Day: October 16, 2009

[…] you know, I’m busy and Nancy [Pelosi is] busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess — we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you’re not holding the mop the right way. (Applause.) Why don’t you grab a mop, why don’t you help clean up. (Applause.) You’re not mopping fast enough. (Laughter.) That’s a socialist mop. (Laughter and applause.) Grab a mop – let’s get to work.

Barack Obama

Takron-Galtos revisited

jimray posts:

“Terrorists should not be treated like common criminals in federal court. These detainees are enemies of the state, and should be treated as such by being held and brought to justice right where they are — in Guantanamo Bay.”

— Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA), criticizing a Democratic play to [transfer suspected enemy combatants from Guantanamo to the United States to stand trial]

It occurs to me that this kind of thinking is exactly backwards – nothing would be more humiliating to a terrorist than to be treated like a common criminal. We need to stop treating these people as if they’re some kind of team of super-villains ready to sow havoc on the U.S. at a moment’s notice. It’s not Lex Luthor or an evil genius Bond villain that we’re up against here – these people are barely literate, delusional and fueled by a misappropriation of religion and blind hatred of a worldview too complicated for them to understand. If that sounds familiar to people like Representative Lewis, it’s probably because it’s also an apt description of the extreme of his own party.

This is exactly right. Why the GOP and many average citizens seem to think our justice system simply cannot handle criminals “like this” is beyond me. A series of regular old trials (and, presumably: convictions and sentences) is precisely how to prevail in this situation over the long haul. We lose when we’re seen to dispatch with our whole system of government because it’s expedient or just more convenient. That dissolution of our government and, by extension, our ability to tinker in world events abroad, is precisely the object of their desire. Bring Osama bin Laden and his associates before the bench, one by one, just like any other common criminal. Nothing would undermine their entire worldview more.

The Other End of Orthogonal

Gruber (and others) muse that Microsoft’s competition for Windows 7 customers is with its own Windows XP and with apathy. Most notably: not with Apple/Macintosh. Which is true. Apple has repeatedly stated through words and actions that they have no particular interest in the sub-$500 PC market. They barely have an interest in the sub-$1000 market. True, Apple has a few “hobby” projects in that space, but not a major business push.

But, and it’s a big but: the other end of an orthogonal relationship is the collision point. What happens when there’s sufficient processing power to do the vast majority of cheap-PC stuff on a phone or tablet? Microsoft’s continuing failure in this market is as obvious as Apple’s ongoing and growing success in it. True, you’re never going to word process on an iPhone, but a tablet: could be. Like many, I’ve already found an iPhone sufficient for huge swaths of what I formerly used laptops for while traveling. For many business travelers, it’s probably already there. A truly functional tablet could well eliminate most folks’ entire need for a laptop; certainly, the net-book industry would close almost overnight.

So it seems likely then that Microsoft (and the cheap PC market) will be utterly decimated when Apple (or somebody else) solves the tablet market. Think it through: a wildly successful tablet (or an iPhone type device with far greater capabilities that that of today) would obviate the need for a “real” laptop, would also neuter the crap experience of the cheap PC; who would want a table-bound POS when you could have a doodad in your lap that does everything said POS does and more, only with real usability and ease. Such a development would leave only the high-end market for people that need serious computing power or some other fairly specific, high-end task like a giant monitor. Microsoft is in precisely none of those spaces. Apple is in all of them, and not just in: they’re dominating and defining them in a way that makes follow-on innovation seem more like poor imitation, and gaining a foothold is that much more difficult. Curious that the only one they’re not in is the one they publicly disregard while (quietly) planning to destroy… almost like there’s  a plan afoot.

The Gay Blade

Clearly some rampant judicial activism going on when it falls to the judge to finally point out the blazingly obvious logical flaws in a case:

The unusual exchange between U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker and Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, came during a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the measure as discriminatory under the U.S. Constitution.

Cooper had asked Walker to throw out the suit or make it more difficult for those civil rights claims to prevail. The judge not only refused but signaled that when the case goes to trial in January, he expects Cooper and his legal team to present evidence showing that male-female marriages would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.

Some of the specific exchanges went like this:

“What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?” Walker asked.

“My answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Cooper answered.

and this:

“Since when do Constitutional rights rest on the proof of no harm?” Walker parried, adding the First Amendment right to free speech protects activities that many find offensive, “but we tolerate those in a free society.”

all one can say to that is: “Yep. And Yep.”