AndrewKrause

When I was about fifteen, my parents struck up a conversation about someone I went to school with. It turns out, thought I don’t know it at the time, that she was a prostitute. Growing up in a small southern town, I knew they existed, but didn’t concieve that someone in one of my classes would have that kind of life. They tried in their most sensitive way to warn me what it would mean to have a friend like that. The addage they used was “if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

As a teenager, I was basically stupid in the areas of allegory, allusion and metaphor. It would be years before I understood that people judge you by their perceptions of you, and not by the reality. If I consorted with people of low character, then people would assume I had a low character. Apparently, Barack Obama’s daddy never taught him this. Oh yeah, I forgot… he was never around.

This brings up William Ayers, the former anti-war activist, radical and founder of the terrorist group “Weather Underground”. Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers has played out in the media as being one of circumstance - they live in the same neighborhood and have served on a few committees together. In reality, it goes much deeper. Barack Obama has always been attracted to extreme left ideologies. As a follower of Saul Alinksy, he is more or less a student of Communism and his policies follow the notion that government is the ultimate vehicle of social equality and welfare. In Chicago, this makes him more or less normal. In the US as a whole, it puts him on the extreme left wing. That’s why Obama has to hide his associations, and deny them.

Denials, however, are not enough in our age. It is politically expedient for a politician to deny an association with a controversial figure, but one has to question why were they together in the first place. The fact of the matter is that you cannot associate yourself with terrorists like Bill Ayers and explain it away as mere coincidence. Obama’s career was launched in Bill Ayer’s living room. Coincidence? And while Obama has denounced the past acts of Ayers as despicable, and pointed out that he was a child when they happened, Ayers himself has not disclaimed his past and even expresses regret over not having bombed more buildings and killed more people. Obama’s choice to associate himself with an unrepentant terrorist speaks volumes to his distaste for America and his inability to lead.

If Ayers were the only dog Obama had lain with, this story would be short. We shouldn’t forget Jeremiah Wright, the man who incited racial hatred against whites and made defamatory statements against America as part of his vitriolic sermons in church. Obama sat in church and listened to Wright for decades, and didn’t disclaim his statements until it was politically necessary to do so. He has never denounced the man himself.

Then there’s Imam Hassan Qwazini. You probably haven’t heard about him yet - he is the muslim cleric with deep connections to Hamas and Hezbollah who has called for the wholesale destruction of Israel and a second holocaust against Jews. Barack Hussein Obama held a secret meeting with Qwazini. And in case you’re wondering, Qwazini has close ties to Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah who issued the Fatwah that led to the bombing of 300 US Marines in Beirut. And while we’re speaking of connections to Islamofascist terrorism, Jeremiah Wright pals around with Louis Farrakhan, who pledged his support for Muammar Gadafi who is responsible for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103.

The question here is this: who would you rather lead this country? A man who decries America as a racist, bigoted and inequitable country that only he can change, or a man to surrendered the best years of his life to serve in uniform and defend America? I’m not a huge fan of McCain, but at least I know he loves this country.

I’m going to give you two videos. The first is an MTV-style explanation of the origins of this mess we’re in. In brief, it describes the Community Reinvestment Act passed by the Carter Administration, and how under the Clinton Administration it was turned into a carrot-and-stick tool to drive the sub-prime market.

The next video shows how the Bush Administration attempted to deal with the issue, but was blocked by a corrupt Democrat-led Congress.

Last but not least, how this mess applies to the current race. Obama, the Saul-Alinsky inspired ‘community organizer‘, with his connection to ACORN, is part of the Democrat axis-of-socialism. This video shows the corrupt leadership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac congratulating the Dems for their support.

The source of this mess is simple - easy money. Cheap credit enabled people to buy beyond their means, and their excess was underwritten by the US Governments. We can blame Wall Street for this mess with about as much credibility as we can blame a table when we stub our toe on it. The individual investors who trust their savings and retirement to Wall Street are the victims of socialist policies of the Democrats and the irresponsible behavior of Americans who borrow money they can’t afford to pay back.

I’ve noticed a commercial by Microsoft in the last few weeks for a new Windows version called Mojave. Except that - as the commercial reveals - it’s really Vista, and this is Microsoft trying to prove to people that Vista doesn’t suck as much as they’ve heard. And nobody in these commercials has actually seen or used Vista, which is why whatever demo they’re showing is so impressive to them.

