"If you vote for the lesser of two evils and your candidate wins, you still get evil. The only wasted vote is when you vote for a candidate that you don't respect."
Very true. I know there are those who will say "that is stupid, a vote for (3rd party) is just a vote for (candidate I don't like) and this election is the most important ever, we have to make sure (candidate I don't like) does not win"
I say bull. This election is possibly the LEAST important ever. Bush and Kerry are so similar it is sickening. Oh sure what they SAY is different but if you think for a second that Kerry is going to (end the war/roll back tax cuts/improve civil liberties/etc) you are either completely ignorant of what he has said and done in the past, or (worse) you think his sudden change in positions was legit and had nothing to do with struggling to find ways to differentiate himself from Bush.
So vote for who you really want to win, because either Bush or Kerry are going to win anyway and they will both equally suck.
What about dumping the keychain in plain text and taking the data from there and migrating it to a new system?
If you read my original post, that is exactly what you cannot do with keychain, and the basis of my complaint. There is no way to get data out of keychain in any standard format (PEM, DER, etc)
Right, but what you just told me is that a reader is more expensive than a usb token. Imagine a corporation where every person has their own PC and thus every PC needs a reader (not to mention they need to get them for their homes likely as well).
Ideally manufacturers would make smart card readers standard. IBM and Dell have been promising that to me for four years straight now. I only see a few specility models with them.
Why does each person using the computer need two keys/cards?
Your Keychain, in ~/Library/Keychains, is perfectly portable, and designed to be moved from computer to computer, or stored on a device for storing such tokens, such as a USB flash drive.
I mentioned it is possible to copy keychain files. Which is perfectly fine if you are only talking about OS X computers, but that isn't the only OS out there. Calling keychain portable is fine as long as you note that the portability is only extended to other Macs.
Further, that certificates are even in your keychain at all implies that you should have access to the original source certificate files, which clearly remain portable.
False, if you generate a personal identity cert using a service like Thawte or Verisign (which do this over a web interface) then the private key is generated as a request from their webserver on your machine, and ONLY stored in Keychain. Try it yourself, use Safari and go to Thawte's page and create a personal cert. The cert is downloaded in whatever format you desire, but the key is generated locally and there is NO way to get it out of Keychain (despite the permanently grayed out "export" menu option).
This kind of situation does not happen on any other OS. (and arguably wouldn't have happened on OSX had I used Mozilla or Firefox to generate the private key).
Lastly, what happens to the person who maybe generates their private key using, say, openssl and then imports it to keychain? Practicing good security maybe they decide that having multiple private keys is bad and the delete the file assuming that it is possible to export a private key out of Keychain. Is that such an unreasonable assumption? What good reason is there for OSX to not allow you to do that?
The changes to Keychain you referenced are certainly welcome (since that app has hardly changed at all over the years and could do much more), but I wonder if they will fix the exporting problem? I certainly hope so.
Everyone has USB, why not use this instead of requiring a card reader?
Excellent idea though, I have been in support of that concept for a while. This could be extended to requiring a password to unlock the private key on the card/usb drive or even have a small thumbprint reader on the card/usb drive itself to unlock the key. This would remove my major complaints about biometrics (ie replay attack)
These technologies all exist and would be simple, but people simply do not see the need for them so there is no demand (outside of of some rare government, education, and corporation groups). Unfortunately the average joe is content with a digital world that relies completly on his mother's maiden name for authentication:(
I finally found something about OS X that I absolutely hate and is making me question the entire OS. OS X has its own digital certificate/private key cache (which also stores passwords, but that is irrelevant), which is convenient for applications that use certificates and private keys for identity (like safari and mail.app). It also has a nice utility for managing this environment (Keychain Access).
HOWEVER, Apple (for reasons I cannot fathom) has decided to not allow keys and certs to be exported from this cache. This is totally unacceptable and horribly wrong. In this email, which confirms my worst fears, Peter Sagerson says it best: In Jaguar, private keys are never exportable. This seems kind of silly, since my digital identity should be linked to me, not the platform, the machine or that particular (and transient) installation of the OS. In Panther, Keychain Access has an Export command, but it's never enabled. I don't see a Keychain-level API for key export and the CSSM API doesn't seem to work. So it's hard to tell what the intention is.
