So it’s Saturday night here in California, and the topic for me is the best news of all, my upcoming wedding. We’re waist-deep in preparations for what is going to be a moderately small (120-person) wedding; but we’re getting to use a very cool venue – I can’t say more without risking the pseud, sadly – and we’re the first wedding that’s been held there. So everything is an issue. What can we do, given union rules, without needing staff for a full day? Exactly where can the chairs go, and will the fire marshall approve? And so on…we’ve almost got all the issues knocked down.

And tonight, as I’m relaxing from a day of faxes and calls, while TG is away at a concert, I get to think about what we’re doing it all for.

Because in a week, we will stand in front of our friends and family, and united as a community, TG and I will both get to share the joy we find in each other and take public responsibility for each other and our relationship.

But it’s not the responsibility, but the joy that I want to talk about; it’s the amplification of joy that takes place when you stand in a circle of people who care about you – and who you care about – and they focus their attention on you and the joy that you’re feeling right then.

And I’m anticipating that joy quite a bit.

For the next week, I’ll be busy, and then for a while I’ll be gone.

As I’ve said in the past, please try not to kill each other or blow anything up while I’m gone.

Well, this sure sounds like some good news…

During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times – a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah’s answer was always the same – “I don’t know anything about these people” – these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn’t now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah’s. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family’s mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them,” he said. “If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”

Asadullah is even more sure of this. “Americans are great people, better than anyone else,” he said, when found at his elder brother’s tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. “Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier.”
(emphasis added)

(hat tip to norm’s blog)

You know that amendment Arnold’s people are talking about – the one where they eliminate the citizenship requirement to run for President?

Maybe we can use it for Tony Blair; after all, just because he was PM in the UK, he’s not otherwise Constitutionally disqualified from being elected President. He made a helluva speech yesterday (hat tip to Harry’s Place):

I know a large part of the public want to move on. Rightly they say the Government should concentrate on the issues that elected us in 1997: the economy, jobs, living standards, health, education, crime.

I share that view, and we are. But I know too that the nature of this issue over Iraq, stirring such bitter emotions as it does, can’t just be swept away as ill-fitting the pre-occupations of the man and woman on the street.

Real threat

This is not simply because of the gravity of war; or the continued engagement of British troops and civilians in Iraq; or even because of reflections made on the integrity of the prime minister.

It is because it was in March 2003 and remains my fervent view that the nature of the global threat we face in Britain and round the world is real and existential and it is the task of leadership to expose it and fight it, whatever the political cost; and that the true danger is not to any single politician’s reputation, but to our country if we now ignore this threat or erase it from the agenda in embarrassment at the difficulties it causes.

I want to quote the whole thing here, it’s just so damn good, direct, human (in the sense of humanizing the decisions which he felt he had to make), and in my mind, right. But go click through, now please, and read it.

Pass this speech around to your friends. Let’s make sure everyone sees it as we try and make up our minds about what we have done and what we need to do. Then scroll down, and compare it to Kerry’s keynote on security and terror, and understand why I can’t just jump on his bandwagon.

Lots of people have been pointing me at the speech Kerry made here in Los Angeles last week. I actually thought about going; I have a friend at UCLA who I could have blackmailed into getting me in. But I just couldn’t get excited enough about Kerry to take a day and do it. which, sadly, kinda sums up my view of him right now. Here’s the speech, for those of you who may have missed it, with some interspersed comments:

It’s an honor to be here today at the Burkle Center … named in honor of a good friend and one of America’s outstanding business leaders.

Day in and day out, George W. Bush reminds us that he is a war President and that he wants to make national security the central issue of this election. I am ready to have this debate. I welcome it.

I am convinced that we can prove to the American people that we know how to make them safer and more secure … with a stronger, more comprehensive, and more effective strategy for winning the War on Terror than the Bush Administration has ever envisioned.

As we speak, night has settled on the mountains of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. If Osama bin Laden is sleeping, it is the restless slumber of someone who knows his days are numbered. I don’t know if the latest reports … saying that he is surrounded … are true or not. We’ve heard this news before.

We had him in our grasp more than two years ago at Tora Bora but George Bush held U.S. forces back and instead, called on Afghan warlords with no loyalty to our cause to finish the job. We all hope the outcome will be different this time and we all know America cannot rest until Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.

I’m working on a post complimenting the Bush Administration for what I’ve come to believe is actually a smart policy in Afghanistan. The Afghans are a proud people who are damn good at war, and have been since the time of Alexander the Great. They have fought off invasions by Hindus, Russians, Indians, and the British, and there is no reason to expect that they would not fight against an occupying force of Americans just as strongly. But we aren’t occupying them; by keeping our forces at a minimal level, and explicitly targeting Al Quieda and Talib forces, we have gotten a kind of pass from the general population. Afghanistan, one of the most primitive and tribal nations on earth, isn’t going to become Belgium any time soon, and it would be a waste of effort for us to try. Our goal should be incremental improvements in the conditions and politics of the country, and denial of the territory and population to organized use by Al Quieda and their supporters.

