Random stuff

Monday, August 11, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Interesting email today speculating that Wes Clark will be the VP nominee. If so, I like this choice. I know Clark said that being a prisoner of war doesn't qualify McCain to be president, and some (notably John Kerry) thought this was wrong, but obviously it's true! Being shot down and locked up for years in a dark cell and being tortured, while sad and painful, hopefully has nothing to do with being President or VP. However, Clark has real experience in the military at an executive level, the kind of experience that does prepare you for other executive offices. Imho. 

I've become bored and fed up with political punditry, I can't make it through Meet The Press or Face The Nation or On The Media, so in desperation I started listening to an audio book on my daily walks, the last couple of days -- Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope. It's really quite a book, refreshing and smart, and in many ways he anticipated everything that's happened so far in the campaign. If you're planning on voting for Obama, I highly recommend reading the book, you should know what you're supporting, and I believe it'll make you feel strongly that you've made the right choice. 

Work on the OPML Editor continues at an agressive pace. Two milestones today: I more or less finished the podcatcher tool, and I came really close to getting the kernel to build on Windows. I really want to be able to do kernel builds, I'm not comfortable running the same binaries year after year. Sooner or later a version of one of the OSes is going to break us, and then we'll be panicking trying to get it back on the air. I want to get out in front of it. 

I can help Twitter and FriendFeed and maybe some other services improve their future-safeness. Look at this URL and let me tell you what's wrong with it. What if someday Amazon gets taken over by the government, or shut down by a lawsuit, or otherwise goes out of business? What if you get acquired by an Amazon competitor? You can easily use aliases to mask the amazon.com part of the addresses, and if someday you want to use some other service you'll be able to switch. By distributing all those hard Amazon addresses, you're removing a choice for yourself down the road. It's a very easy thing to preserve. 

Back to Obama -- should he be running ads that make fun of John McCain the same way McCain made fun of him? He's doing it. Is it right? Yes!! I hate it when they attack him and he doesn't attack back. We're hiring a President not a therapist. When the US is attacked, we want our President to get angry on our behalf. You can't wonk your way to the Presidency, we don't elect wimps to our highest office, for good cause -- it's a dangerous world and we want a tough mofo in the White House (but please one with a brain who likes to use it). Remember how Dukakis responded to the question about Kitty getting raped and murdered. Oy. The correct answer is KILL THE FCUKER, I'D WANT HIM DEAD RIGHT NOW. People like a little emotion from their leaders. So Obama hit McCain back, in a very nice way, so maybe he'll think twice next time one of his fancy advisers says you can paint Obama as a limp-wrist elite celebrity. A little fear in our opponents is a good thing.  

BTW, pretty sure that's Edward James Olmos of Battlestar Galactica doing the voiceover on Obama's ad.