RTFA: http://www.economist.com/vote2008/?mode=descriptio…

The Economist has redrawn the electoral map to give all 195 of the world’s countries (including the United States) a say in the election’s outcome. As in America, each country has been allocated a minimum of three electoral-college votes with extra votes allocated in proportion to population size. With over 6.5 billion people enfranchised, the result is a much larger electoral college of 9,875 votes. But rally your countrymen-a nation must have at least ten individual votes in order to have its electoral-college votes counted.

There are few countries whose votes in the Global Electoral College are a foregone conclusion. So the winner is unlikely to be decided by a small number of “swing countries”. Rather, they will have to cobble together a coalition of small, medium and large nations. (A campaign stop in Beijing is recommended, as well as a tour of Africa.) Voting in the Global Electoral College will close at midnight London time on November 1st, when the candidate with most electoral-college votes will be declared the winner.

Great concept! …but the results are absolutely shocking:

Listen: I’m a registered Republican. I voted for Ron Paul in the primaries, and as we all know, he’s advocated a very isolationist approach. I donated to the McCain campaign, and if you’ve been following RTFA recently, you have probably noticed an endless stream of articles that are critical of McCain. This is because I’m totally angry, disenfranchised, and betrayed by the GOP. I will be infuriated if the GOP manages to steal this election, because they don’t represent Republicans, they don’t represent Americans, and they don’t represent Humanity, at large.

Demonstrations like this map from The Economist give me a moment’s pause. In spite of my Ron Paul endorsement, the rest of the world DOES factor into my calculations, and I advocate for a realistic, gradual shift in focus. There must be a transition from the hard-line, idealistic orthodoxy that has caused the US to exert itself (rather, over-exert) in the affairs of too many foreign nations. Paradoxically, it would appear that I agree with the global consensus, and I conclude that the rest of the world doesn’t want the US in their business.

The essence of the paradox is this: I will listen to the world; it tells me that we should ignore the world. Of course, this is a dramatic over-simplification, but the US must concentrate on its own problems for a few years. I think we can accomplish this through diplomacy: the US can still exert a positive influence by cooperating, through global forums, with other countries that are willing to put forth their own resources towards certain global problems. It is cheaper, and the risks will be shared among more countries.

Here it is… I have delayed as long as possible, but I have reached my breaking point. As a McCain donor, as a registered Republican, as a hard-line fiscal conservative, as a strict constitutionalist:

I am hereby endorsing Obama. I stand with the majority of Americans and the majority of Humans.

RTFA: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/200…

A proposal to decriminalize the possession of marijuana has the support of about half of Massachusetts voters as the election nears, according to a new poll.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters supported Question 2 on the ballot, while 32 percent opposed it, and 16 percent were undecided, in a Suffolk University/WHDH-TV (Channel 7) News poll taken earlier this week.

The poll also found strong opposition to Question 1, a proposal to repeal the state income tax, and a nearly equal split among voters on Question 3, a proposal to ban dog racing in the state.

Law enforcement officials have mobilized to oppose the marijuana decriminalization proposal, making significant progress in swaying people to their side, said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University.

In an August poll, 72 percent of those surveyed had supported decriminalization.

“The ‘no’ side has gained momentum over the past two months,” said Paleologos. “The issue is whether the brass and blue will be able to move enough additional voters to their side in 12 days.”

Election season is heating up!

…but this article raises an interesting question: why should law enforcement oppose 3/4 of the popular will on a certain issue, and attempt to influence an election to maintain the criminality of that issue? Does this make sense to anyone? I’ll grant that police officers are citizens, and are therefore entitled to their vote. However, it seems like the police should want to create a law-abiding society, and should not oppose a movement that would make it easier to achieve this end. If that strong of a majority don’t think something should be a crime, then maybe it just shouldn’t be a crime!

Of course, this issue cannot simply come down to a moral question of whether or not it should be legal. Other factors are likely to include funding for certain programs, rates of incarceration, and other entrenched interests.

The bottom line is: bring this issue out of the dark! Decriminalization will prevent money from funding violent crime. Bring this financing into the light, choke out the illegal dealing, and reduce crime in this country!

Thank you for your letter regarding the amendment offered by Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 1585), expressing the sense of the Senate regarding Iran. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

I understand your concerns about this issue. I believe that the United States should resolve its differences with Iran diplomatically, through direct negotiations and dialogue with Iranian officials. We must also work closely with our friends and allies in the international community to pressure Iran to abandon its uranium enriched program, cease its active support for terrorist groups, and become a positive force for change in the Middle East.

I am also deeply concerned about allegations that Iran has provided arms, training, and financial support to Iraqi insurgents carrying out attacks against U.S. and Coalition troops and Iraqi civilians. In recent years, Iran has played a destabilizing role in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, and has pursued a nuclear enrichment program in violation of its international legal obligations and United Nations Security Council resolutions.

On September 26, 2007, I joined 75 of my colleagues in approving the sense of the senate amendment regarding Iran introduced by Senators Kyl and Lieberman. I decided to support this amendment after two very controversial provisions were removed. Those provisions would have stated that it is the policy of the United States to stop violent Iranian activities inside Iraq and to use all tools at our disposal, including the military, to do so. I felt this could be interpreted as an authorization of military force against Iran and was pleased that Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman agreed to remove these provisions from the amendment.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue to write on matters of importance to you. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/.

I didn’t expect to receive such a relevant response to my original petition, so I was pleased to find this letter in my inbox, this morning. In fact, I am immensely pleased.

I can’t help but comment on the latency, though. It’s approximately 60 days after the fact… I know that the ping times to Dianne Feinstein’s CGI mailer are on the order of 200ms, so the bottleneck is obviously not with how quickly “they” receive the message.

To briefly digress, the essence of a Denail of Service attack is to overwhelm an event responder with more events than it can respond to. In practice, an attack against an Apache web server takes the form of lots of bogus requests flooding the server, which is generally unable to separate the legitimate requests from the bogus. The legitimate requests are therefore not responded to. Put another way, legitimate access to the web service is denied: Denial of Service. There are technical solutions to the DoS problem (or at least band-aid-type responses), but it’s still a relatively open issue.

Getting back to the latency with the federal government, I think this is essentially evidence of a DoS. It’s not an attack, per se, but the “representation service” provided by federal representatives is effectively denied until the time after which it is no longer relevant.

I understand why this is necessarily the case: one person’s attention can only be split so many different ways, and a person is also quite different from a timesharing computer server. As the controversial Linux Completely Fair Scheduler can attest, there’s a lot to be said about how you prioritize the focus of your attention across multiple, simultaneous tasks. It makes sense for a senator’s organization to take longer to respond to a single message from an individual, such as myself.

There are several solutions to the problem. Clearly, other federal representatives, who are in “less demand,” need to be brought into the loop. This means the next step is to contact the appropriate federal house representatives. It should be the case that their attention is focused on a smaller number of constituents.

In the end of the day, this is the question: is it possible to participate in current political events, in the United States? Of course, I’m optimistic that the answer is “yes.” However, it may be the case that this “yes” answer only applies at a fairly local level, and that federal policy is more difficult to influence.