The intention seems to be the very incorrect idea that the digital identity belongs to the computer, and not the person. I have figured out how to move my cert and key to another Mac, that is simple creating a new keychain, copying certs to it, and moving the new keychain file to another machine. However, I still cannot get them out of Apple's proprietary format to move them to any non-OSX platform. I have posted this question to Apple's usually helpful discussion forum, but have received no answer.
This is most disturbing and calls into question both Apple's competency with regard to security in general, and their intentions with regard to what the user can do with their own data (or in this case, their own identity)
He was, big time. Have you ever seen the full tape?
Look, what the cops did there was reprehensible and the fact that they got off even more so, but let's not pretend King was some hero. He is (still today) a repeat drunk driving offender who is frequently fighting with police and other, sometimes on PCP (which he was supposedly on during the taped beating). Society would be much better off without both King and the cops who beat him, there were no "winners" in that mess.
Is there a campuswide network? Yes Hey, Forbes got one right!
Is there a wireless network? No There is not wireless completely covering the huge campus, but there are wireless hotspots all over the place. This admittedly is a problem since only a handfull are centrally managed and use the University's central authentication system.
Can students access e-mail away from school? No Yeah, because we don't offer POP3 (SSL POP3 and Kerberized POP3 for that matter). And if that doesn't count we wrote our own frikkin (extremely popular) webmail application for crying out loud (none of the existing ones scaled all that well or made use of our existing infrastructure)
Does the school offer classes online? No World Campus
Can students register online? No Since about 1998 or so.
Can students do other administrative functions online? No I cannot think of any administrative functions you CANNOT do online.
Are students required to own a computer? No True, but only because just about every one does and if they do not there are general use labs at every campus.
Can students get discounted computers? Yes Forbes now has two correct answers.
Does the school support handheld computers? That's kinda vague. I'll accept no for now but that is being actively worked on.
Does the school stream audio or video of any courses? No Yes
Is network access available in dorm rooms? No Has been for years possibly a decade (there was when I got here in 96)
Is network access available in dormitory lounges? No There are now three correct answers, go Forbes:)
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No Yes, remember who (for good or ill) pioneered the Napster II stuff? That was as a result of the ethics policy.
Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No Since Usenet existed (we were one of the first Bitnet nodes for crying out loud)
Does tuition include a computer? No Four! Four correct answers...ha ha ha ha
Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No Yes
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No I know quite a few professors who would be ticked at that answer.
Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations? WPSU, For all your NPR and PRI needs:)
If all the stats Forbes has on schools are as accurate as this one, then this report means nothing.
If Bush is elected, industry leaders will serve corporate interests, as opposed to those of the public, as appointees in the Bush administration.
And you assume this will not be the case under Kerry? You are just exchanging the set of corporate masters pulling the strings on the president. Kerry is certainly no less corrupt or beholden to corporate and special interests. He isn't some outsider riding in to save us all, he is a part of the same system Bush is and has just as much interest in upholding the status quo.
If Bush is elected, my stock portfolio will go down
Now that us just silly. You (and everyone else) has absolutely no idea where the economy will go regardless of who is president. You point about taxes is dead on though.
At lets not forget my skyrocketing energy costs thanks to Enron, and Halliburton.
Enron's shenanigans happened under Clinton's watch. And if you are going to complain about energy prices, place the blame where it belongs, instability in the middle east (so you can still blame Bush).
3. It shouldn't be a guy who takes a month long vacation every august
I agree, but on the same token we don't want a senator who missed a significant portion of votes and meetings while in office do we?
4. It shouldn't be a guy who's going to pray to the great dragon Shinron to magic the world ok and be totally ineffectual like all of the third party canadates. (If they can't run a campaign, they can't run the USA. It's just that simple.)
I didn't get this at all, you lost me with Shinron (wasn't that the dragon from Dragonball?) Are you saying that the third party candidates are only unsuccessful because they cannot run a campaign? You don't think it has anything to do with the way campaign finance is set up? Or the way the debates have been hajacked by the bipartisan debate commission that will never let a third party in? Or perhaps just because the status quo is set up to make sure that only republicans and democrats who will not change anything make it on ballots?
And a protest vote is wasted, Bush doesn't care if I protest or not, so long as he doesn't see it. This year, more than most others, a protest vote *is* a wasted protest.