And when that day comes, it will be a great step forward but we will still have far more to do. It will be a victory in the War on Terror, but it will not be the end of the War on Terror.

This war isn’t just a manhunt … a checklist of names from a deck of cards. In it, we do not face just one man or one terrorist group. We face a global jihadist movement of many groups, from different sources, with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe.

Hang on, now…

On one hand, the failure to nab Bin Laden at Tora Bora was critical – on the other, Bin Laden isn’t the one we’re facing…OK, I’m slightly puzzled now.

As CIA Director George Tenet recently testified: “They are not all creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks.”

At the core of this conflict is a fundamental struggle of ideas. Of democracy and tolerance against those who would use any means and attack any target to impose their narrow views.

The War on Terror is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash of civilization against chaos; of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.

Wow!! I like this part a lot; he sounds like he’s been reading me or Den Beste a bit…

Like all Americans, I responded to President Bush’s reassuring words in the days after September 11th. But since then, his actions have fallen short.

I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the War on Terror; I believe he’s done too little.

Where he’s acted, his doctrine of unilateral preemption has driven away our allies and cost us the support of other nations. Iraq is in disarray, with American troops still bogged down in a deadly guerrilla war with no exit in sight. In Afghanistan, the area outside Kabul is sliding back into the hands of a resurgent Taliban and emboldened warlords.

I’ll disagree with ‘disarray’ here; the recent passage of a draft constitution, the basic willingness to work within a political framework, declining US casualties (even as the guerilla war and terrorist acts continue) – I continue to believe that we’re moving forward in Iraq, albeit bureaucratically and slowly. That’s how reality works. In Afghanistan, see above; I think that be limiting our military ‘footprint’ there, we’re doing the right thing.

In other areas, the Administration has done nothing or been too little and too late. The Mideast Peace process disdained for 14 months by the Bush Administration is paralyzed. North Korea and Iran continue their quest for nuclear weapons … weapons which one day could land in the hands of terrorists. And as Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld has admitted, the Administration is still searching for an effective plan to drain the swamps of terrorist recruitment. The President’s budget for the National Endowment for Democracy’s efforts around the world, including the entire Islamic world, is less than three percent of what this Administration gives Halliburton … hardly a way to win the contest of ideas.

And how, exactly, would Kerry stop North Korea and Iran from their pursuit of nukes? By proselyting democratic values (a good thing on it’s own)? I’ll certainly agree that we’re doing a mediocre job at best on the meme-spreading front, but it’s damn easy to say ‘I’ll get North Korea to back off on their nuke program,’ and a hell of a lot harder to say how you’re going to do it.

Finally, by virtually every measure, we still have a homeland security strategy that falls far short of the vulnerabilities we have and the threats we face.

OK, I’ll buy that as well.

George Bush has no comprehensive strategy for victory in the War on Terror … only an ad hoc strategy to keep our enemies at bay. If I am Commander-in-Chief, I would wage that war by putting in place a strategy to win it.

We cannot win the War on Terror through military power alone. If I am President, I will be prepared to use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests.

But the fight requires us to use every tool at our disposal. Not only a strong military … but renewed alliances, vigorous law enforcement, reliable intelligence, and unremitting effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds.

To do all this, and to do our best, demands that we work with other countries instead of walking alone. For today the agents of terrorism work and lurk in the shadows of 60 nations on every continent. In this entangled world, we need to build real and enduring alliances.

Let’s see – on one hand, Pakistan is actively cooperating in turning over bad guys to us, and will be allowing some limited access to the Afghan border as we look for Bin Laden; Germany, on the other hand, is acquitting 9/11 suspects. From an interview with that well-known unilateralist Mohamed El Baradei:

MARK URBAN:
Do you think the invasion of Iraq empowered your work in Iran or Libya?

MOHAMED EL BARADEI:
I think it empowered my work in some sense. It showed an inspection was working in Iraq, that we managed to disarm Iraq through an inspection. It empowered my work by telling people you should give me more time to complete my job. You need to be patient. These things take time. In that sense, it also empowered my work because people are taking verification very seriously, they know that this could make the difference between war and peace.

MARK URBAN:
So to some extent, they have been intimidated, those regimes or not do you think?

MOHAMED EL BARADEI:
I think maybe a positive message that came out of Iraq, that the international community will not tolerate proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and in that sense it helps me of course with my work.

And from the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram:

“Abu Ammar, now you know more than anyone else how many opportunities the Palestinian people have missed because of you. This is not my business … but it is your business and the business of your people, which sooner or later will call you to account. Your people are like the folk proverb that says, ‘He who cannot see the sun through the sieve is blind.’ This sieve is the Middle East and the events that have occurred in Kuwait and Iraq, in the Sudan, and in Libya.

What ever could he be talking about? OK, back to Kerry:

Allies give us more hands in the struggle, but no President would ever let them tie our hands and prevent us from doing what must be done. As President, I will not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake. But I will not push away those who can and should share the burden.

And how, exactly, is this different from what Bush did in the runup to Iraq? This is a critical issue – balancing our need to defend our own interests against the value of alliance, but without some clear context, it’s right up there with ‘increase shareholder value‘ as empty air.

