Wasting Time Explaining a Waste of Time

The views expressed here forth are a response to an article posted on American Thinker and assuming, like the many comments already visible therein, that it is not rejected during moderation, this will also be viewable there.

Let it be known, first and foremost, that I do not believe either party candidate to be of any *real* value to the citizens of this country. That said, this entire "controversy" is a waste of time; the prerequisites for presidential candidacy are checked in most states, if not all. Additionally, many US citizens maintain citizenship in other countries that do not provide for Dual Citizenship and the United States has not overturned their citizenship. I know people who *work for the US government* that maintain citizenship in Italy, Japan and Egypt personally and, while their citizenship in those countries is not recognized while they're in the United States (meaning they can not seek harbor in an embassy to require extradition for prosecution), this has not nullified their citizenship (in fact the US *only* recognizes their US citizenship). Also, once you are a natural born US citizen the citizenship status or changes of your parents does not affect your own unless it can be proven that they never were US citizens in the first place. Simply put, citizenship gives the US legal system more capability and, as such, they use it whenever convenient. Even if Obama *had* shown a birth certificate to an unfriendly source in person we would still be depending on the words of someone else rather than deciding for ourselves; is it now the responsibility of every political candidate to carry their birth certificate on their person so as to show it to everyone? What happens if/when it gets stolen? I know I don't carry mine with me just to prove I'm a citizen, I just show it to the appropriate government office when they require it and put it back in a safe place.

Additionally, Obama's health records, while not complete and detailed, or no less reliable than the exposure McCain has provided (effectively very limited access by few people for a limited time) and the analysis of these limited views still show Obama to be in significantly higher health. If you're going to require health records, which I completely agree with, require complete disclosure from all candidates.

Molotov also makes bold claims when stating that they released information before "anybody knew," clearly showing exaggeration since they obviously weren't part of the movement and likely had to take their information from somebody. Also, conspiracy is defined as "an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons" amongst other similar derivatives, which this video is (not that I mind, it's important to consider the possibilities of these things, the term has been loaded with a negative "foil hat" image), keeping in mind that a search for "Illuminati" will return results almost entirely consisting of conspiracy theories.

This article serves as nothing more than smoke-screen in an ever-filled political atmosphere through which too many people are depending on the unproven words of "smart people" instead of looking the information up and deciding for themselves. If this is supposed to be published for an "American Thinker" why not *think* before disseminating it?

P.S. McCain has a similar case brought up and, rightly so, both have been dismissed on similar terms. I suppose its only fair to question the citizenship of every candidate, but don't you think the process would have booted them by now?

Longwinded Response and Declaration of Political Views

I've been working on the majority of this for quite some time and was about to paste it in a forum discussion (found here) until I realized that it's even longer than my usual rants (I guess that's what happens when I let it build over time ;p). Some of the segments/content herein are new or altered and serve primarily as response to posts in the forum.

It seems we have similar views, but I find it hard to believe that a constitutionalist (like myself) would vote for McCain simply based on his Senate record. Ron Paul was the most constitutionally aligned candidate this election, but bad press and primary campaign funding coming from the grassroots internet movement didn't put him far enough forward for people to research his platform enough to understand his position. My opinion about America and it's core values seems, to me, to be common sense from middle school social studies class, but it may be that many Americans have become too lazy or their perspective is outside the scope of my understanding. I agree with you on a lot of the points you make, but I don't think that you've actually given any particularly good reasons for your position. I also believe that more people should acknowledge just how much George W. Bush has hurt our constitutional rights; this is very important because John McCain has voted 90+% along with Bush over several years while he and his confused VP receive support from bigoted leaders without addressing the awful things they say. It's also incredibly important that the American people not be convinced to let up on their prying; these people will become the most powerful people in the world. It's massively important that we let resolution come (the opposite of postponing) to things like the next troopergate investigation before making decision about a woman who could very easily become a replacement president with an unadressed reasonable statistical possibility of natural death.

