Gotta tell ya, I been watching this one, and it's exciting: Kinky Friedman for TX Gov. He's making all the right moves online. The cartoons are slick, and getting really good candidate media out online is a huge part of getting people you don't know engaged in your project.

I think there's an enormous potential for independent political actors who have a different idea of how and why to govern to make great gains in the next 20 years. I'm still a fan of taking over the Democratic party (and of burning down and rebuilding the GOP too), but to be honest the Democrats are fucking squares. I'm a freak-power man myself, and I don't ever really see myself having a comfortably home under that big tent. It's a big tent, but everyone in it of consequence is deeply (and beautifully) square. As the Hammer of Truth notes:

There’s going to come a time in American politics when we’re tired of ex-wrestlers, action heros, and writer/author/country singers and want staid guys in suits to lead us. Until then, and as long as the establishment politicians are fun-hating windbags who only stop legislating morality long enough to take a bribe or shoot their friends, Go Kinky!

Fuck yeah. Maybe once I'm old and networked enough, I'll head on back to Oregon and stomp it up. Rowdy bloggers running for office on the open source ticket. Frank already promised to work for me, so there's that. Could be fun.

Internet at home was hitting some snags: I could keep a persistant ssh connection to remote servers, which is pretty essential in my line of work.

Jeff Kramer, one of the Gurus at Polycot, reminded me how to get around this, which he'd done before back when I was at MFA. In the interest of not forgetting this again, here's the stuff:

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.keepintvl=120
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.keepidle=1500
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive=1

Basically, this tightens up the "keepalive" command, which means my lappy will sent a couple bytes of data out to remote servers over TCP/IP saying "I'm still here... don't hang up on me" more often than before. Hopefully this will work like before and prevent the disruptions.

You'll want to issue those commands as root (best through sudo) and/or put them at the end of your /etc/rc file (prior to the "exit 0" line though) so they get issued on startup.

Thanks Jeff!

Walk the Line was really quite good! And not a bad choice for Valentines day either.

I actually thought it was a better film than most of those up for major awards, even though it comes up somewhat short of what you'd want from a Johnny Cash biopic. I agree with my man Shouter Dauter that it's more of a "tribute" film. In addition to compressing time and leaving out some of the better/wilder Cash exploits, they also radically simplified the religious and substance-abuse angles, but it's a movie. They needed to build a basic narrative, and following on the formula that Ray etched out -- great music, great actors, and a plot arc about a good man who has to kick his habbit to reach his full potential -- is a pretty logical choice.

I really have to give it up for Reece Whitherspoon, who I have an instinctual loathing of as a person (for no good reason, really), but who continually impresses me as an actress and manages to be downright attractive in character. That's talent.

The movie made me miss the South from last summer. Like, I got all excited when they showed Sun Records. It's a small place, you know; and I been there. That's always a little thrill. But it's more than that. It's the vibe of the whole thing, the South, from the bit at the beginning in Arkansas farm country through to the Carter family coming over in a pickup with Thanksgiving.

For a lot of us Northerners and urbanites, all the good essential bits of humanity that are a bound up in those cultural traditions and places are mixed up in ideas about Southern/rural racism and ignorance, which is in itself a form of ignorance, which is too bad.

Day got away from me. Happens to the best of us. Still, feel like I got a lot done.

As the collective methological knoweldge of the Open Source movement begins to permeate those who understand government and politics and things of that nature, I suspect we'll begin to see more and more stuff like this:

The real damage to our national security isn't in the too much disclosure of information. Al Qaeda doesn't have bureaucracies of analysts and spies probing for weaknesses in the American security system. The worst thing that could potentially happen is that the name of a captured jihadi is prematurely leaked before useful intelligence can be gained. Does anyone truly think that al Qaeda actually believed that e-mails and phone calls to the US weren't being monitored?

No, the HUGE problem, the elephant in the room, isn't leaks. Rather, it is in a complete lack of transparency. As we have seen again and again, secrecy prevents the full analysis of alternatives. It shuts down debate and prevents the qualification of sources. It is also the crutch of bad and/or nefarious management.

This is why Microsoft's products are routinely exploited by malicious software (viruses, spyware, etc) and high-quality open source products are not. Market-share is a factor, but the reality is there are simply way more holes in Windows than in Linux (or BSD, the open source core of MacOS X). There is no way for you to vet the Windows code, whereas every proposed patch and development to any active open source project will be reviewed and debated -- in public, I might add -- by experts in the field, with the opportunity for anyone at any time to suggest an improvement or fix.

The application of this simple revelation to Government is a little tricky, but the overrarching lesson is that Security Through Obscurity Is Not Dependable, and may in fact create vulnerability, not to mention being latently undemocratic.