Working with other countries in the War on Terror is something we do for our sake … not theirs. We can’t wipe out terrorist cells in places like Sweden, Canada, Spain, the Philippines, or Italy just by dropping in Green Berets.

Nope. Which goes to the heart of the weakness in the ‘law-enforcement’ model. Without the cooperation of states – some of which, you’ll recall, actively or tacitly support the terrorist goals – how do we arrest the bad guys in a country where their activities are being supported at the highest levels of government?

It was local law enforcement working with our intelligence services which caught Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramsi Bin al Shibh in Pakistan and the murderer known as Hambali in Thailand. Joining with local police forces didn’t mean serving these terrorists with legal papers; it meant throwing them behind bars. None of the progress we have made would have been possible without cooperation … and much more would be possible if we had a President who didn’t alienate long-time friends and fuel anti-American anger around the world.

And how likely is it that the Pakistani police would have been quite so cooperative if there hadn’t been a couple of divisions just across the border?

We need a comprehensive approach for prevailing against terror … an approach that recognizes the many facets of this mortal challenge and relies on all the tools at our disposal to do it.

First, if I am President I will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders. George Bush inherited the strongest military in the world … and he has weakened it. What George Bush and his armchair hawks have never understood is that our military is about more than moving pins on a map or buying expensive new weapons systems.

America’s greatest military strength has always been the courageous, talented men and women whose love of country and devotion to service lead them to attempt and achieve the impossible everyday.

But today, far too often troops are going into harm’s way without the weapons and equipment they depend on to do their jobs safely. National Guard helicopters are flying missions in dangerous territory without the best available ground-fire protection systems. Un-armored Humvees are falling victim to road-side bombs and small-arms fire.

Here’s an issue he can capture; the lack of up-armored Humvees, the lack of armor, the ammunition factories working three shifts. Somebody is supposed to plan this stuff.

And families across America have had to collect funds from their neighbors to buy body armor for their loved ones in uniform because George Bush failed to provide it.

The next President must ensure that our forces are structured for maximum effectiveness and provided with all that they need to succeed in their missions. We must better prepare our forces for post-conflict operations and the task of building stability by adding more engineers, military police, psychological warfare personnel, and civil affairs teams.

And to replenish our overextended military, as President, I will add 40,000 active-duty Army troops, a temporary increase likely to last the remainder of the decade.

So far, so good. That was one of my points, so I’ll buy right into this.

Second, if I am President I will strengthen the capacity of intelligence and law enforcement at home and forge stronger international coalitions to provide better information and the best chance to target and capture terrorists even before they act.

And you’ll do that…how? By violating our civil rights even more?

But the challenge for us is not to cooperate abroad; it is to coordinate here at home. Whether it was September 11th or Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, we have endured unprecedented intelligence failures. We must do what George Bush has refused to do … reform our intelligence system by making the next Director of the CIA a true Director of National Intelligence with real control of intelligence personnel and budgets. We must train more analysts in languages like Arabic. And we must break down the old barriers between national intelligence and local law enforcement.

Those barriers exist for a reason; there’s something about blending intelligence and law enforcement that makes us all feel pretty damn creepy – or like we’re living in the EU.

In the months leading up to September 11th, two of the hijackers were arrested for drunk driving … and another was stopped for speeding and then let go, although he was already the subject of an arrest warrant in a neighboring county and was on a federal terrorist watch list. We need to simplify and streamline the multiple national terrorist watch lists and make sure the right information is available to the right people on the frontlines of preventing the next attack.

But we can’t take any of those steps effectively if we are stuck with an Administration that continues to stonewall those who are trying to get to the bottom of our September 11th intelligence failures. Two days ago, the Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert refused the request of the bipartisan 9-11 commission for just a little more time just to complete their mission. This after the Commission has had to deal with an Administration that opposed its very creation and has stonewalled its efforts.

He didn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call Denny Hastert to ram through his Medicare drug company benefit or to replace a real Patients Bill of Rights with an HMO Bill of Goods. This President told a Republican fundraiser that it was in the “nation’s interest” that Denny Hastert remain Speaker of the House. I believe it’s in America’s interest to know the truth about 9-11. Mr. President, stop stonewalling the commission and stop hiding behind excuses. Pick up the phone, call your friend Denny Hastert and tell him to let the commission finish its job so we can make America safer.

Hang on…let’s go to the staff memos:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard…

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time– but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year…

Summary

Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public’s concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading — if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives — of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration’s dubious motives and methods.

No offense, but I’d have strong second thoughts about cooperating with that committee, too. Back to Kerry:

Third, we must cut off the flow of terrorist funds. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the Bush Administration has adopted a kid-glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money. If I am President, we will impose tough financial sanctions against nations or banks that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it. We will launch a “name and shame” campaign against those that are financing terror. And if they do not respond, they will be shut out of the U.S. financial system.

ROTF. Right, I’d love to see a U.S. President pick up the phone and tell Citibank to pack up all that Saudi money and send it home, and Alan Greenspan that we’re cashing out the Saudi T-Bills and shipping the cash to Europe. I’d love it, that is, until the world financial markets imploded.

