November 2008 Archives

I have much to be thankful for this year. Honestly, every year of my adult life has been great even with the ups and downs. My wife and I work very hard at living consciously and deliberately, so I feel like I've really earned whatever success and pleasantness I've experienced. Here's a smattering:

• My wife: I wouldn't be the man I am today if I had never met her. I feel so fortunate that we have such a strong relationship after 15 years of marriage, but it doesn't surprise me since I have so much admiration for her.
• My girls: my three daughters (5, 5, 3) are the biggest joy in my life. They're rambunctious, contentious, and mischievous but mostly they're just marvelous. I think I'm a better man for having them.
• My son: we're three days away from the journey to pick him up from Ethiopia. That will be the culmination of over a year of effort, paying through the nose, and complying with maddening bureaucracies. He will complete our family and I just can't wait to meet him.
• My job: Go Daddy is a great employer. The benefits and pay are outstanding. I've been fortunate to have challenging and interesting work. My team is reliable, competent, and nimble. I'm taking a month off to be with my new son and had to move my plans up a week with only two days notice, but my boss was fine with it (much more than I was) and expressed excitement at my upcoming adventure. I plan to stay there as long as they'll have me.
• My friend Larry: he lives in San Diego and I don't talk to him nearly enough, but whenever we do it feels exciting and refreshing. He's also the smartest guy I know—besides myself, ahem. We see him several times a year and the kids adore him.

I was going to list my iPod, my MacBook, and my MINI Cooper but their importance in my life is different in kind from the items listed above. They're great and all but their absence wouldn't leave a void in my life.

To those of my readers who are tired of reading my political writings, have hope! I am working on a new blog where I plan to do all of my political blogging. I will then try to keep bblog focused on computers, programming, and technology.

The new blog will have a stable of Objectivist authors commenting on politics, society, and culture. I have high hopes for it. I'm still setting up the blog—look for an announcement in the next week or so.

[UPDATE (11/25/2008): My new blogging partner has broken the news about The New Clarion. I am so excited about this.]

The students at an elementary school spontaneously asked for their school to be renamed Barack Obama Elementary School. At least, some fifth graders who held a mock debate and who came to a school board meeting to request the change. And then the school board unanimously and immediately accepted the change.

I can't say anything else about this. Do I comment about the sorry state of education, the deification of The One, or cynical manipulation of children? I'm at a loss.

Interesting news is coming furiously since the election and I just can't muster enough wherewithal to write whole entries about it. So here's another del.icio.us barf:

• So Obama's plans for enlisting teenagers and college students into national service morphed from "require" to a "setting a goal" after a few hours of bad publicity. I saw this on Friday too and was aghast at the thought, but it was something that both Obama and McCain had campaigned on all along. I don't understand the furor and I was glad that he was finally coming clean about "expecting you to work." Does this mean that he'll be the panderer everyone right of him hoped he'd be? I had considered him to be a closet Marxist given the company he kept, the statements he casually dropped, and the path by which he had risen. This incident plus the hint that he's going to pull from the Clinton dugout for his Cabinet makes me hopeful, but not too much so.
• The encomiums continue as writers gush over the ascendance. I love how they delude themselves into thinking that he's writing these speeches himself. And I'm sure they're off the cuff. And those teleprompters are there just in case he gets distracted by a flash of inspiration. Bush is routinely accused of being anti-intellectual, but who looks to the president for inspiration or validation? Oh, collectivist writers.

• Earlier I linked to an inspiring call to action by Representative Jeff Flake the day after the election. It was clear to me during the entire campaign (and really during the whole Bush administration) that the GOP had strayed far from its Goldwater days. Back then, it was a party in favor of limited government and individual freedom. (For the most part, that is, because there was a sizable states' rights faction that fought desegregation. Goldwater wasn't a part of that at all.) The neoconservative movement had systematically taken over the Republican Party, reorienting it towards big government. I had (and have) high hopes that this defeat will bring about a shift or retrenchment away from the neocon philosophy. There are now a lot of voices joining Flake's in calling for a refocusing and a return.