It is not a "protest vote", I (and many others) seriously cannot stomach either skull n bones, spoiled, lying, yale frat boy. What should I do? Just not vote?
Exactly, which is a good example of why I dislike both. I dislike Bush for the patroit act and I dislike Kerry for supporting it, then pretending he is against it for the sake of votes. I'm not going to vote for evil, I don't care if it is "lesser" evil.
That was a big issue for me, since my career is basically cryptography (not quite but cryptography is a major part of it).
Clipper was intended to outlaw (you heard me right) private research into and ownership of cryptography. Let me repeat, they were going to outlaw MATH. It was to be the exclusive domain of the federal government and the only crypto we could have was the backdoored clipper chip. This would have completely annihilated the computer industry in the US as nobody outside the US was going to use our watered down "legal"crypto, and companies that wanted to ensure privacy would have fled in droves. Frankly the implications both economically and socially of that move frightened me more than the Patriot act, we are talking government mandated, zero privacy.
I guess what I mean is, how sad is it that the best outcome is for government officials to be rendered ineffective? We are voting for people based on what they want to do, but then hoping that they are countered by others to prevent either from doing anything. Seems kinda pointless.
You're right. The person we elect will not make any difference at all. I'm not sure why we even vote for anyone in the executive branch. They are all simply puppets to the legislative branch. They have no real power.
Read up on how checks and balances work, you seem to have missed a civics class somewhere.
The point is, Mr Let's-Take-Fink's-Comment-To-An-Illogical-Extreme, neither can claim they WILL or WILL NOT raise taxes, since it is not completely in their power. They will work with Congress to do one or the other but frankly even what they intend is subject to change if economic circumstances change.
And on the same token he will continue to wage war on the constitution by not only crap like the Patriot act, but pushing for EVEN MORE with Patriot II. He will continue to suppress findings and reports that the CIA assembled regarding 9/11. His speaking skills will continue to degenerate to where he cannot express himself at all.
Look anything good you can say about Bush can be easily countered with all the bad crap he has pulled. I voted for him once, as the lesser of two evils. Also because I mistakenly believed he was a conservative, but his irresponsible deficit spending cured me of that misconception.
And of course for many of the reasons you outlined, Kerry is no better. Since I do not feel strongly enough that either of these two should be president, I will vote for the 3rd party candidate who I most agree with.
Great idea, let's find a way to force down the price on something that actually has a marginal cost of production so that we can continue charging an exorbitant amount for software which has 0 incremental cost.
I'm sure the hardware manufacturers will just trip over themselves to cut their own profits so that Microsoft can continue to make even more money on their sub-standard software.
Actually no, neither will raise or lower taxes. Congress will (or will not). It is completely meaningless what both of them are saying, they will only submit butgets and approve or veto what congress passes.
You know what? I'm really sick of ignorant people saying "both candidates suck, I shall weep".
I never said that. Both candidates suck, I shall vote for neither. I voted for what I believed to be the lesser of two evils last time and look where that got us. I'm not doing it again.
I'm a fairly moderate Democrat, and you know what? Kerry doesn't suck. Neither did Al Gore. Neither did John McCain. I happen to really dislike George W Bush, but if I was a fairly hardcore right-wing conservative, I'd imagine I'd be pretty pissed to hear you say that he sucks.
I'm a socially liberal, fiscially conservative kinda guy, Kerry sucks in my opinion. Don't ever get me started on Edwards. Gore sucked (clipper chip anyone? he was its primary cheerleader). I like McCain, but I doubt he would ever get the republican nod (maybe as VP).
I know a lot of fairily right wing conservatives who agree about george bush. Many of them are voting for Kerry (there is a fairily strongrepublicans for Kerry campaign). Why? Because Bush is not a conservative. His reckless deficit spending is not what being a conservative is about. His pissing on the constitution with the patroit act and terrorism fear mongering is not what being a conservative is about.
Are they perfect, flawless, shining crystals of purity? No, they're mother-effing human beings who are probably trying to do what they feel is right, most of the time.
Yes, and what they feel is right seems to be "maintain the status quo, never change anything about the system that gives us power, money, and control", just like seemingly everyone in DC these days. If anyone running for president actually cared about making the system better there would be talk of "instant runoff voting", "campaign finance reform", or "balance budget amendments". None of them want to talk about these things, not because they would be bad for the country (they would be good), but because they would be bad for their political career and power.