Fourth, because finding and defeating terrorist groups is a long-term effort, we must act immediately to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. I propose to appoint a high-level Presidential envoy empowered to bring other nations together to secure and stop the spread of these weapons. We must develop common standards to make sure dangerous materials and armaments are tracked, accounted for, and secured. Today, parts of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal are easy prey for those offering cash to scientists and security forces who too often are under-employed and under-paid. If I am President, I will expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy the loose nuclear materials of the former Soviet Union and to ensure that all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and materials are out of the reach of terrorists and off the black market.

Man, that’s what we’re talkin’ about. I propose to appoint a high-level Presidential envoy empowered to bring other nations together to secure and stop the spread of these weapons. That’s pretty much exactly what people are afraid Democrats are going to do – appoint envoys. Given a choice between a President who sends Marines and one that sends envoys to sip tea and ‘bring other nations together’ – the nations that are profiting, financially and politically, from WMD component sales – I’ll tell you where my money is going.

Next, whatever we thought of the Bush Administration’s decisions and mistakes … especially in Iraq … we now have a solemn obligation to complete the mission, in that country and in Afghanistan. Iraq is now a major magnet and center for terror. Our forces in Iraq are paying the price everyday.

Yes, they are…at a rate comparable to the rate of deaths in a number of major American cities…a rate that is declining.

And our safety at home may someday soon be endangered as Iraq becomes a training ground for the next generation of terrorists.

Because jihadi terrorists haven’t managed an operation on U.S. soil yet…

It is time to return to the United Nations and return America to the community of nations to share both authority and responsibility in Iraq, and take the target off the back of our troops. This also requires a genuine Iraqi security force. The Bush Administration simply signs up recruits and gives them rudimentary training. In a Kerry Administration, we will create and train an Iraqi security force equal to the task of safeguarding itself and the people it is supposed to protect.

We must offer the UN the lead role in assisting Iraq with the development of new political institutions. And we must stay in Iraq until the job is finished.

Unless the UN wants us out, of course…does anyone else see a contradiction in that statement?

In Afghanistan, we have some NATO involvement, but the training of the Afghan Army is insufficient to disarm the warlord militias or to bring the billion dollar drug trade under control. This Administration has all but turned away from Afghanistan. Two years ago, President Bush promised a Marshall Plan to rebuild that country. His latest budget scorns that commitment.

We must … and if I am President, I will … apply the wisdom Franklin Roosevelt shared with the American people in a fireside chat in 1942, “it is useless to win battles if the cause for which we fight these battles is lost. It is useless to win a war unless it stays won.” This Administration has not met that challenge; a Kerry Administration will.

But nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas. In failed states from South Asia to the Middle East to Central Africa, the combined weight of harsh political repression, economic stagnation, lack of education, and rapid population growth presents the potential for explosive violence and the enlistment of entire new legions of terrorists. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, almost sixty percent of the population is under the age of 30, unemployed and unemployable, in a breeding ground for present and future hostility. And according to a Pew Center poll, fifty percent or more of Indonesians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Palestinians have confidence in bin Laden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs.”

OK, I like the direction he’s going with this.

We need a major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas. We have seen what happens when Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda. And we must support human rights groups, independent media and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture from the grass-roots up. Democracy won’t come overnight, but America should speed that day by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments which take genuine steps towards change.

Again, a good, broad statement that doesn’t map well to the actual behavior of the EU or Russia. So who’s going to stand beside us as we proselytize? Most of the UN conferences have been pro-Palestinian and anti-Western; are we going to suddenly somehow remake the UN?

We cannot be deterred by letting America be held hostage by energy from the Middle East. If I am President, we will embark on a historic effort to create alternative fuels and the vehicles of the future … to make this country energy independent of Mideast oil within ten years. So our sons and daughters will never have to fight and die for it.

It’s all about the oillll. Give me a fucking break. If it was about the oil, the French and Japanese armies would be leading the way – they’re the ones who depend on Persian Gulf oil. And we would have entered into long-term agreements with Saddam to rebuild his oilfields, buy his oil, and lift the sanctions. It pisses me off to hear this at high levels. Having said that, I do think that we’d be smart is isolate ourselves from the impact of Persian Gulf supply and price changes as well as the increasing vulnerability of our energy infrastructure; to do that means that we have to rethink our energy economy just a bit.

Finally, if we are going to be serious about the War on Terror, we need to be much more serious about homeland security. Today, fire departments only have enough radios for half their firefighters and almost two-thirds of firehouses are short-staffed. We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in New York City. We need to put 100,000 more firefighters on duty and we need to restore the 100,000 police on our streets which I fought for and won in 1994 but which the Bush Administration has cut in budget after budget.

We need to provide public health labs with the basic expertise they need but now lack to respond to chemical or biological attack. We need new safeguards for our chemical and nuclear facilities.

OK, another good one.

And our ports … like the Port of Los Angeles … need new technology to screen the 95 percent of containers that now enter this country without any inspection at all. And we should accelerate the action plans agreed to in US-Canada and US-Mexico “smart border” accords while implementing new security measures for cross border bridges. President Bush says we can’t afford to fund homeland security. I say we can’t afford not to.

