McCain’s Blackberry

Strangely, one of McCain’s advisor is stating that McCain was responsible for the creation of the Blackberry. Or maybe he meant that the commerce committee allowed for the prevalence of mobile communications devices, such as the Blackberry.

Pressed to provide an example of what McCain had accomplished on that committee, Holtz-Eakin said the senator did not have jurisdiction over financial markets, then he held up his Blackberry, telling reporters: “He did this.”

“Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create,” Holtz-Eakin said. “And that’s what he did. He both regulated and deregulated the industry.”

I have to point out that RIM, although listed on a US exchange, is actually a Canadian company.

Alaska Is Like Nigeria

This article in the IHT compares governing Alaska to governing Nigeria.

With vast distances, large numbers of indigenous peoples and a narrowly based extraction economy — with a handful of giant multinational oil corporations dominating the game — some economists say a country like Nigeria might be an apter comparison.

The oil companies are putting a lot of money back into the economy as a result of an Alaskan windfall tax. Consequently, Alaskan residents are getting $1,200 bonus checks. No wonder Sarah Palin’s approval record is over 80%!

vpilf.com

I saw that McCain is going to pick Sarah Palin as a VP. I thought I’d check out http://vpilf.com/ on GoDaddy and see if I could register it. You do the math.

ANYWAYS, I realized that the domain name was taken. And it was taken recently. And it is anonymously registered to a company in Arizona. It’s probably irrelevant, but I just figured I’d share my conspiracy theory with you.

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
(http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: VPILF.COM
Created on: 04-Aug-08
Expires on: 04-Aug-09
Last Updated on: 04-Aug-08

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration VPILF.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599
Fax — (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS47.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS48.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Barack Obama and FISA

There seems to be a huge backlash against Obama’s vote on the FISA bill. Although I don’t understand the legal implications behind the vote, I read an opinion article that is pretty interesting.

But the anti-intellectualism of his opponents — people who think George W. Bush’s C-average is a good thing — makes it politically dangerous to explain complex issues in complex ways. And the conventions of political reporting in this country — which emphasize the horse race instead of the substance of campaigns — make it almost impossible to get this level of detail across to the public.

I wonder if the people criticizing the vote would feel differently had they gone through three years of law school and studied up on warrant law. Besides the knee-gut reaction to the bill, I have yet to see some good legal arguments. My problem is that even if I read a good dissection of the argument, I don’t think I’d understand it.

HRC’s Minority Mess

I know the spin machine is at maximum rotation at the moment. HRC’s political operatives are holding conference calls and selling the Pennsylvania Primary as a victory. And for the moment, it will help her raise some money to continue the race.

However, it is a statistical certainty that despite all the negative campaining, Obama will finish with a lead in delegates and the popular vote.

Bill Clinton has spent most of the campaign trying to marginalize Obama as the black candidate. The hope from the Clintons is that by doing this, it will give them a shot at winning the popular vote, which is pretty close.

If HRC does manage to secure the nomination by persuading the super-delegates, the Democratic Party will suffer great harm. That scenario requires the super-delegates to vote against the delegate count and possibly the popular vote. In essence, they would be discarding the results of the primaries, and voting on an ephemeral quality – electability.

The most damaging aspect is that if Hillary does manage to secure the Democratic party nomination, she will effectively isolate the entire minority population. It will appear as if a wealthy, connected, white politician has stolen the nomination from a minority who won it fair and square.

It looks like the only reason HRC is continuing this damaging, ugly, and lose-lose fight is for personal gain. It is either that, or she truly believes what millions of Americans do not believe – that Obama does not have the capability of being a good president.

Clinton and Obama tied in NH

I know that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in New Hampshire. However, they are splitting the total number of delegates from NH, so technically they actually tied with nine delegates apiece.

One of the political pundits on Newshour with Jim Lehrer suggested that the Bush Administration released news stories of the Iranian boats and images of Bush going to the Middle East on the day of the NH primary to bring National Security back in the spotlight. Somebody else retorted that the Bush Administration was neither that smart or calculating to do something like that. It makes for an fascinating conspiracy theory though.

As my former classmate pointed out to me, less than 2% of the total population has voted so far. With John Kerry endorsing Obama, it could be an extremely close race with lots of in-fighting between the Democrats. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting.

Since the Superbowl is only a few days before Super Tuesday, there is going to be a lot of news fighting for mindshare.

SEC FOIA Requests

My company, Novell, recently postponed our earnings release for the most recent quarter because of an SEC review. Specifically, our company received a second comment letter from the SEC on October 18th.

I am curious about the comment letters. I’m sort of a finance geek, and wonder what the SEC is questioning. Do they have questions about the way we handle Linux revenue? Is it a question about how we accounted for the Microsoft deal?

It is possible to obtain copies of the letters by filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the SEC. I thought about it, but I am not so curious as to actually file a request. If you are super curious, you can find the SEC FOIA request information here.

Iraq War Attacks By Month

I’m not sure what the following graph says about the war. I don’t know if this could be interpreted as “the surge worked” or if it means “the surge failed.” My gut instinct when looking at this graph is to try to extrapolate the future. Obviously, there is no way that the future can be predicted. I just think this topic is interesting.

Also, the war will cost us 190 Billion dollars next year – that is the amount of new funding being requested. The government estimates that we have spent 450 billion dollars to date.

Source: click here

Unity and Bloomberg

When I heard that Michael Bloomberg left the Republican Party, my immediate reaction was to think of Unity ’08. Unity ’08 needs Bloomberg. They also need a new website, but that’s another story.

I did a quick search online, and it turns out that my wacko theory isn’t all that wacko. The Nation seems to think he will team up with Chuck Hagel, the Senator from Nebraska, for an independent bid on the Unity ticket. Read about it in John Nichols’ blog here.

The concept behind the Unity ’08 party is really intriguing. It could really change the level of participation in our democracy. I’m not sure if this election will be their election, but I think that it could really take off in the future.