  But I worry that Republicans might get the wrong lesson from this election. I worried that they might conclude that they weren't religious enough (Pence, I retract my earlier praise), that McCain was too moderate, or that they should veer left to get back in power. Reading this conservative post-mortem, only Richard A. Viguerie nailed the proper conclusion. We must take back the GOP and put it on a principled footing of individual rights and limited government. Only then can the voters make a valid choice between two opposing viewpoints.

• One of the oft-repeated canards of this election cycle is that voter turnout was unprecedented. The story goes that Obama is such a charismatic and inspiring leader that he aroused the average apathetic American out of electoral slumber. More people voted, but the turnout was about the same. It appears that the average apathetic American was just as apathetic—rightly so, given the contest between Socialism and Socialism Light—as ever, but the average Democrat was much more involved. And the youth really came through for Obama. This alarms me somewhat, but I think their expectations are so high that they're in for a rude awakening. There's already been some move to cushion the fall for when Obama Claus can't deliver.
• I don't know whether to laugh or to cry about Al Gore's recent editorials. On the one hand, I'm heartened by his need to disguise his eco-fascism as "capitalism." That suggests that he thinks he couldn't get away with baring his teeth openly. On the other, the prescription he lays out for making capitalism "sustainable" is so nakedly anti-capitalistic that I can't believe anyone would be snookered by it. Yet surely they must be. "100% carbon-free electricity within 10 years" WTF? HFS! "At this moment, we are faced with the convergence of three interrelated crises: economic recession, energy insecurity and the overarching climate crisis. Solving any one of these challenges requires addressing all three." Solving any of these "problems" will require massive dislocations, inconceivable expenditures, and unprecedented government interventions. None of these "crises" are legitimate: the bugaboo is but a dodge to distract while the statists expand their power. Taken together, it's of a piece with 9/11 and the rise of Homeland Security—fear overcomes many people's natural aversion to government intrusion.
• This cartoon illustrates one of the things that Americans just don't understand about immigration: it is almost impossible to do it legally. Yet hundreds of thousands do every year and a decent percentage of them go on to become American citizens. Freedom isn't something that depends on where you popped out of the uterus; it is inherent in our humanity. If people want to come to America, then we should welcome them so long as they are not contagious or criminal. It worked—for the most part—the first hundred and fifty years so why not re-open our borders?

I have to agree with Dare Obasanjo's latest blog entry about in-memory caching. After working on high-transaction, heavy database-using Web applications for the last nine years, there is one thing above all else that I have learned and taken to heart: a Web application is only as good as its caching strategy. My career has seen a progression from light to heavy cache usage and each new application has benefitted in scalability from that.

Dare's entry got me thinking: why couldn't the RDBMS itself incorporate a distributed, in-memory cache like memcached or Project Velocity? What if a Web application could basically eliminate the need for its own caching layer by relying solely on the database, which would then aggressively and algorithmically use one of the caching services to expand its memory-based caching?

If the problem with query caching in MySQL or SQL Server is the amount of server RAM that can be installed, then distributed caching seems like the perfect solution. It's what the Web server layer uses: why not bring it down to the data layer. Moreover, given the common replication and clustering scenarios, there are likely idle database servers whose memory is already going unused for the most part. Putting a distributed caching system in place would put them in action while still keeping them ready for failovers.

The main objections I can see is that going to the database might cause an increase in network usage since some cache calls in the Web server layer would never leave the server and that the database would have to work to decide between file-level and cache-level access. But that would be minimal and the simplification it would engender on the Web application level would make the costs even less objectionable.

It's entirely possible that Project Velocity is being undertaken with exactly this thought in mind. (It's not clear that there's any movement afoot in MySQL AB towards this end—at least from my cursory searches.) This idea would have to be implemented at the RDBMS level.