I feel that the absolute most important principle in American values is freedom. I define freedom as the right to do whatever you want so long as you do not get in the way of anybody else doing what they want. I believe that in America, the only purpose of law is to protect our freedoms. Murder, rape, theft, discrimination, etc. are matter-of-factly an aggression against the freedom of another citizen. With that said, I think that voting for a candidate (who isn't even running for part of the legislative branch, mind you) based on their opinions about concepts that we can not, based entirely on fact, say is an attack on the freedom of another should not even touch the floor of congress, let alone be part of a candidate's platform. The tiered/federalized system supports the possibility of like-minded people grouping and enforcing common opinion; the federal governments primary purpose is to protect our constitutional liberties. We do, however, have quite a mess on our hands given the state of the economy.

Income tax is entirely unconstitutional as the 16th amendment was never properly ratified and it is neither a direct apportioned tax, nor an indirect uniform tax (this interview does a fine job explaining the position) and is therefore not even remotely close to an executive branch concern so much as legislative and/or judicial. It is also against our founding principles due to the fact that it enforces taxation in Washington D.C. and other unrepresetned zones (taxation without representation, anybody?). The same branch-orientation applies to abortion as the only thing a president can do is appoint justices and choose to veto or not, which congress can, on our behalf, override in a true majority based decision anyway (overriding veto with process or judicial review with new legislation/ammendments). We should be looking for a president that knows these things well, as it will be his job, and acts accordingly. We don't need a President who is pro-choice or pro-life, we don't need a President who will legalize drugs (as much as I believe drug related infractions should be based on what laws they've broken that affect other people, like killing someone while driving intoxicated, not based on what you decided to put in your body while sitting in the comfort of your living room) since he can't legalize/decriminalize anything.

What we truly need is a President who knows to Veto a bill that does not benefit the majority of our population, such as the Patriot Act which was written before the event utilized to pass it and which passed without elected officials even reading it. We need a president that doesn't "authorize" warrantless wire-types on US citizens without reason. We need a President that knows that passing a law that gives the President the ability to declare martial law is the opposite of supporting our constitution's foundation (too late again, of course). We need a President that isn't going to lie to us to support his own agenda or cover his friends' a**es or to establish fake enemies with no proof which degrade society by supporting race/religious hate and enforce an international stereotype of the mean and stupid nature of Americans.

Unfortunately, over the last century we've dug ourselves into such a deep hole of non-majority supporting legislation that, at this point, we need government involvement just to clean up after the mess we let our government make in the first place, but far more importantly we need Americans that hold their representation accountable and force action even when our politicians turn into flopping fish because of their campaign funding or other misrepresentation rationalizations. We need Americans that are willing to push their representation for impeachment when their position has been misused, rather than over suits that with little impact on America that can be handled in civil courts.

The privatized fiat currency we've allowed to gradually destroy our economy while being convinced (for whatever reason I do not know) that printing more of it can actually fix something is a mess that can't be resolved in one term. The money we waste declaring war on our own people (War on Drugs) sending armed forces into the homes of families near "farmers" in California (this used to be illegal), or arresting large numbers of people in unfortunate circumstances negatively affecting one or two people, all the while bailing out white collar criminals who have potentially contributed to the destruction of the lives of millions (criminals punished by paying them millions of dollars for failing to perform their duties effectively). This isn't something that can be fixed without the government, it's something the government needs to fix on our behalf.

Lastly, while battleground states can be very narrow lines, the only reason that it is currently "impossible" to elect a candidate outside the two major parties is that everybody seems to think that they have to vote one or the other or they're throwing their vote away. This isn't actually a two-party country, there's just an illusion that benefits big business and continuity of current tactics. The person who wins is the person with the most electoral college votes, no questions asked, period. Still, regardless of differences of opinion I'm very happy to see that many of us are still actively engaging in discussion and debate about these concerns. It gives me hope, and it's the only thing we can use to change these dangerous illusions.

