Day: November 2, 2008

“It’s not easy being green” – and life’s hard in “red states”, too

It’s not easy bein’ green.
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re not standing out
like flashy sparkles in the water- or stars in the sky.

Kermit certainly should know about the difficulty of being green; but, I suspect he’d find being green in a Red State even harder.  This letter from the Blue States of “New California” to the Red States offers an interesting assessment of the differences between the two groups.  More about that after the letter.

Dear Red States:

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel Continue reading ““It’s not easy being green” – and life’s hard in “red states”, too”

Another Great Political Commercial. Sums Up My Feelings Nicely

This one is dedicated to the good folks at Yallpolitics. Believe me I know it ain’t easy pumping a pig, whether a stock down on it’s luck or a political party about to have it’s ass kicked by the voters. Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE]

A “man in the middle” of electronic voting?

Sop will readily agree that I have a very basic understanding of technology – something slightly above “on” and “off”.  It troubles me so at times that I’ve even expressed a desire for my spirit to leave this earthly world by wire so I can see how fax machines, lazer printers, and so forth work.  Just fax me to Jesus.

As you might imagine, my trust level of electronic voting systems is pretty low and I just found a post on Raw Story that can explain my concern.

Information technology expert Stephen Spoonamore believes this architecture could have made possible a KingPin or “Man in the Middle” (MIM) attack — a well-defined criminal methodology in which a computer is inserted into the network of a bank or credit card processor to intercept and modify transactions before they reach a central computer.

In what I call my “read around” that followed, I linked to black box voting, a site that reassures me that people who do understand technology are at least paying attention to this security of the upcoming vote – leaving me, however, without the assurance that those who might tamper with the vote are not one step ahead of those working to keep it secure. Continue reading “A “man in the middle” of electronic voting?”