A House committee is considering nationalizing 401(k)s but you wouldn't know it from the press release they put out. Luckily, the Carolina Journal, a publication of the John Locke Foundation, investigated more deeply and has publicized the testimony of Theresa Ghilarducci. To read the aforementioned press release, the only notable outcome from the two witnesses was that the situation has workers and retirees spooked. (The later field hearing in San Francisco was much more muted and reasonable in its calls to action.)

Thus far, a call for better information and education is the only thing that has come from committee chairman George Miller. But he's "considering" all options, including those of Ghilarducci and Weller. Their preference is for the government to offer Guaranteed Retirement Accounts to those worried about their retirement and eventually phase in a replacement of everyone's 401(k) with a GRA, which is fully "invested" in Treasury bonds guaranteeing a 3% annual return.

But with a statement of commitment like the following, how long will Miller hold out?

"We will fight to restore workers' rights, so that every American can benefit from economic opportunity. And we will make the preservation and strengthening of retirement savings a priority, so that all Americans can enjoy a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work."

The whole retirement savings sector is suffused with government meddling and distortion. It needs to exit in an orderly fashion, protecting commitments already made but leaving those without such guarantees to make their own decisions. People earn the money that they segregate for their later years; why can't they be allowed responsibility for managing it?

I just took a survey from QuikTrip about environmental perceptions. Here are the questions:

1. Do you sort and recycle your trash?
2. How concerned would you say you are about the environment?
3. Do you perceive the plastic fountain drink cups sold by QuikTrip to be more environmentally friendly than styrofoam cups?
4. Please select the following statement which best describes your fountain drink purchasing actions
5. How do you perceive QuikTrip as it pertains to the environment?

When it asked for further comments, I left this:

Frankly, pandering to the environmental movement annoys me to no end. There is no way you're going to be "green enough" for the crazies given that you sell liquefied carbon, transport goods from places distant, and contribute to an economy that prizes convenience over privation. Embrace your right to exist instead of apologizing for not being the eco-equivalent of a roadside stand. You are an amazing, modern enterprise that is only possible in the United States. Good for you!

I just got an email from Wells Fargo saying that my account was deactivated until I faxed some information to them. It was done to prevent any unauthorized transactions.

• First name
• Last name
• SSN
• Adress [sic]
• City
• Zipcode
• Phone number
• E-mail address
• Credit/debit card number (16 digits numbers of your card)
• Expiration Date
• Code Verification number(3 digits number of [sic] the back of your card)
• ATM PIN ( for bank customer verification)

I don't have a Wells Fargo account so I just sent them my bank's information. I hope they re-activate it soon as I need to buy gas this morning.

Hilarious. {via}

Jeff Flake's editorial in the Washington Post today is exactly what I needed this morning. It's exactly what I would have liked the losing presidential candidate to have said in a concession speech:

I suggest that we return to first principles. At the top of that list has to be a recommitment to limited government. After eight years of profligate spending and soaring deficits, voters can be forgiven for not knowing that limited government has long been the first article of faith for Republicans.

Second, we need to recommit to our belief in economic freedom. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" may be on the discount rack this year, but the free market is still the most efficient means to allocate capital and human resources in an economy, and Americans know it. Now that we've inserted government deeply into the private sector by bailing out banks and businesses, the temptation will be for government to overstay its welcome and force the distribution of resources to serve political ends. Substituting political for economic incentives is not the recipe for economic recovery.

Let's compare how I voted to how the rest of my Arizonans voted. Outside of my district and county, I pretty much am out of step. I'm glad they voted down the "homeowner's bill of rights" and took a tax on home sales off the table permanently, but they also stopped same-sex marriage with a constitutional amendment, snuffed payday loans out of existence, and enabled a Masschusetts-style denial of private insurance.

My wife thinks that the proposition voting mirrored the spending trends on commercials. I cannot believe that, but it's a compelling argument. Some of the proposition wording was very precise and commercials about those measures were very deceptive—did people not look into the matter further?