The simple reality is that in the 21st-Century, Governments must go on-line in a real way which empoweres citizens to learn about, watchdog and interact with public servants and services. This will inevitably provide better governance, which is what citizens deserve and desire. The first political party to explain (perhaps demonstrate) and "own" this sort of initiative will make political hay.

Why do local credit unions routinely have better web services than the Social Security Administration?

Why isn't the Government providing secure, trusted, unified identity services?

Why isn't a unified federal budget available online with the ability to drill down from departmental appropriations to specific expendatures?

The truth is that people respond to real information as well as to propaganda and fearmongering. In the long run, one form of building political capital creates a strong civil society which can make collective desisions and support itself, and the other creates a latently facist Daddy State in which citizens are disempowered, afraid, and seek protection and patronage from their superiors in the statehouse.

Pick one.

As the collective methological knoweldge of the Open Source movement begins to permeate those who understand government and politics and things of that nature, I suspect we'll begin to see more and more stuff like this:

The real damage to our national security isn't in the too much disclosure of information. Al Qaeda doesn't have bureaucracies of analysts and spies probing for weaknesses in the American security system. The worst thing that could potentially happen is that the name of a captured jihadi is prematurely leaked before useful intelligence can be gained. Does anyone truly think that al Qaeda actually believed that e-mails and phone calls to the US weren't being monitored?

No, the HUGE problem, the elephant in the room, isn't leaks. Rather, it is in a complete lack of transparency. As we have seen again and again, secrecy prevents the full analysis of alternatives. It shuts down debate and prevents the qualification of sources. It is also the crutch of bad and/or nefarious management.

This is why Microsoft's products are routinely exploited by malicious software (viruses, spyware, etc) and high-quality open source products are not. Market-share is a factor, but the reality is there are simply way more holes in Windows than in Linux (or BSD, the open source core of MacOS X). There is no way for you to vet the Windows code, whereas every proposed patch and development to any active open source project will be reviewed and debated -- in public, I might add -- by experts in the field, with the opportunity for anyone at any time to suggest an improvement or fix.

The application of this simple revelation to Government is a little tricky, but the overrarching lesson is that Security Through Obscurity Is Not Dependable, and may in fact create vulnerability, not to mention being latently undemocratic.

The simple reality is that in the 21st-Century, Governments must go on-line in a real way which empoweres citizens to learn about, watchdog and interact with public servants and services. This will inevitably provide better governance, which is what citizens deserve and desire. The first political party to explain (perhaps demonstrate) and "own" this sort of initiative will make political hay.

Why do local credit unions routinely have better web services than the Social Security Administration?

Why isn't the Government providing secure, trusted, unified identity services?

Why isn't a unified federal budget available online with the ability to drill down from departmental appropriations to specific expendatures?

The truth is that people respond to real information as well as to propaganda and fearmongering. In the long run, one form of building political capital creates a strong civil society which can make collective desisions and support itself, and the other creates a latently facist Daddy State in which citizens are disempowered, afraid, and seek protection and patronage from their superiors in the statehouse.

Pick one.

I've been enjoying very much the blogging of Glenn Greenwald, who's got a very well-done post up looking at what's going on with the contemporary "Conservative" heads:

[P]eople like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists. Their allegiance is not to any principles of government but to strong authority through a single leader.

They love them that Daddy State, yes they do. The post is around 2800 words, and they're good ones.

Update: Greenwalkd responds to some responses. One of the most interesting bits is the quote he found from Bill Kristol (who's sort of the consiglere of neoconservatism) saying that "Bush was the movement and the cause."

The three most wonderful things about snow days in NYC: the already-beautiful topography looks even more interesting dusted with snow; the flakes absorb sound and keep a lot of cars off the road, making the city quiet; you can't see any garbage.

I'm going to stay in and relax, maybe make a run for coffee provisions, work on my new site a bit. Last night was a late one. I'd planned to just rest and relax but then I got the word that it was my friend Jay's birthday, and I hadn't seen him since last may in Washington DC. Going out with Jay generally means being in for the long haul, so I consider myself lucky to have gotten home at 5:30.

Time Warner finally came through!

Expect more out of me.

This morning Murph texted me, "Do you hate 'telling it like it is?'" in response to a post-Superbowl barroom chat we had last night. I responded, yes, because more often than not, I don't agree that that is, in fact, how it is. Almost universally. Now, of course, some things are irrefutably "like it is." The sun rises in the East. That's just how it is. Johnny Damon has signed with the Yankees. That's just how it is. I am underpaid and undervalued at my dead-end job. That's just how it is. Usually, though, folks who invoke the "like it is" clause are apt to be qualifying one of their paranoid, uninformed conjectures that usually features some degree of bigotry and, often as not, outright violence. You know who I mean.

Jeremy Slusarz is a great writing talent. Someone give him a job doing that please.