And I say that if you think you can screen the 95 percent of the containers that come into the Port of Los Angeles – the port that’s about six miles from my house – and still maintain anything like the current levels of traffic, you’re high. You might screen some percentage of them once they are off the ships, but the vulnerability is in the port infrastructure itself; that’s the high-value, high-leverage target.

The safety of our people, the security of our country, the memory of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors and heroes we lost on September 11th call on us to win this war we did not seek.

And our children’s future demands that we also do everything in our power to prevent the creation of tomorrow’s terrorists today. Maybe there’s no going back to the days before baggage checks and orange alerts. Maybe they’re with us forever. But I don’t believe they have to be. I grew up at a time of bomb shelters and air raid drills. But America had leaders of vision and courage in both parties. And today, the Cold War is memory, not reality.

I believe we can bring a real victory in the War on Terror. I believe we must, not only for ourselves but for all who look to America as “the last best hope of earth.” I believe we can meet that ideal … and that’s why I’m running for President.

Well, there are some nuggets in there.

Of course giving speeches is easy; but if that’s how we judged our Presidents, we’d be electing Sean Penn. We have to look at the complex history behind the man and the speech as well, and Kerry’s history doesn’t get my motor running too hard. But I’m reading, and listening, and trying to learn.

Just for grins, over the next week, I think I’ll write the speech I wish Kerry would give; let’s see if I can make something interesting out of it. Maybe I’ll even do the one I wish Bush would give, too…

A lot of what I do is deal with broken projects; systems that don’t work, software development that’s way behind or on schedule but shedding necessary features.

When things don’t work, there’s seldom a ‘smoking gun’; you have to dig a bit to try and find out what’s going on, toss up hypotheses and check them out, and one of the things I say a lot is “How would we know if that’s true?” The coders are claiming the database is performing badly; the DBA’s are claiming the application servers are misconfigured. OK, how would we know if any of those are true? Because once you can ask that question and get an answer, you’re on the path to defining tests which will let you make some firm statements.

So here’s an article about the election yesterday and e-voting:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Voters across the United States encountered scattered problems with new touch-screen systems on Tuesday as they voted in primary elections, but by and large the machines ran smoothly, state election officials said on Wednesday.

Voters in some polling stations in San Diego and Oakland, California, were turned away after officials had trouble starting up the machines, while others in Maryland and Georgia had to use paper ballots, officials said.

Aside from setup problems, the machines functioned smoothly, officials said.

“We had no technical issues at all, just the normal human stuff,” said Linda Lamone, Maryland state administrator of elections.

OK. How would we know if that’s true? We don’t, and more importantly, we can’t.

Folks, I’m coming to the conclusion that this is the most urgent issue on the table today. More important than fighting Islamist terrorism, more important than domestic security, more important than economic policy, and let me tell you why I feel that way.

It’s about legitimacy. Legitimacy matters, both domestically, and internationally. Here’s an example:

“Cherie Blair still believed that Bush had stolen the White House from Gore,” author Philip Stephens wrote in his book “Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader. ”

Although Tony Blair was pragmatic about Bush’s victory, Mrs Blair was far less sanguine about the Supreme Court decision that gave him the keys to the White House.

She believed Al Gore had been “robbed” of the presidency and was hostile to the idea of her husband “cosying” up to the new President.

Even as they flew to Washington for their first meeting with the presidential couple, Mrs Blair was in no mood to curry favour, the book stated.

You want to imagine the impact when some disgruntled tech spins a story about deliberate, untraceable, errors coded into the machines that gather election results? When there has been a close, hotly contested election, and the presidency is at stake?

Kagan has written substantially on the importance of legitimacy in the international sphere; his positions are discussed in this column:

The researcher believes that “a great philosophical schism” has broken out between the continents because of sharp disagreements over the acceptability of the use of military force. The actions of the United States in Iraq have become a test case, in which what is at stake is “the future reputation of the United States, its reliability, and its legitimacy as a world leader”.

Kagan’s assessment of the present situation is right, as such. The United States has never been so powerful and so influential as it is now, but the wisdom and motives of its policies have probably never been so extensively and deeply questioned.

The country’s overwhelming strength makes it possible for it to wield its power even without legitimacy, but always at a high price. Acceptance is replaced by resentment, friendship by fear, and allies by vassals. Not even the most hard-line hawks in the United States can seriously want such a world, but the movement during the term of President George W. Bush has been in that very direction.

It’s still possible to push this back; but it’s going to take substantial action to do so.

I’ll suggest a simple standard: no e-voting system should be used unless it prints a human-readable ballot which can be stored in a ballot box, and unless the officials in charge of voting agree to test a significant sample of the paper ballots against electronic results, and to use paper ballots in the event of recounts.

And electronic scanners that count marked ballots should be subject to the same audit/test/recount requirements (note that as I understand it, the punchcard-reading scanners tend to be simple totalizators, which are harder to game – let me know if this is wrong).