It's done finally, so now's the time to move on and start accepting the outcome. I have got a couple of months to lay low, relax, and study before I join the Kulturkampf. An Obama presidency is a grand opportunity to publicize Ayn Rand and Objectivism since he represents such a stark contrast to us.

Barack Obama is president.

I listened to John McCain's concession speech with disgust. It succinctly summed up McCain: a pragmatist and compromiser to the end. A principled opponent would have conceded the battle but laid the groundwork for the larger war. He would have pledged to relight the flame of liberty during the dark times ahead.

In today's climate, such a speech is unthinkable. Unity is the buzzword of the day. Like many times during his flawed, unprincipled run at the presidency, I sought comfort in the 1964 campaign. After listening to McCain's terrible convention acceptance speech, Goldwater's was a palliative. I figured that his concession in that same year might provide the inspiring call to action that McCain's wasn't. There's some of that but I think there must be a pattern of graciousness in these matters that I was unaware of. Or maybe the losing candidates are just as sick of campaigning as we are.

I've waited 'til now to make any statement about this election because I wanted to find out more of the details of the vote—not just the total but the spread of it, what it might portend at this very early date.

I know many of you expected me to make some statement last night but I held that off. I sent the President the following wire, which I think will be available for you if you don't have it now:

"To President Lyndon Johnson in Johnson City, Texas.

Congratulations on your victory. I will help you in any way that I can toward achieving a growing and better America and a secure and dignified peace. The role of the Republican party will remain in that temper but it also remains the party of opposition when opposition is called for. There is much to be done with Vietnam, Cuba, the problem of law and order in this country, and a productive economy. Communism remains our No. 1 obstacle to peace and I know that all Americans will join with you in honest solutions to these problems."

I have no bitterness, no rancor at all. I say to the President as a fellow politician that he did a wonderful job. He put together a vote total that's larger than has ever been gained in this country.

However, it's interesting to me and very surprising to me that the latest figures that I can get do not reach the totals of the 1960 election. I am disappointed in this because I thought that the American people would have turned out in greater numbers than they seem to have done.

But he did a good job and I have to congratulate him on it.

Also I want to express my gratitude to the more than 25 million people in this country who not necessarily voted for me but they voted for a philosophy I represent, a Republican philosophy that I believe the Republican party must cling to and strengthen in the years ahead.

I want to thank all of you across this nation who turned out in those numbers to support my candidacy and that of Bill Miller and the Republican party.

I don't think that I've ever seen more dedicated people in my life, people who worked as hard or who worked as long and produced the results that they did. These people are dedicated to, as I say, the Republican philosophy.

There is a two-party system in this country and we're going to keep it. We're going to devote our days and the years ahead to strengthening the Republican party, to getting more people into it and I feel that the young people coming along will provide the army that we need.

This effort that we engaged in last January 3 turns out to be a much longer effort than we thought. It's not an effort that we can drop now nor do we have any intentions of dropping it now.

I will devote—being unemployed as of January 3 or thereabouts—I'll have a lot of time to devote to this party, to its leadership and to the strengthening of the party, and that I have every intention of doing. I want to just ask the people in this country who worked so hard in this election not to be despondent, that we have a job to do and let's get along with it, because there are many questions that have to be answered.

I'm very hopeful that the President will, now that the election is over, get along with the answers that we've sought during the campaign—the answers about Vietnam, about Cuba, about Communism—Communism's continuing growth all around the world—about the growing tendency to the control of our economy and our daily lives in this country.

As I said in my wire, anything that I can do—and I'm sure that I speak for all Americans—anything that we can do to help the President get along with the solutions to these problems, we're ready, willing and able to do.

Now with that I have nothing further to say. I will entertain a few questions—not any prolonged period at it. Mr. Wagner will recognize.

I've been searching for the perfect word to describe Barack Obama fanatics. Portmanteaus seemed to be the perfect neologistical type but all the ones I have found were unsatisfying to pronounce. "Obamaniac" was the closest but it just doesn't work as a word and I've seen too many of them co-opt it for themselves. I don't disparage people who like it.

