Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

Came across this video on YouTube. Typically videos like these don’t make an impression on me however this one is different. Its a shame how pro-war the republicans have become. It seems people who are not pro-war typically aren’t pro-military either. Why can’t we be pro-military while wanting to use war/violence as a LAST resort. Having a strong military is crucial in maintaing national security. If our military is completely incompetent and puny, I’m pretty sure someone would have invaded by now.

Now that my mind is wondering to it, when did this preemptive bull shit start happening? Looks like they’re about to attack, lets hit them first! Looks like they “might” have WMDs, lets attack! For a country who follows innocent until proven guilty, we sure do like making strong convictions. If someone looks like they could rob a liquor store, do you immediate assault them and point a guilty finger? If you’re wrong, who looks like the jack ass? Bush/Iraq anyone? The idea of preemptive strike is just this but on a larger scale. People tend to forget this. I say, better to wait and let the suspect make the first guilty move. This way, you don’t look like the jack ass, you know without a doubt the person is guilty, and most people will be understanding of your further actions.

Anyway, getting somewhat off track of just wanting to post this video. Here it is:

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Tags: Government, McCain, Preemptive Strike, Republicans, Video

Came across this article on Digg, thought I’d repost it here.  Paul makes an interesting remark that voting for the lesser of two evils is “the dumbest thing”.  I’ve always said this will be what I’ll probably do.  Paul says to vote who represents you the best.  For me, that would be the Libertarian party.  Problem is, I don’t like any of them.  Its been a while since I looked at them, perhaps I should go back and reevaluate them.  While searching for the Libertarian link, I found the winning candidate.  Haven’t looked at him yet.  Guess I could also look at the Constitutionalist Candidate too.

Listen To Radio Interview

…or…

Watch Radio Interview

Above links and info came from Libertymaven.

I’m a little late on posting this, but at the end of March, Obama came to University of Pittsburgh and gave a speech.  Unfortunately I didn’t know about the event till it was over, however my friend Jessie was and wrote a wonderful article reflecting about the event.  Some quick highlights:

“As I listened to Obama’s speech, I was thoroughly impressed (as usual). He spoke about the issues he thought were facing Americans. He told us what he planned to do to carry out his promises of “change”. To my recollection, he never spoke a negative word about Senator Clinton. He said he respected her- he was friends with her before this campaign, and he will likely be friends again after the campaign. I was impressed that even though he was down in the PA polls, he didn’t resort to mud-slinging. The same cannot be said for his opponent.”

Obama’s refusal to be childish and [gasp] be an adult is one of the reason why I like him.  I never understood why politicians feel the need to nit pick when they are loosing.  Here’s a thought, maybe people just don’t like your ideas?  Had Clinton campaigned during the red scare, I’m pretty sure she would have been black listed and arrested for being a communist.  Obama has an uncanny ability among democrats which Jessie discusses further.

“In Dr. Drew Westen’s book The Political Brain , Westen addresses the Democrats’ past difficulties in engaging Americans emotionally, leading to a failure of re-elections with the exception of FDR and Clinton….he says that Democrats must find a candidate that’s not emotionally tone deaf if they are to overcome this.

I believe they’ve found their candidate. I think I’m falling for it too!! Westen says that first and foremost our tendencies to vote for a candidate are based on how we feel about that party emotionally, then how we feel about the candidate emotionally…. and THEN the real political issues. Sad isn’t it.”

I was struck curious by this fact.  I never heard of this Westen fellow and followed the wikipedia link. He lead: 

“…a study in which functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that self-described Democrats and Republicans responded to negative remarks about their political candidate of choice in systematically biased ways. Specifically, when Republican test subjects were shown self-contradictory quotes by George W. Bush and when Democratic test subjects were shown self-contradictory quotes by John Kerry, both groups tended to explain away the apparent contradictions in a manner biased to favor their candidate of choice.”

Unfortunately the study did not include Libertarians as it would be interesting to see if we suffered the same effect.  I would guess no.  Libertarians thought processes is very unique in the political world.  I touch on it and explain about in an earlier post.  Since, Libertarians are so logical about their decisions we easily avoid emotionally charged conclusions, hence not affected by above said study.  Of course, keeping in line with its analysis I may simply be explaining this away in a manner that favors my party.  LoL.

Jessie continues with more reflective thought:

“Throughout the years I’ve come to the conclusion that being an independent is thebest thing for me. I can evaluate the political candidates without being loyal to one party-they have to work to get my vote…as a Mormon, why should I be loyal to the Republican party? The majority of Mormons are Republican, and have been for the last few decades (even though the church itself doesn’t support either political party but does speak out on many political issues). ”

Good point.  Back in my heyday, I was Republican because my parents were.  As I grew older, I became an Independent because having a two party system was frustrating.  The parties seem to make choices based off what the other party says.  Republicans say “this” so Democrats say “that”.  Democrats say “this” so Republicans say “that”.  Wtf? Can’t they say “this” or “that” because its what’s the best for their country?  Not what’s best for their party?  So yes Jessie, I agree.  Being an Independent allows you break free from that nonsense.