The policy core of John Kerry’s victory speech tonight:

My campaign is about replacing doubt with hope, and replacing fear with security.

Together we will build a strong foundation for growth by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to cut the deficit in half in four years and invest in health care and education.

We will repeal every tax break and every loophole that rewards any corporation for gaming the tax code to go overseas and avoid their responsibilities to America.

We will provide new incentives for manufacturing that reward good companies for creating and keeping good jobs here at home.

We will fight for worker and environmental protections in the core of every trade agreement – and we will raise the minimum wage because no one who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty in America.

And we will meet one of the historic challenges of our generation with a bold new plan for energy independence that will invest in technologies of the future and create 500,000 new jobs, so young Americans in uniform will never be held hostage to Mideast oil.

We will stand up for the fundamental fairness of health care as a right and not a privilege.

For an America where Medicare and Social Security are protected; health care costs are held down; and your family’s health is just as important as any politician’s in Washington.

We will rejoin the community of nations and renew our alliances because that is essential to final victory in the war on terror.

The Bush Administration has run the most arrogant, inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in modern history.

This President wants to run on national security. Well, if George Bush wants to make national security the central issue in 2004, I have three simple words for him I know he understands: Bring it on.

Boy. The last election choice that sucked this badly was Davis vs. Simon for CA Governor. I was depressed for a week before that election, just at the notion that those two losers were the best that our political system could toss up.

I think I’ll be blue (not like blue-state blue) for at least month or so leading up to November. We could be surprised, maybe one of the candidates moight show us something unexpected. But I’d say sending me chocolates, Calvados, or one of these is definitely something you all ought to consider…

Interesting article on the history of gay Christian marriage (yes, you read correctly) in the Irish Times.

Is the icon suggesting that a homosexual “marriage” is one sanctified by Christ? The very idea initially seems shocking. The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St Serge and St Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that “we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life”. More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St Serge is openly described as the “sweet companion and lover” of St Bacchus.

(hat tip to Cynical Nation)

Today is election day, and before I talk about who I’m voting for, I thought I’d point out what is, to me, a far more serious issue – the growing use of electronic voting machines in spite of the demonstrated insecurity of these machines as they exist today.

Imagine the 2000 election with claims that Bush or Gore had hacked the Florida voting machines and caused untraceable changes in votes. Think about the challenges to Bush’s legitimacy today, and imagine what they’d be like in the event we were confronted with a series of news reports waking up – finally – to the insecurity of these systems.

On Declan McCullogh’s Politech list, this email went out today (it’s not up on his site yet, so I’m posting the entire thing):

—– Forwarded message ——

Declan and Dave,

Please (please!) remove my e-mail address if you decide to post this.

I’m an undergraduate in a large Georgia university, which also happens to be the place I vote at election time. Although I have been a casual follower of the voting security debate, I now find myself in a unique position. A sitting position. More precisely, sitting 10 feet away from a stack of 10 unguarded electronic voting machines. Despite having been here for for 120 minutes (and taking a conspicuous number of photos), I have yet to see any security presence, or anyone associated with these machines at all.

First thing: this terrifies me. Because although I have no reason to suspect these machines have been tampered with, I really have no way of knowing for sure. Even though it would be difficult for someone to tamper with these machines on-site without being noticed, there is a huge potential for a machine to be stolen (at which point it could either be tampered with, and then (in theory) returned, or just analyzed to locate problems with the voting software). It’s one thing to debate how secure the software is, especially when being used within sight of elections officials. It’s another thing entirely when anyone who wants to can take the machine home to play with.

Even more alarming than the lack of security around these machines is the response I have received from anyone I have tried to point this out to. The friend who initially directed me to this problem has called a half dozen different groups, ranging (in order) from the state voting commission, the local paper, the local news, campus security, and even the campus newspaper. The voting commission assured us the machines were locked. As someone standing next to the machines, I can assure you that they are not, unless a zip tie now qualifies as a lock. The press brushed us off entirely. Campus security told us it was “not their problem”.

If someone could tell me that this is somehow okay, that I’m overanalyzing the problem, and that this is in fact not dangerous behavior, it would reassure me a great deal. But if this is in any way representative of the way electronic voting systems are being deployed around the rest of the country, I fear for tomorrow’s election.

Now, descriptions of the machines. I have about 70 pictures of these, should anyone require them (but I’m holding on to them for now, in the interest of remaining anonymous until I feel these machines are secured). I have removed information that identifies directly which county these machines belong to; I am happy to reveal it later, once these machines are set up and under active surveillance.

Each container is roughly 2 feet by 2 feet square, by 1 foot deep, with collapsable legs. These containers are stacked in two piles of 5 machines each, with a larger box and a briefcase resting nearby. The small boxes have wheels on the bottom and a suitcase style handle and clasps. They appear identical to the system displayed on http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/ . One such machine has the following information on the front, near the handle: A barcode with a green and a yellow sticker attached. The barcode reads “123678” A barcode labeled “[county name] County – Ga Purchase”. The barcode reads, “265345893” A half-removed label with the following word fragments: [bottom portion of a large word] Election S[unintelligible] 4.3.14 UPGRA[unintelligible] This text appears consistent with the Diebold Election Systems logo, as seen at the above Diebold Election Systems website.

