from an Airport Express. In other words, it's fine for Internet access, but not good for transferring large files around the local area net.  

Net effect 

Not much time to blog this morning, but I wanted to say that the net effect of the election is that US politics is shaken up. We've hit as significant a reset button, it seems, as 9-11 for world politics. Let's hope this time that we take better advantage of the opening.

Message from voters 

You can fool some of the people all the time.

And all of the people some of the time.

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.