I'm sick of reading bitchy posts and hearing bitchy comments about how "oh, all the candidates are bad", and "I'm not going to vote". If you really feel the candidates are that bad, go to the polls anyway. Write in a vote for "NONE OF THE ABOVE", or maybe even the third party candidate of your choice. Badnarik, Nader, whoever--votes for those guys are how the parties realize they need to appeal to those platforms.
That is actually what I am advocating. I think you got me confused with someone who is proposing we all just forget about the vote and sit home and smoke pot and complain:)
If we as young voters all pitch in and at least make an EFFORT to vote (even if they're throwaway votes for Nader or something), then our power as voters goes up.
I don't prefer nader myself, but in my opinion the only wasted vote is a vote for someone you don't actually believe in. Once it became normal to vote for the lesser of two evils, we as a population sent the message: "we are perfectly willing to vote for evil, just as long as you distract us with unimportant crap like swiftboat veterens, fake cbs memos, marriage amendments, and mysterious earpieces so that we know which evil we dislike more".
So go take a civics class or something and stop your complaining.
That is truly amusing on a couple of levels. I've found the more involved in civics you are (let's just say I am involved;), the more effectively you can complain and the more you find to complain about. Complaining does not mean giving up. Pointing out absurdity and corruption is complaining, would you have us not do that?
Honestly, that is the first good reason to vote for one or the other I have heard yet. Although how telling is it that in order to get a better government we need to strive for political gridlock that results in them doing less.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you vote for the lesser of two evils and your candidate wins, you still get evil. The only wasted vote is when you vote for a candidate that you don't respect."
Very true. I know there are those who will say "that is stupid, a vote for (3rd party) is just a vote for (candidate I don't like) and this election is the most important ever, we have to make sure (candidate I don't like) does not win"
I say bull. This election is possibly the LEAST important ever. Bush and Kerry are so similar it is sickening. Oh sure what they SAY is different but if you think for a second that Kerry is going to (end the war/roll back tax cuts/improve civil liberties/etc) you are either completely ignorant of what he has said and done in the past, or (worse) you think his sudden change in positions was legit and had nothing to do with struggling to find ways to differentiate himself from Bush.
So vote for who you really want to win, because either Bush or Kerry are going to win anyway and they will both equally suck.
But not for Bush or Kerry if you dislike the Iraq war.
Finkployd
And if you just want to export the data from the keychain in human readable form, try man security
security dump-keychain -r looks like what I want but it throws it out in a format I have never seen before. It is certainly not PEM or DER encoded.
What about dumping the keychain in plain text and taking the data from there and migrating it to a new system?
If you read my original post, that is exactly what you cannot do with keychain, and the basis of my complaint. There is no way to get data out of keychain in any standard format (PEM, DER, etc)
Right, but what you just told me is that a reader is more expensive than a usb token. Imagine a corporation where every person has their own PC and thus every PC needs a reader (not to mention they need to get them for their homes likely as well).
Ideally manufacturers would make smart card readers standard. IBM and Dell have been promising that to me for four years straight now. I only see a few specility models with them.
Why does each person using the computer need two keys/cards?
Your Keychain, in ~/Library/Keychains, is perfectly portable, and designed to be moved from computer to computer, or stored on a device for storing such tokens, such as a USB flash drive.
I mentioned it is possible to copy keychain files. Which is perfectly fine if you are only talking about OS X computers, but that isn't the only OS out there. Calling keychain portable is fine as long as you note that the portability is only extended to other Macs.
Further, that certificates are even in your keychain at all implies that you should have access to the original source certificate files, which clearly remain portable.
False, if you generate a personal identity cert using a service like Thawte or Verisign (which do this over a web interface) then the private key is generated as a request from their webserver on your machine, and ONLY stored in Keychain. Try it yourself, use Safari and go to Thawte's page and create a personal cert. The cert is downloaded in whatever format you desire, but the key is generated locally and there is NO way to get it out of Keychain (despite the permanently grayed out "export" menu option).
This kind of situation does not happen on any other OS. (and arguably wouldn't have happened on OSX had I used Mozilla or Firefox to generate the private key).