Also, written on the top, where the legs are collapsed: “P/N 663-1141 REV–4

Model/Revision AVTS–BOOTH.1.01.004” Next to that, a yellow sticker with the text, “A-H 6-12-02”

The boxes are sealed with a large plastic zip tie (some are pulled tight; others only about halfway tight), and with a red tag with a serial number. One such tag is labeled, “SEALED 0144481”

One machine also has a label attached to the side opposite the wheels. The label is attached with a zip tie, and enclosed in a plastic container. The label reads, “02X 2 [scribbled out numeral 4] of [scribbled out numeral 4] 9”. [It is probably worth reiterating that there are, in fact, 10 machines stacked here].

The larger box is roughly 1.5 feet by 2 feet, and 1.5 feet tall, with the text, “Property of [county name] County Government, Registration, and Elections” embossed in the side.

The briefcase is blue, 3 inches deep, 2 feet wide, 1.5 feet tall, and has a handwritten label attached with the words “Provisional Voting” written on it.

I will be monitoring both Politech and Interesting People for responses, should this get posted.

—– End forwarded message —–

I’ve been reading Bruce Schnier’s great book on security (review to follow) and the reality is that all the high-tech, intrusive, civil-rights violating security measures in the world don’t mean a damn thing if you leave the hardware unattended and unsecured.

Andrew Northrop’s question:

Here it is again: how are Corrine Brown’s comments (calling Condi Rice, Mr. Noreiga, and Colin Powell, among others of assorted genders, races, and ethnicities, “a bunch of white men” who “all look the same to her”) in any way as offensive as celebrating the segregated South or trafficking in Jewish conspiracy theories?

I’d unpack this into two questions:

1) Are there ‘lesser’ and ‘greater’ levels of racism; i.e. do we treat slights differently than we do active discrimination differently than we do genocidal violence? I’m taking this from the implication that her remarks, while offensive, didn’t rise to the level of action.

2) Are racially-charged comments fundamentally different when they come from someone on the receiving end of racial discrimination? Fundamentally, because Rep. Brown is black, and thus assumed to be among those who have suffered from white oppression, do we look at her comments by a different standard than we would someone who is white?From going through the thread and Andrew’s responses to me and others in it, I’m a bit confused, because when I asked:

So, Andrew, you’re suggesting that only ‘advantaged’ groups – empowered groups as it were – can be racist, while the oppressed – the ‘disadvantaged’ can’t be, or if they are, are excused?

he replied:

Interestingly, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m actually saying what I said. Why can’t you give a straight answer? Here it is again: how are Corrine Brown’s comments (calling Condi Rice, Mr. Noreiga, and Colin Powell, among others of assorted genders, races, and ethnicities, “a bunch of white men” who “all look the same to her”) in any way as offensive as celebrating the segregated South or trafficking in Jewish conspiracy theories?

which leads me to guess that while his remarks can be interpreted as 2) (and need to be looked at in that light), the explicit meaning he intended was 1).

Let me start out with two disqualifiers, and explanation, and a backflip with a quarter-twist.

First, that it is virtually impossible for liberals to meaningfully talk about race right now, which is a truly Bad Thing. It is one of the subjects where disagreement and emotion run so deep that raising the issue is in fact a discussion-ender.

Next, let me point out that race is a deep subject, and that this is a blog – a conversation – not an essay or book. I won’t claim to cover the issue in the breadth or depth it deserves and requires.

But as usual, none of those will stop me from jumping in…

Andrew seems to claim in the comments thread that he’s asking 1; but I’ll suggest both from Andrew’s own comments and from any kind of reasonable view, that you can’t pull the two questions apart (at least not in this discussion).

First, per Andrew’s own comments:

No, I’m explicitly saying that painting bizarre and elliptical possible expressions of racism (I’m still trying to see how calling Condi Rice a “white man” is an example of racism, as opposed to an example of mental illness, but it’s possible, I suppose) as equally worthy of attention as serious examples of blatant racism tied to a long history of genocidal violence in order to score points on your political opponents does most certainly demean the more serious events. AL’s post is not condemning Corrine Brown’s racism; it’s condemning other people for not treating it as equally deserving of condemnation as Trent Lott’s. Much as everyone would like me to be saying that some racism is okay, it is quite certainly not what I’m saying. (One of the first clues that this is so is that I never said it, and never implied it.) I’m saying that there are clearly instances of racism which are far, far worse than others. Weird tirades about how a group of whites, Hispanics and black people “all look the same”, while highly bizarre (and possibly racist, although someone will have to draw me a picture), just aren’t as worthy of note as wishing Strom Thurmond had won the Presidency on a platform of enforcing racial segregation. Pretending they are is silly, and insulting to everyone’s intelligence.

That pretty much maps to my comment about advantaged groups, in my mind.

The issue isn’t necessarily that her comments were relatively offensive or inoffensive, it’s that they must fundamentally be judged on a different standard because she is African American, and hence her racial offenses can’t be tied to the historic racial offences of Dixiecrat whites, or ‘examples of blatant racism tied to a long history of genocidal violence‘.