Of course, as I continued to get even older I realized my opinions and way of thinking followed the Libertarian view point.  I eventually made the switch and am quite satisfied, though not with our candidate choices.  LoL.  I’d like to applaud Jessie for breaking the typical Mormon Republican path.  She is working towards a BS in Computer Science so I have faith she’ll eventually realize that the Libertarian in her is slowly at work and finally accept it.

A small group of dedicated grassroots artists have created a new 60 second promo/TV ad for Presidential candidate Ron Paul, entitled “The High Tide”. The ad combines carefully edited audio from various Ron Paul speeches with high end computer animation, motion graphics, and a moving musical score, into a unique presentation to help reinvigorate the Ron Paul message.

The official website.

How I Arrived Here
I stumbled upon this comparison when visiting a friends blog. Jessie had posted a comic that summed up, briefly, many aspects of a geek. One of which was libertarianism. Of course the joke related to Ron Paul, but this post is not about what political ideal Ron Paul truly follows. Jessie didn’t understand the relationship between computer scientists and libertarians. Truthfully, I never noticed there was a correlation. Well perhaps I did, I just didn’t ponder much about it.

I began thinking deeply about the question, but failed to formulate any sound idea. Since I am a libertarian and a computer scientist, I was left perplexed. I gave my first gut thought on Jessie’s blog, but it was more of a joke and directed more for geeks as opposed to programmers. Most of my friends are geeks and programmers from school. We’ve engaged in political talk time and time again. Many are in fact libertarian or at least follow many libertarian view points. So it would appear the correlation exists.

The Article
This must have equally bothered Jessie because she dug up a blog post that talked about it. More specifically, a blog post that reposted an article by Stuart Reges. The article is somewhat lengthy, but quite fascinating. He explains how libertarians think so differently from non-libertarians and effectively correlates that with programmers and non-programmers. I highly recommend taking a look, however for a quick over view I’ve written a short summary of the key points.

Summary
Stuart talks about his background briefly and an interesting analysis of results of a computer science AP exam back in the 80’s. He develops a theory stating computer scientists have of model of computation and can “play computer” in their head. Stuart goes on to explain this concept with a typical story seen among his TAs. He then relates this to libertarianism by the same type of connection. A programmer’s model of computation is to their ability to “play computer” as a libertarian’s model of interaction is to their ability to “play society”. He continues by giving examples to back up this claim:

Libertarians are able to look at a given law or government ruling (a piece of code segment) and tell you exactly how it will effect society (overall program). Libertarians will also try to solve the problem not treat the symptoms. This was the classic problem seen by his TAs. Just as a programmer can abstract away certain layers of code, so too can a libertarian abstract away certain layers of government. Libertarians will also follow “top-down programming” principles with their decentralize government thinking. Let higher levels be independent and handle few tasks, while the lower levels handle more of the details. Finally, he states libertarian thinking can be answered with mathematical certitude. If two Libertarians disagree, each asserts the other has a flaw in their logic.

Conclusion
My summary is very simply and leaves out a lot of details. It doesn’t do the main article any justice. I found Stuarts thinking dead on and made perfect sense to me. Perhaps the programmer in myself prevented me to step outside the box to understand how I think like a libertarian or vice versa. If I’m ever faced with this subject again, I will be better prepared in formulating my thoughts. Perhaps when time allows, I’ll make the same connection from a different view point since a non-programmer may have trouble understanding the arguments made in the article.

Ron Paul In New Hampshire

Nice little article talking about all the ongoings on Ron Paul’s campaign in New Hampshire. To those that don’t know, NH is the first primary and works as a good indication of where candidates stand. Ron Paul’s strength has been in the internet, and its good to see the strength is carrying over outside of the net. Interesting quote of the article:

“Sixty-one percent of likely GOP voters in New Hampshire say they will not vote for him under any circumstances, according to a University of New Hampshire poll.”

Polls can easily be misleading. Things like populous size of the sample can easily throw results. Also, no further info is giving on the conditions, sampling and so forth of the polling.

Iraq is not Nazi Germany

A great short clip of Ron Paul’s response to John McCain’s comment of Iraq is like Nazi Germany. Paul sums it up very well on how bull that really is. I am a bit astounded by McCain’s comment myself. Guess he never heard of Godwin’s Law.

Ron Paul: “Iraq is not Nazi Germany and besides, I thought it was Hitler that caused WWII, not the American people who opposed going in. So it didn’t make any sense and then he was awfully confused about isolationism versus non-intervention. There is a big difference.

Indeed there is. Just looking at the words on a literary aspect should show that. Wikipedia describes it best: “Nonintervention is a foreign policy which holds that political rulers should avoid alliances with other nations and avoid all wars not related to direct territorial self-defense.” Isolationism combines nonintervention with protectionism. Think of protectionism as the opposite of global free trade. I for one would like a return to non-intervention. Being the “Global Police” is not something we should be practising. That’s something better left served for the United Nations. Granted it has a lot problems and is far from perfect, but I do believe its a step in the right direction.