Lastly, what happens to the person who maybe generates their private key using, say, openssl and then imports it to keychain? Practicing good security maybe they decide that having multiple private keys is bad and the delete the file assuming that it is possible to export a private key out of Keychain. Is that such an unreasonable assumption? What good reason is there for OSX to not allow you to do that?
The changes to Keychain you referenced are certainly welcome (since that app has hardly changed at all over the years and could do much more), but I wonder if they will fix the exporting problem? I certainly hope so.
Finkployd
I know, I mentioned that, but that only helps if you are talking about another OS X computer. What about a Linux box or a Windows box?
Same issue with the readers through right? When you factor them into the cost.
Everyone has USB, why not use this instead of requiring a card reader?
:(
Excellent idea though, I have been in support of that concept for a while. This could be extended to requiring a password to unlock the private key on the card/usb drive or even have a small thumbprint reader on the card/usb drive itself to unlock the key. This would remove my major complaints about biometrics (ie replay attack)
These technologies all exist and would be simple, but people simply do not see the need for them so there is no demand (outside of of some rare government, education, and corporation groups). Unfortunately the average joe is content with a digital world that relies completly on his mother's maiden name for authentication
Finkployd
I finally found something about OS X that I absolutely hate and is making me question the entire OS. OS X has its own digital certificate/private key cache (which also stores passwords, but that is irrelevant), which is convenient for applications that use certificates and private keys for identity (like safari and mail.app). It also has a nice utility for managing this environment (Keychain Access).
HOWEVER, Apple (for reasons I cannot fathom) has decided to not allow keys and certs to be exported from this cache. This is totally unacceptable and horribly wrong. In this email, which confirms my worst fears, Peter Sagerson says it best:
In Jaguar, private keys are never exportable. This seems kind of silly, since my digital identity should be linked to me, not the platform, the machine or that particular (and transient) installation of the OS. In Panther, Keychain Access has an Export command, but it's never enabled. I don't see a Keychain-level API for key export and the CSSM API doesn't seem to work. So it's hard to tell what the intention is.
The intention seems to be the very incorrect idea that the digital identity belongs to the computer, and not the person. I have figured out how to move my cert and key to another Mac, that is simple creating a new keychain, copying certs to it, and moving the new keychain file to another machine. However, I still cannot get them out of Apple's proprietary format to move them to any non-OSX platform. I have posted this question to Apple's usually helpful discussion forum, but have received no answer.
This is most disturbing and calls into question both Apple's competency with regard to security in general, and their intentions with regard to what the user can do with their own data (or in this case, their own identity)
Ha! Just like Rodney King was resisting arrest.
He was, big time. Have you ever seen the full tape?
Look, what the cops did there was reprehensible and the fact that they got off even more so, but let's not pretend King was some hero. He is (still today) a repeat drunk driving offender who is frequently fighting with police and other, sometimes on PCP (which he was supposedly on during the taped beating). Society would be much better off without both King and the cops who beat him, there were no "winners" in that mess.
Finkployd
They got PSU completely wrong.
:)
:)
From the Top:
Is there a campuswide network? Yes
Hey, Forbes got one right!
Is there a wireless network? No
There is not wireless completely covering the huge campus, but there are wireless hotspots all over the place. This admittedly is a problem since only a handfull are centrally managed and use the University's central authentication system.
Can students access e-mail away from school? No
Yeah, because we don't offer POP3 (SSL POP3 and Kerberized POP3 for that matter). And if that doesn't count we wrote our own frikkin (extremely popular) webmail application for crying out loud (none of the existing ones scaled all that well or made use of our existing infrastructure)
Does the school provide Web pages? No
Wrong again
Does the school offer classes online? No
World Campus
Can students register online? No
Since about 1998 or so.
Can students do other administrative functions online? No
I cannot think of any administrative functions you CANNOT do online.
Are students required to own a computer? No
True, but only because just about every one does and if they do not there are general use labs at every campus.
Can students get discounted computers? Yes
Forbes now has two correct answers.
Does the school support handheld computers?
That's kinda vague. I'll accept no for now but that is being actively worked on.
Does the school stream audio or video of any courses? No
Yes
Is network access available in dorm rooms? No
Has been for years possibly a decade (there was when I got here in 96)
Is network access available in dormitory lounges? No
There are now three correct answers, go Forbes
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? No
Yes, remember who (for good or ill) pioneered the Napster II stuff? That was as a result of the ethics policy.
Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? No
Since Usenet existed (we were one of the first Bitnet nodes for crying out loud)
Does tuition include a computer? No
Four! Four correct answers...ha ha ha ha
Does the school provide multimedia equipment? No
Yes
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? No
I know quite a few professors who would be ticked at that answer.
Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations?
WPSU, For all your NPR and PRI needs
If all the stats Forbes has on schools are as accurate as this one, then this report means nothing.
Finkployd
If Bush is elected, industry leaders will serve corporate interests, as opposed to those of the public, as appointees in the Bush administration.
And you assume this will not be the case under Kerry? You are just exchanging the set of corporate masters pulling the strings on the president. Kerry is certainly no less corrupt or beholden to corporate and special interests. He isn't some outsider riding in to save us all, he is a part of the same system Bush is and has just as much interest in upholding the status quo.
If Bush is elected, my stock portfolio will go down
Now that us just silly. You (and everyone else) has absolutely no idea where the economy will go regardless of who is president.
You point about taxes is dead on though.
At lets not forget my skyrocketing energy costs thanks to Enron, and Halliburton.
Enron's shenanigans happened under Clinton's watch. And if you are going to complain about energy prices, place the blame where it belongs, instability in the middle east (so you can still blame Bush).
3. It shouldn't be a guy who takes a month long vacation every august
I agree, but on the same token we don't want a senator who missed a significant portion of votes and meetings while in office do we?
4. It shouldn't be a guy who's going to pray to the great dragon Shinron to magic the world ok and be totally ineffectual like all of the third party canadates. (If they can't run a campaign, they can't run the USA. It's just that simple.)
I didn't get this at all, you lost me with Shinron (wasn't that the dragon from Dragonball?) Are you saying that the third party candidates are only unsuccessful because they cannot run a campaign? You don't think it has anything to do with the way campaign finance is set up? Or the way the debates have been hajacked by the bipartisan debate commission that will never let a third party in? Or perhaps just because the status quo is set up to make sure that only republicans and democrats who will not change anything make it on ballots?
And a protest vote is wasted, Bush doesn't care if I protest or not, so long as he doesn't see it. This year, more than most others, a protest vote *is* a wasted protest.
It is not a "protest vote", I (and many others) seriously cannot stomach either skull n bones, spoiled, lying, yale frat boy. What should I do? Just not vote?
Finkployd
Exactly, which is a good example of why I dislike both. I dislike Bush for the patroit act and I dislike Kerry for supporting it, then pretending he is against it for the sake of votes. I'm not going to vote for evil, I don't care if it is "lesser" evil.
Finkployd
OOG THE CAVEMAN you are not.
That was a big issue for me, since my career is basically cryptography (not quite but cryptography is a major part of it).
Clipper was intended to outlaw (you heard me right) private research into and ownership of cryptography. Let me repeat, they were going to outlaw MATH. It was to be the exclusive domain of the federal government and the only crypto we could have was the backdoored clipper chip. This would have completely annihilated the computer industry in the US as nobody outside the US was going to use our watered down "legal"crypto, and companies that wanted to ensure privacy would have fled in droves. Frankly the implications both economically and socially of that move frightened me more than the Patriot act, we are talking government mandated, zero privacy.
Read The Electronic Privacy Papers to find out just how bad (and close to being real) this was.
Finkployd
I guess what I mean is, how sad is it that the best outcome is for government officials to be rendered ineffective? We are voting for people based on what they want to do, but then hoping that they are countered by others to prevent either from doing anything. Seems kinda pointless.
Finkployd
You're right. The person we elect will not make any difference at all. I'm not sure why we even vote for anyone in the executive branch. They are all simply puppets to the legislative branch. They have no real power.
, neither can claim they WILL or WILL NOT raise taxes, since it is not completely in their power. They will work with Congress to do one or the other but frankly even what they intend is subject to change if economic circumstances change.
Read up on how checks and balances work, you seem to have missed a civics class somewhere.