Boy, that presents a lot of problems to me.

The first problem is one based in the simple fact that if I dig back far enough, I can find catastrophic treatment of most groups by someone else. At what point in the past do we draw the bright line and say ‘ollie ollie oxen free‘? This isn’t to suggest that moral burdens simply evaporate – they don’t – but that they begin to get lost in the noise of all the other conflicting moral burdens.

So how do we judge what our social response to these burdens should be?

The project, as I see it, is to remedy past inequity by making sure of two things: a) that it won’t happen again; and b) that the current populations we live as part of aren’t trapped by that inequity.

And that leads me to the second problem.

By tolerating – and one might say, even encouraging – a racist worldview (let’s define: the The ICERD (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) defines racism as follows: “Any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise, on equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, or any other field of public life.“; The ADL defines it as: “Racism is prejudice or discrimination based on the belief that race is the primary factor determining human traits and abilities. Racism includes the belief that genetic or inherited differences produce the inherent superiority or inferiority of one race over another. In the name of protecting their race from “contamination,” some racists justify the domination and destruction of races they consider to be either superior or inferior. Institutional racism is racial prejudice supported by institutional power and authority used to the advantage of one race over others.” On either count, I believe Rep. Brown’s comments were racist. Her comments were explicitly meant to devalue the position of, and discourage the participation in dialog by, someone who she challenged based on their actual ethnicity or on their ‘ethnic loyalty.’) we damage society as a whole, and further, I’ll argue that we damage the least-advantaged more than anyone.

Look, four decades of racial politics in the US have brought great progress in a number of fronts. There is serious discussion of a black woman as a Vice-Presidential candidate, fer Chrissakes. How would that have sat with Strom, who apparently saw black women as sexual playthings?

But there’s a certain – stuckness – to African American politics today. I’ll argue that it’s caused by three things: demographics (the Latino and Asian influxes, and relative success), politics (the capture of African-American interest groups by poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al “Four Seasons” Sharpton), and philosophy (hey, it’s me we’re talking about here, of course there’s philosophy involved – as the internalized philosophy of victimization Dickerson talks about deprives parts of African American culture of the philosophical basis for success).

So to get back to Andrew, I’ll certainly agree that there are lesser and greater sins when it comes to race; I’ll gladly grant him that. But I’ve gotta say that his statements sure seems to leave the door wide open to direct interpretation that part of how we judge the severity of the sin is based on the color of the skin of the person who commits it.

And I just don’t buy it. I think that the position is morally weak, and worse, counterproductive if the goal is to figure out how to minimize the racial victimization of our country’s children. Commenter Senior Administration Official said:

…one could argue that A.L.’s side is the one being relativist here because he’s pushing a sort of equality between all racist acts, regardless of their real consequences.

I’m arguing that in fact tolerating Rep. Brown’s display has far more real consequences than a misty-eyed rendition of ‘Dixie’ and nostalgia for a South that probably never really existed. She was attempting to shut someone out of a policy debate that effects millions of people today. Lott was in fact just supporting Thurmond as he got misty-eyed over his sexual abuse of his black mistress sixty years ago.

I’ve been chewing on the recent events on this from in an Francisco and New Peltz, NY (just a train stop to me up to now), and thought I’d take a few minutes and go set out why these make me so happy, and what I think they mean.

Just for openers, as I said a while ago, I’m all for gay marriage, both as a matter of abstract moral conviction and out of direct personal experience (and no, I’ve never been denied the right to marry because I was gay…).

And I’m convinced that by the time Littlest Guy marries, it will almost certainly be legal. But as I noted, the process to get there is going to be messy, erratic, and anything but simple.

Here’s the image I have in my mind when I talk about it; as a society and as people, our values are complex, and often on some level, self-contradictory. I don’t see that as wrong, I just see it as human. At the highest, simplest, most public levels, the values tend to align. But deeper, it looks like the strata underneath California – more faults and temporarily stable dislocations than solid bedrock.And that dynamic system changes over time in response to events, to changes in belief or behavior, to a kind of social evolution.

As a believer in punctuated equilibrium, I also see that as a metaphor for patterns in societies.

Which brings me to Gavin Newsome (who looks like he is going to rival Joe Alioto and Wille Brown as a Bay Area political figure) and his act of civil disobedience – because it really can’t be characterized in any other way.

I’m really pleased that he’s doing this. I think that this is going to be remembered along with the sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. These are events that are among the first signs of real slippage on those faults as society aligns itself anew.

That’s how social change happens. A small event that would have been lost at another point in history, manages to set of a wider shift – because the underlying forces were in place to make society receptive to it.

Two years ago, it wouldn’t have had the same effect, and two years from now, it would have mattered less.

I believe that the gay community needs to keep fighting for this, and when the victories come – like this one – cherish them and use them for fuel to keep going for the rest of the fight.

And, most important, to realize that while those who oppose this are wrong and that this is a struggle – that hating and demonizing them is not going to make victory come sooner, and in the end will make the battle less worth winning.