Those of us who’ve actually used, managed and troubleshooted systems with Windows Vista installed don’t think it sucks. We know it does.. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Microsoft has done such a horrible job with Vista that they actually have to relaunch a multi-million dollar image building campaign for their monopoly operating system product. It doesn’t hurt that after nearly a decade, WindowsXP is so well perfected, supported and widely available that there simply is nothing about Vista that makes people want to switch. Sure, Vista has some kick-ass eye candy. But you can add that eye candy to WindowsXP with a few simple add-ons that are freely downloaded from the web. (Yahoo! Widgets, for instance.) Again… no reason to shell out a few hundred dollars for Vista.

By the way, if you go to the website advertised in the commercial (www.mojaveexperiment.com), you’ll be prompted to download and install Microsoft Silverlight to view the interactive content on the website. What is Silverlight? Basically it’s Microsoft’s attempt to compete against Adobe’s Flash web player. 99% of the webs interactive content is displayed via Flash, which makes this a growth area for Microsoft products. Microsoft was even smart enough to make their beta version compatible with Safari and Firefox, the two browsers that are edging out their Internet Explorer program, a move which would speed adoption. The problem is… Silverlight is slower than Christmas. I actually thought - at first - the slow, jerky and hesitant display was done on purpose as an artistic statement. Then I realized… “no… just another suckass Microsoft product that doesn’t perform well.”

Silverlight is the latest in a series of “me too” products from Microsoft. The problem with being on top of the software industry is that you’re stuck playing defense. Microsoft - too big, bloated and entrenched to actually come up with convincing new products, is now trying to simultaneously defend it’s market share in the area of office products and operating systems AND trying to snatch marketshare from other companies who know the meaning of the word “innovation”.

This is not new for Microsoft. Internet Explorer, which stills its around the 50% mark in terms of all browsers used, was initially a copy of the first browser - NCSA’s Mosaic browser, and was borne to compete with Netscape Navigator. Microsoft saw the exploding World Wide Web and knew that it had to get ahead of the curve. Later, Microsoft decided that the mp3 format wasn’t proprietary enough for them, so they created Windows Media Audio (WMA). The AVI format was too open for them, so they created Windows Media Video (WMV). Lately, that strategy has been applied to Adobe’s Acrobat PDF viewer. PDF has become nearly a universal format for document exchange. Microsoft decided it would create the Office Document Image format to compete. Unlike Acrobat, which has to be purchased, Microsoft pushed it’s ODI format out for free. In spite of the freeness of all these proprietary Microsoft formats, they haven’t managed to become dominant. Mostly because… in one way or another… they suck.

The problem with all this sucky Microsoft software is that it works. It works well enough and often enough that it’s usable and if you have a competent systems administrator, it’s even reliable. Other than Apple with their Macintosh computer and Operating Systems, there’s no competitor. Apple products are expensive and therefore somewhat niche, though their share of the personal computer market is slowly growing. (Apple doesn’t want to be the behemoth that Microsoft is. Part of their branding is that Apple users are different and unique. If everyone could afford to have a Mac the way people can have a Windows PC, then that uniqueness would disappear.) So I’m still using Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and sometimes, Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The lack of anything better isn’t entirely true. I would easily say that MacOS X is far superior. I would also say that for people who are new to computers or not entrenched in the Windows GUI, Linux desktops are competitive. Ubuntu, the distribution of Linux that has been the most popular for the last few years, has actually sported the kind of eye candy Vista brags about for… the last few years. The latest versions incorporate something called Compiz Fusion that delivers stunning eye candy that Vista could only dream about. You can get on Google video and see some impressive demonstrations - I liked this one.

I started playing with linux over 10 years ago. It wasn’t user friendly at all, and required technical aptitude combined with perseverance to actually get to a point where it’s usable for day-to-day tasks. By 2004, there were distributions of linux that were easier to install and more usable, but they were plagued by bugs and clunky interfaces. From 1991 when linux was first created to 1999, linux was an oddity - a geeks play thing. From 2000 to 2004, Linux became an alternative to Windows that even novice computer users could dabble in, but not a viable alternative. From 2005 to 2008, Linux has exploded. Thanks to corporate support of professional developers collaborating with tens of thousands of volunteer users and programmers, various distributions of Linux have reached a level of maturing where they are ready to completely replace Windows (or even MacOS).

Microsoft is a big ship, and big ships sink slowly. If the copy-cat vs innovate behavior coupled with ho-hum new-products continues, Microsoft will find it in the position of IBM in a few years. Not that IBM is doing badly, but they don’t make adding machines anymore. Likewise, Microsoft will find itself in a position of purveying technologies developed by others. I’m not saying you should dump your MSFT shares just yet… but if you hear the words “Microsoft” and “innovate”, try not to laugh.