The point is, Mr Let's-Take-Fink's-Comment-To-An-Illogical-Extreme
Finkployd
And on the same token he will continue to wage war on the constitution by not only crap like the Patriot act, but pushing for EVEN MORE with Patriot II. He will continue to suppress findings and reports that the CIA assembled regarding 9/11. His speaking skills will continue to degenerate to where he cannot express himself at all.
Look anything good you can say about Bush can be easily countered with all the bad crap he has pulled. I voted for him once, as the lesser of two evils. Also because I mistakenly believed he was a conservative, but his irresponsible deficit spending cured me of that misconception.
And of course for many of the reasons you outlined, Kerry is no better. Since I do not feel strongly enough that either of these two should be president, I will vote for the 3rd party candidate who I most agree with.
Finkployd
Great idea, let's find a way to force down the price on something that actually has a marginal cost of production so that we can continue charging an exorbitant amount for software which has 0 incremental cost.
I'm sure the hardware manufacturers will just trip over themselves to cut their own profits so that Microsoft can continue to make even more money on their sub-standard software.
Finkployd
Rather than retype a bunch of stuff, I think my response here fits your comment.
Finkployd
I answer this here
Finkployd
Actually no, neither will raise or lower taxes. Congress will (or will not). It is completely meaningless what both of them are saying, they will only submit butgets and approve or veto what congress passes.
You know what? I'm really sick of ignorant people saying "both candidates suck, I shall weep".
:)
;), the more effectively you can complain and the more you find to complain about. Complaining does not mean giving up. Pointing out absurdity and corruption is complaining, would you have us not do that?
I never said that. Both candidates suck, I shall vote for neither. I voted for what I believed to be the lesser of two evils last time and look where that got us. I'm not doing it again.
I'm a fairly moderate Democrat, and you know what? Kerry doesn't suck. Neither did Al Gore. Neither did John McCain. I happen to really dislike George W Bush, but if I was a fairly hardcore right-wing conservative, I'd imagine I'd be pretty pissed to hear you say that he sucks.
I'm a socially liberal, fiscially conservative kinda guy, Kerry sucks in my opinion. Don't ever get me started on Edwards. Gore sucked (clipper chip anyone? he was its primary cheerleader). I like McCain, but I doubt he would ever get the republican nod (maybe as VP).
I know a lot of fairily right wing conservatives who agree about george bush. Many of them are voting for Kerry (there is a fairily strong republicans for Kerry campaign). Why? Because Bush is not a conservative. His reckless deficit spending is not what being a conservative is about. His pissing on the constitution with the patroit act and terrorism fear mongering is not what being a conservative is about.
Are they perfect, flawless, shining crystals of purity? No, they're mother-effing human beings who are probably trying to do what they feel is right, most of the time.
Yes, and what they feel is right seems to be "maintain the status quo, never change anything about the system that gives us power, money, and control", just like seemingly everyone in DC these days. If anyone running for president actually cared about making the system better there would be talk of "instant runoff voting", "campaign finance reform", or "balance budget amendments". None of them want to talk about these things, not because they would be bad for the country (they would be good), but because they would be bad for their political career and power.
I'm sick of reading bitchy posts and hearing bitchy comments about how "oh, all the candidates are bad", and "I'm not going to vote". If you really feel the candidates are that bad, go to the polls anyway. Write in a vote for "NONE OF THE ABOVE", or maybe even the third party candidate of your choice. Badnarik, Nader, whoever--votes for those guys are how the parties realize they need to appeal to those platforms.
That is actually what I am advocating. I think you got me confused with someone who is proposing we all just forget about the vote and sit home and smoke pot and complain
If we as young voters all pitch in and at least make an EFFORT to vote (even if they're throwaway votes for Nader or something), then our power as voters goes up.
I don't prefer nader myself, but in my opinion the only wasted vote is a vote for someone you don't actually believe in. Once it became normal to vote for the lesser of two evils, we as a population sent the message: "we are perfectly willing to vote for evil, just as long as you distract us with unimportant crap like swiftboat veterens, fake cbs memos, marriage amendments, and mysterious earpieces so that we know which evil we dislike more".
So go take a civics class or something and stop your complaining.
That is truly amusing on a couple of levels. I've found the more involved in civics you are (let's just say I am involved
Finkployd
Honestly, that is the first good reason to vote for one or the other I have heard yet. Although how telling is it that in order to get a better government we need to strive for political gridlock that results in them doing less.
Finkployd