White Privelege

I didn't write this, and I didn't find it, a friend of mine by the name Chris Scott posted someone else's work and I was very impressed with it. Sorry, I know I haven't written anything myself in some time and I need to get back on that, but for now, taste a bit of this:

September 13, 2008
This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise


For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because 'every family has challenges,' even as black and
Latino families with similar 'challenges' are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and
arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a 'fuckin' redneck,' like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll 'kick their fuckin' ass,' and talk about how you like to 'shoot shit' for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement,
whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as
the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're 'untested.'

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words 'under God' in the pledge of allegiance because 'if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me,' and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the 'under God' part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution,
which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state
to secede from the Union, and whose motto is 'Alaska
first,' and no one questions your patriotism or that of
your family, while if you're black and your spouse
merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home
with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately
think she's being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community
organizers and the work they do--like, among other things,
fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights,
or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people
think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely
question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month
governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she
took in college and the fact that she lives close to
Russia--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who
don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to
vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly
your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these
same white women, and made them give your party a
'second look.'

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't
support your political campaigns and not be accused of
abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages
in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some
folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means
you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four
hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic
fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment
to her children is unquestionable, and whose 'next door
neighbor' qualities make her ready to be VP, while if
you're a black candidate for president and you let your
children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're
irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in
which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent,
while laying out no substantive policy positions on any
issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate
candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the
week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals
on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague
about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the
years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry
or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and
that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job
of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles
into government, and who bring in speakers who say the
conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews
for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're
just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black
and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin
Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist
attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who
talks about the history of racism and its effect on black
people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is
when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the
reporter for asking you such a 'trick question,'
while being black and merely refusing to give one-word
answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're
dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual
and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep
school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and
yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W. Bush)
while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then
Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law,
makes you 'uppity,' and a snob who probably looks
down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom
of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average
from Yale (W.) and that's OK, and you're cut out to
be president, but if you're black and you graduate near
the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be
trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called 'terrorist fist bumps.'

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you 'dangerously naive and immature.'

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the 'lesser adversities' faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole 'change' thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Selective Updating

Update: Buggy game DRM puts Windows users at risk

Nobody seems to be talking about this angle, since everyone wants to harp on DRM (which is great, by the way, keep on finding vulnerabilities in DRM software and take this machine down the right way! By showing that they don't care about you that much more...), but this sounds to me like Microsoft and Macrovision discovered this vulnerability while developing Vista and knowingly didn't report it or update existing users. Failure to update a known glitch is the kind of thing someone does when they don't want people to be able to use their old stuff so that they have to switch to the new stuff.

Come on consumers! It's your job to police the product! These things aren't right, you shouldn't have to hand over all your hard earned cash for things that offer little-to-no additional functionality. It's amazing all of the things out there this system applies to; start checking your products out.

I know somebody who experienced a "necessary update" scenario recently that was just ridiculous. A friend with an Apple iBook was about to break down and buy a new battery (which is, of course, overpriced by Apple; check out replacement batteries for the iPod and then see what superior yet cheaper technology 3rd party manufacturers make for iPod replacement batteries...) when she found out that her laptop wouldn't function unless it was plugged in, not because her battery was dead, but because there was a software update necessary to fix it. I'm sorry... did someone say a laptop shipped with a bug in the software that prevents you from using it without being plugged in?!?!?! That's not a laptop! It's a ball and chain.