One of the biggest zingers from Governor Palin’s speech before the GOP Convention was a joke about how Hockey Moms are separated from pit bulls by the wearing of lipstick. The big controversy in the last 48 hours was Obama making a reference to McCain’s policies, and the old addage about “putting lipstick on a pig”. The blogosphere and Drudge spun that as a personal attack against McCain-Palin which the mainstream “drive by” media spun as a mysogynist personal attack against Palin.

Now… sensible people will discern that Obama, a Harvard graduate, didn’t intend to launch a sexist attack against a female Vice Presidential candidate. He is already in far too much trouble with the women in his own party for shutting out Senator Clinton. But sensible people also should now that Obama, a Harvard graduate, knows the meaning of double entendre. He should have known that any uncharitable language that isn’t specifically directed will be spun. He should have learned his lesson after the “clinging to god and guns” comment that took his ‘champion for the commoner’ image and turned into an elitist snob. He should have know. But he didn’t. Because he’s not that smart.

Here’s the great irony; Dubya, a Harvard graduate, gets a bad rap on his intelligence even though his grades and IQ place him above pretty much anyone he’s ever contested. He gets that rap because… lets face it… he sucks at speeches. Even when he stays on script, his delivery is clumsy and his timing is awkward. When he goes off script, his humor and mannerisms become cocky and sophomoric. This plain spoken demeanor is what you want from the guy you’re buying a car from, but not from the Leader of the Free World.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is an excellent orator. His speeches are energizing, even musical. You don’t even care about his message, because his speeches hit all the right buttons. But Barack goes off script too, and the results are hilarious. And the more he goes off-script, the more people will want to see it, which means the media will oblige.

The love affair of the national media with Obama is over, and what will be interesting now is the coverage of the downward spiral of his campaign.

While everyone else is going gah-gah for Sarah Palin, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on one of the lesser newsmakers of this weeks events - Senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman, who spoke at the Republican convention, is a cause celebre among Republicans and a pariah amongst his own party. The central issue is his continued support for Bush and the Iraq war. Such was also the case in 2006 when Lieberman was up for re-election. Long memories best serve the armchair wonks here, so I’m going to go into a flashback.

The date was March 31st, 2006 and Joseph Lieberman was hosting the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner for the Connecticut Democrat party. As he attempted to introduce Senator Barack Obama to the audience, he found he was largely ignored except for scattered cheers and jeers. That night, Obama proclaimed his solid support for Lieberman, and upon concluding his speech was met with a round of applause that could be best concluded as polite. Though his speech had been riveting, there was a sense of uncommitedness around Lieberman. Though previously endorsed by Senators Clinton, Kennedy, Dodd, Durbin, Biden and other such powerhouses there was a grassroots movement of ultra-radicals hostile to the war in Iraq, hostile to continued US-Israeli support and hostile to Lieberman’s outspoken support of Bush on a number of issues other than the war. By mid-summer, this groundswell had turned into a political Tsunami. Only five Senators would endorse the long-time incumbent, and none of them were key party players. By contrast every heavyweight among the Senate Democrats endorsed Lieberman’s primary opponent, Ed Lamont. Along with those endorsements came long-time contributors. Though officially the Local, State and National parties rarely support one candidate over another during the primary cycle, party leadership holds considerable back channel sway. PAC money flows more or less along the lines of endorsements which is why soft-money donors found on lists turned in by the likes of Obama, Biden, Clinton and Kennedy match very well to those turned in by Ed Lamont. Likewise, few donors were found in common between those four and with Lieberman, even though many had previously supported Lieberman. (To be fair, Lamont funded the lions share of his primary campaign with money from his personal business, and Lieberman had nearly $4 million left over from his 2000 and 2004 fundraising accounts.)

Lieberman lost the primary, and ran as an Independant winning his seat handily. To sweeten his victory, Lieberman the Independent now held the balance of power the US Senate in his hands. As a Democrat, he’d give the party a slim majority. As an Independent, the Dems were 50/50 to the Republicans. A deal was cut that let Lieberman keep his Seniority and his position on key Senate committees so long as he sat in the Senate as a Democrat and voted in favor of Democrats in procedural matters. But with the sweet comes the sour - Lieberman forgave, but didn’t forget that it was Obama, Biden, Clinton and the current Democratic leadership that turned on him. For Lieberman, this week was payback time. With his endorsement, McCain now looks more attractive to independents, crossovers and disaffected Blue-Dogs.

As an interesting aside, among the Democrats supporting Lieberman was John Edwards, former Senator from North Carolina. Edwards’ shutout in this last election is largely seen as a backlash from the current in-crowd for having endorsed Lieberman at the time.