While driving home from dinner tonight, I came up with a doozy. With a sigh of relief at the conclusion of a long, tiring expedition, I offer up Obamaton. Looking over the results at Google and Twitter, I cannot lay claim to originality but at least I'm well clear of cliché.

With all of the linking I've been doing lately, I have noticed that it's really hard to go directly to a particular quote or part of a much-longer essay. My pointers, therefore, often require the reader to wade through a lot of detail to get to the underlying message. "If only people would dutifully place 'id' attributes throughout their paragraphs, I would be able to send my reader directly to the right place," I would think to myself.

But I don't do anything like that. How can I expect everyone else to do it if I won't lead by example? Good point, rhetorical question! With the last couple posts, I have added "id" attributes to each and every paragraph. So if you wanted to send someone to my post on why I voted for John McCain and specifically the part where I discuss the Republicans under an Obama presidency, you can view the HTML source and see that this link (http://bbrown.info/2008/10/13/why-i-voted-for-mccain.aspx#why-obama-opposition-refutation) will take you there.

After writing that last sentence, i realize that I need to make this a little more discoverable. The first task is to put in that metadata—interested parties will find it—but then I need to make it useful to anyone.

Election fatigue has really set in this last week. I have started several blog entries only to feel dispirited and end up canceling them. I have dutifully collected dozens of links for those entries, and I feel like I should share them in rapid-fire fashion just to get them out of my consciousness:

• "How Capitalism Will Save Us": Steve Forbes weighs in on the current financial crisis. This is a great explanation of how we came to be where we are along with a prescription for what we need to do once the crisis is resolved, which he predicts will be by next spring. Reading this essay, I lapsed into a daydream about what if he had been elected president back in 1996 or 2000. He makes every presidential candidate of either party seem like an intellectual lightweight (except for maybe Al Gore). I may disagree with him at times, but I know that his arguments are genuinely held, well informed, and thoughtful. I hope he runs again; if he did, I would volunteer much more hardily than I did in his previous presidential adventures.
• "Checks on 'Joe' more extensive than first acknowledged": this plus the legal intimidation (the entry's a little hard to read, but the controversy seems to surround temporary Obama campaign workers registering and voting) and the media freeze plus spells out how dissenters might fare under an Obama administration. He does not handle opposition well.
• "Obama's Moving Tax Threshold": when someone says that they want to close the gap between the rich and poor, there's only two ways to do it: spread the rich's wealth around to make the poor richer—the Robin Hood model—or redefine rich down so that the spread is nominally smaller. It's a rare candidate indeed who does both.
• Obama's Constitution: it discusses Professor Cass Sunstein's infatuation with FDR's Second Bill of Rights, which is the clearest statement of economic collectivism that I've seen from an American politician. Sunstein was the Obama campaign's go-to guy over Obama's 2001 radio interview wherein The One implicitly confirmed what he meant by spreading the wealth.
• Prepared Remarks of Senator John McCain in NH: it's a decent speech complaining about Obama's tax plan. It's just too bad that he contradicts it all the time by wanting to tax "windfall" profits and denouncing corporate greed. That's McCain in a nutshell: a contradictory, unprincipled demagogue.
• "White People Shouldn't Be Allowed to Vote": this will be a common refrain should Obama somehow lose. The racist voters just weren't up to the challenge of voting for a black man. It's definitely not that he's the most liberal candidate put up by either party in the last twenty years or that he associates with anti-American radicals, or that he's a Chicago politician of the worst kind. Nope, we're just as racist as ever.
• "Obama's Carbon Ultimatum": and this is one of the biggest reasons I'm afraid of an Obama administration. He's bad enough, but the people he'll bring to Washington amplify and expand his reach. The Senate is already prepared to fast track any nominees he puts forth. That includes packing the courts.

That's about half the links I've been collecting, sadly. So expect another link dump in a few days.

[UPDATE (11/1/2008): You mean the checks on Joe's child support records were politically motivated? No way!]