Here's another one: My Phone, the ever-awesome HTC Apache (dubbed the PPC 6700 or XV 6700 in the US). Awesome phone, pretty good setup; downside: Sprint (and other manufacturers) stopped releasing updates beyond AKU 2.2. AKU 3.5 has been out for quite some time now! That's basically the equivalent of someone giving you a computer with Windows XP Service Pack 1 on it and telling you that you're not allowed to install Service Pack 2. WTF?! You sold me this device and now you're not willing to support it?! And it's great that the independent developer community has managed to make some excellent ROM Kitchens for using both Windows Mobile 5 AKU 3.5 as well as Windows Mobile 6 on the Apache (now I have no need to spend $600 on the HTC Mogul/PPC 6800, since it doesn't really offer anything but WM6 and a pretty antennaless case). It gets worse than that too. The radio chipset inside this phone is perfectly capable of retrieving and reporting GPS data with or without assistance (a-GPS, GPSOne; these are methods used for 911 calls and Sprint Roadside assistance and such. They need data from the cell phone company.) It's just a crying shame you can't actually access the already present GPS device. Sprint/Verizon/etc. have it locked down so that the only way to get GPS data from this phone is through special phone calls (such as 911). So I'm expected to wait until Sprint gets their act together with their own proprietary navigation service or go out and buy a really expensive GPS device when I've already purchased an expensive GPS unit: MY PHONE.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant, but seriously people: take more pride in yourselves and more responsibility for ensuring people do the right thing. No matter how many times we try to get the government to change things for us it's not gonna matter unless we work with each-other! (Another rant on this topic some other time :p).

Anyway, I'd like to talk about some cool nerdy stuff but I seem to have exhausted all of my time on this. See, now if you all could change the world for the better I might not have to waste my time on things like this and we might be able to work on *progress* ;p

-TheXenocide

John "Delegate" Doe

It seems I've just experienced a unique little caveat of anonymous delegates. One of my favorite things about an anonymous method in .NET is that it can carry over variable values from the defining code into the definition of the method. Essentially this (which is just sample code and not a good reference for proper logging practice ;D):

private void RegisterClickLogger(string logTitle)
{
Log log = new Log(logTitle);
this.Click += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
log.Write("Clicked!");
};
}

will write "Clicked!" to the log object created as a local variable in the RegisterClickLogger method even though RegisterClickLogger has stopped executing. The purpose of this post isn't really to introduce this concept though, there are many views on proper usage and such for anonymous methods out there, but rather to point out a unique scenario that caused me to think a bit about it.

As some of you may have discovered through other annoying experiences (like myself :p), Dictionary stores it's values in a structure called KeyValuePair. The key here is that it's a "structure" (a Value Type), not a class (Reference Type). A common issue with this is that it complicates serialization (when using a Reference Type for one of the type parameters). Today, however, the following code through me for a bit of a loop:

foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Type> pair in s_tests)
{
b = new Button();
b.Text = pair.Key;
b.Click += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Form f = (Form)Activator.CreateInstance(pair.Value);
f.ShowDialog(this);
f.Dispose();
f = null;
};
b.AutoSize = true;
flow.Controls.Add(b);
}

It seemed all was fine when I clicked the last button, but later when I needed to click one of the earlier buttons I noticed that the same Form was appearing for every button. Looking things over a bit I decided to try changing the code to this:

foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Type> pair in s_tests)
{
b = new Button();
b.Text = pair.Key;
Type t = pair.Value;
b.Click += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Form f = (Form)Activator.CreateInstance(t);
f.ShowDialog(this);
f.Dispose();
f = null;
};
b.AutoSize = true;
flow.Controls.Add(b);
}

It's a very simple change, hardly noticeable really, but sure enough it did the job and my problem was solved. So what happened? Well I'd have to look into things a bit more to give a truly accurate, in depth answer, but from my initial impression it seems that the value of "pair" (that was referenced by all of the anonymous delegates created) was updated (as expected) through each iteration in the loop. When a delegate would finally get called the loop had finished iterating and pair was the value of the last item in the Dictionary. I should probably look into it a little further to identify whether this treatment is related to the fact that pair was a Value Type or if the declaration of the variable "t" inside the scope of the loop is the only reason it was solved (t being a Reference Type). I'm just curious because I don't recall all of the nuances of anonymous methods in .NET, though I'd venture a guess that the second possibility is more likely (though I would, so much like to have another reason to hate KeyValuePair being a Value Type).

Alas, there is never enough time and I must run, but I'll be back soon to discuss some developments in my research (as promised),

-TheXenocide