Friday, November 05, 2004

Back at the hotel to chill out before the 7PM dinner at Ming's.  

It's likely there will be a webcast. Tune in to Scripting News tomorrow for an update. 

I'm accessing the Internet from room 290 over the Wifi we'll be using tomorrow. The username is bloggercon, the password is bloggercon. If you can read this, it's working. Coool. Of course today is the day my cellphone decided to crap out, so I'm pretty much cut off from the outside world (not being able to send email). The student monitors are getting their walk-through of the AV system. Doug Kaye will want to know that Mike Lehman just showed up. 

Ed Cone: "It's just before midnight on election night in Raleigh, NC, and Erskine Bowles approaches the podium to address his supporters. The mood in the room is sober." 

Newsweek postmortem on the Kerry campaign. 

I'm at Stanford. An important note for people who will be using Wifi here tomorrow, they block port 25, so you will not be able to send mail with a mail app like Outlook or Eudora. No problem receiving mail, or sending-receiving instant messages, or sending email via the Web. 

CBS: "Everything in the blog universe -- from 'podcasting' to advertising to publishing philosophies -- will be on the agenda this weekend as Webloggers gather for a conference Stanford University." 

Engadget report on iPodder 1.1. "The latest version of iPodder for Mac and PC adds a ton of new features, including a podcast directory you can browse to help you find stuff to listen to." 

Good morning from Rickey's Hyatt. Went out for Spicy Noodles last night with Adam Curry and his friend Ron Bloom. For people who are staying at Rickey's looking for some early morning caffeine, there's a Starbuck's about a block north on El Camino, on the east side of the street.  

NY Times: "Hollywood's major movie studios said yesterday that they would begin filing lawsuits this month against people who make copyrighted films available for downloading over the Internet." 

If you want to understand the shock felt by the blue-staters, a review of the articles in today's NY Times most-emailed RSS feed is revealing. (Don't subscribe to the feed, I took a snapshot, it's never going to change.) 

Morning Coffee Notes 

Last night I pointed to Chris Nolan's piece about Arlen Specter. Before she got to Specter, she had a stern lecture for Democrats, one I wanted to shine some light on. I agree Bush and his people are smart, very smart, but I believe there's a difference between the people who voted for Bush, and the people whose interests he serves. Do the people who voted for him understand that? That's a question, not a statement. Now another statement. I can't believe they really do, because:

1. The President has no power to stop judges from permitting gay marriage. A constitutional amendment is (rightly) much more difficult than electing a president. If you guys really want to pass that amendment, you're going to have to convince a majority of liberal eggheads in some of the blue states.

2. He's going to reform the tax system, which means that most of the people who voted for Bush are going to pay more taxes, and the top one percent that Kerry kept talking about will get another tax cut. (BTW, this is no longer speculation, they're already talking about it.)

3. He's also going to reform Social Security. Were you planning on having some of that money for your retirement? I wouldn't be so sure.

Now, I'm not saying #2 and #3 are bad things, maybe they're good. Re #1, I believe the Federal government has no business legislating sexuality, and I honestly don't understand why a gay couple in Massachusetts getting married changes anything about a heterosexual couple's marriage in Iowa. In general, I think the government should let people do what they want, as long as no one gets hurt. To me, those are compassionate conservative values. Are they not for people who live in red states?

One thing that needs to happen, and I think every reasonable person would agree, is that we should get to know each other. Speaking as a person who has lived in blue states all my life (a variety of them) I was pretty shocked that Bush was re-elected. I think you guys sold out too cheap, but now we're going to find out what it feels like to have a government that doesn't reflect our values, and I understand this is something you've been living with for a long time. But the problem is, I still don't think you've got it.

We're all going to find out that there are much more important values that Bush and his team don't share, generosity to the poor, respect for human life (Iraqis are people too), a love of the freedoms passed down from our forefathers, and on and on. In other words, the negotiation that must take place is between the people of the United States, not the two parties, not the news networks, we need to solve this one ourselves, to decide what kind of country we want. We shouldn't leave the country, yet. Shock is a good thing, if it brings about positive change. We're shocked, maybe you are too, maybe now we'll find out that you're good people we can work with, and maybe you'll find out the same?