Thursday, May 31. 2007
Why a vote for Ron Paul is not a waste
Out of the ten current Republican presidential candidates there really are only two choices. We have the neo-con candidates led by Giuliani, McCain and Romney and the anti-war constitutional conservative Ron Paul. I have been interested in seeing th buzz which has been generated regarding Ron Paul in the last few months on the internet. On many blogs people preface or conclude their articles with the comment "but Ron Paul has no chance of winning" - this is a plea to the don't waste your vote crowd. If you are a person who broadly agrees with Ron Paul's ideas but is concerned you might waste your vote, read on.
Watching the debates online recently it is clear to me that if any of the nine neo-con candidates are elected the differences between them are minimal - all are for the war, all are for expanding US federal spending. If you are spending time trying to differentiate them so you choose the best candidate it probably is as effective spotting differences between a school of fish. They all look the same, so why waste your vote choosing between nine clone candidates with whom you don't overly agree with. Either way if Ron Paul does not win, you are fairly certain as to what you are going to get, so why worry about your perceived wasting of a vote for Ron Paul. Surely it is better to vote for a candidate you agree with than rather trying to split hairs between neo-con candidates with questionable and unknown intentions.
As for Democrat voters, switching to the Republicans and voting Ron Paul is a guaranteed way you can stop the war. It is pretty evident that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be anti-war leaving the left side of the ballot is anti-war. Which way will the right side go? If you help Ron Paul win the primary then it will be an Anti-War v Anti-War presidential election, meaning both the left side and the right side will be anti-war. Even before the November 2008 elections are held it would be clear that the Iraq war will end, and thus other issues will become relevant in the presidential contest. If however a neo-con candidate wins the Republican primary the only issue debated will be the war. Democrats helping to elect Ron Paul will actually cause the Republican primaries to become a referendum on the war rather than the much later presidential election.
How the campaign continues for the Republicans in the next few months might determine their party's direction for the next ten to twenty years. I will watch with interest.
"ron paul"
Watching the debates online recently it is clear to me that if any of the nine neo-con candidates are elected the differences between them are minimal - all are for the war, all are for expanding US federal spending. If you are spending time trying to differentiate them so you choose the best candidate it probably is as effective spotting differences between a school of fish. They all look the same, so why waste your vote choosing between nine clone candidates with whom you don't overly agree with. Either way if Ron Paul does not win, you are fairly certain as to what you are going to get, so why worry about your perceived wasting of a vote for Ron Paul. Surely it is better to vote for a candidate you agree with than rather trying to split hairs between neo-con candidates with questionable and unknown intentions.
As for Democrat voters, switching to the Republicans and voting Ron Paul is a guaranteed way you can stop the war. It is pretty evident that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be anti-war leaving the left side of the ballot is anti-war. Which way will the right side go? If you help Ron Paul win the primary then it will be an Anti-War v Anti-War presidential election, meaning both the left side and the right side will be anti-war. Even before the November 2008 elections are held it would be clear that the Iraq war will end, and thus other issues will become relevant in the presidential contest. If however a neo-con candidate wins the Republican primary the only issue debated will be the war. Democrats helping to elect Ron Paul will actually cause the Republican primaries to become a referendum on the war rather than the much later presidential election.
How the campaign continues for the Republicans in the next few months might determine their party's direction for the next ten to twenty years. I will watch with interest.
"ron paul"Thursday, October 26. 2006
Mild Indian Roadsign Innuendo
This road sign is located outside the border town of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India. The signwriter has given the road a perfectly innocent personification.
Saturday, August 19. 2006
This train is delayed until Windows reboots
I was out and about in London last night and took a quick snap of Windows working its magic. It is a display sign above one of the platforms and is meant to show the next train, destinations, time etc. It won't be doing that tonight. I have seen this happening before on train displays - a few times on the CityRail network in Sydney, and elsewhere in the UK.
If you zoom in you can see that the message says "Your system is running low on virtual memory". I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, if you check out the version date 22/7/2002, it is clear this software has not been upgraded in a while - and probably is currently unsupported. Given the state of the railway companies in the UK it is more likely to be the case of dodgy software and a memory leak from the timetabling system.
Fortunately my train was on time.
If you zoom in you can see that the message says "Your system is running low on virtual memory". I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, if you check out the version date 22/7/2002, it is clear this software has not been upgraded in a while - and probably is currently unsupported. Given the state of the railway companies in the UK it is more likely to be the case of dodgy software and a memory leak from the timetabling system.
Fortunately my train was on time.