As both the presidential (and congressional, for that matter) campaigns and the economic crisis continue to unfold, I become more and more convinced that Larry Lessig’s latest crusade is critically needed. The Change Congress movement is committed to increasing transparency in government, limiting the influence of lobbyists and special interests, supporting publicly financed campaigns, and ending earmarks. I’m a recent convert to some of these positions (public campaign finance, for example), but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that our democracy is broken.

I’m all in:

Unless I break down and relent, I think I’m going to pass on the VP debate tonight. There’s just no upside for me…it’s not going to change my vote, and I expect it to be both frustrating and awkward. As has been noted elsewhere, the VP debates tend to be more about a proxy attack against the opposing Presidential candidate, and I’ve had my fill of the negative campaigning (by both parties) for now. In addition, Gov. Palin has set the bar so low at this point that she may very well come out of this doing much better than expected, and with a Republican bump in the polls. I simply don’t think I can bear to watch it live. Besides, it’s not like it won’t be readily available later for me to catch up on. Vive la Internet!

On the bright side, I’ve seen a couple episodes of Fringe now, and it’s not too bad. Overly graphic, but that’s TV nowadays, it seems. Hulu certainly makes it easy to keep it on in the background. Nice!

I seriously think we lucked up yesterday. For whatever reason…Pelosi’s strategy (or screwup), Republican ideological differences, or just plain lack of leadership, the bailout plan failed in the House yesterday, and there’s no real chance of another vote until Thursday (mainly due to Rosh Hashanah). Awesome.

Realistically, something is going to happen…there’s too much pressure at this point on the government to do SOMETHING. But ironically, the combination of the vote failure and the postponement gives us the 72 hours to read and discuss the bill that the Sunlight Foundation had started a petition for. It’s probably inevitable that the existing bill will be the starting point; there isn’t enough time to create yet another plan out of whole cloth. But with 3 days between votes, Congressmen will have time to talk to more economists about options, citizens can continue to educate themselves and talk to their reps, and the media can hopefully contribute constructively to the discussion.

Already, we’re getting some ideas that seem plausible to me, like the proposal to increase FDIC insurance from $100K to $250K. We need more solutions that will calm and loosen the credit markets and start to deal with the ongoing housing crisis, not just reward risk-taking Wall St. executives because they’re too big to fail.

I decided to vote for Obama some time ago, though I’m not a registered Democrat, and I’m not 100% in favor of his policies. In fact, I voted Libertarian in every Presidential election I could until 2004, when I voted for Kerry (in an desperate effort to vote Bush out of office). Irregardless, I try to vote the issues, not the person…and on the issues that matter most to me, and to the country, I line up with Obama. These issues include:

• The War on Terror and its consequences
• The invasion of Iraq
• Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture, and habeas corpus
• Supreme Court nominations
• Health care reform

Luckily, on all these issues, I agree with a single candiate’s position; Obama’s. On the other hand, since I still have a small-government inclination, we disagree more on some economic issues; in addition, I’m highly skeptical of his energy plan without a nuclear component (that he presently avoids explicitly supporting).

But the differences there are trumped by the agreement on the truly important points; issues that I also have almost a perfect disagreement with McCain over. (Ironically, McCain and I probably see much closer to eye to eye on the issues that are less relevant to me for the election). So it’s really a no-brainer. I’ll talk more about the topics above in some upcoming posts, but the takeaway is that I’m close to Obama’s position on pretty much all of those. So no surprises from me in November, and no WAY any of these debates could make a difference. To me, it’s not about the dog-and-pony show; it’s about the issues.

I find it telling that President Bush is asking both McCain and Obama to Washington to attend White House meetings with Congressional leaders to work on a compromise. Hm…now I could actually understand this if it was mid-November, and he was inviting the President-elect. But one of these two fellows isn’t going to be anything other than a failed candidate in 6 weeks or so. Involving both of them at a high level just moves the politics of the election into a situation that needs to be focused on solving a problem. Regardless of your position on whether or not the candidates should postpone Friday’s debate, this looks to me like a man who just wants out of the spotlight at this point.

I realize Bush is a lame duck at this point, but wow…

Well, I finally broke down this past weekend and downloaded the demo for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and enjoyed it enough that I just picked up the Platinum gamepack from Steam. Sure, it’s a few years old now, but I like buying games that way…for $30, I got Dawn of War and two expansions; enough gameplay for me for probably 6 months of fun. Good deal, IMO.

I’ve always loved the Warhammer 40K universe…the whole dystopian gothic space opera thing is right up my alley. I’ve owned bits and pieces of the rules since the early 90s, and I finally got around to playing tabletop again a little bit over the past couple of years…fun! (I’m an old, old school strategy wargamer, so setting up minatures is old hat).

To me, computers have always had the potential to really take a lot of the drudgery out of wargaming, though…setting up 400 or 500 chits for a Napoleonic wargame can take almost as long as playing. Unfortunately, I think the real-time strategy (RTS) “innovation” had a tendency to replace chit setup pain with a requirement to be fast on the click to play a strategy game…which I don’t like. The newer ones have tweaked that to a certain extent though, with build queues and such, and I’ve been looking forward to playing one of them for awhile. I expect I’ve found the game that will keep me out of WotLK and Warhammer Online this winter…*grin*. Blame Steam for dangling this stuff in front of me!

TIme to get back in the saddle. The past few months have seen me slip out of doing my podcast, then out of writing here on my blog, and even finally out of commenting much even at sites like Friendfeed. I’m hundreds of posts behind in RSS feeds, and I just generally feel a bit overwhelmed by my digital existence…I can’t keep up. I could complain, AGAIN, about everything that’s going on, but I’m not. I’ll just knock things out a day at a time, and get back in the groove. (and that’s the last navel-gazing comment, I SWEAR.)

I wanted to make note of several excellent podcasts I’ve listened to recently:

• Dave Slusher at Dragon*Con: Why podcasting matters
• Reality Break Podcast: Episode 5 – Bruce Sterling
• Fora.tv: A Critical Look at the Presumptive Presidential Nominees
• Yog Radio: Episode #30, Dan Harms Interview

Dave Slusher takes the prize here, being responsible for two of the four (hey, I’m an EGC fanboy, what can I say?). Dave was the facilitator and first speaker at the Dragon*Con Why Podcasting Matters panel, and he set the tone precisely as I thought it should be done. Dave and I are of one mind here…low-to-zero cost distribution has brought us podcasting, and set us free from the requirement of publishing for anything other than the joy of doing it and the ability to connect with other people. Profitability runs a distant second for me here; it totally doesn’t need to be the focus. Dave has made this point well before, and he makes it well here (despite some pushback from the other presenters…Dave can hold his own!). Well worth listening to, and for Bob’s sake, subscribe to Evil Genius Chronicles (Dave’s personal podcast) if you haven’t already!!

Oh, and now, since you’ve got your podcatcher open, subscribe to the Reality Break Podcast as well (that is, if you’re into science fiction). Episode 5 is a great example, with a great guest…Bruce Sterling. Bruce is one of the godfathers of the cyberpunk movement, one of my favorite authors, and an excellent interviewee. This interview is from 1996 (Reality Break was a radio show back in the 90s, and Dave is interleaving new and old interviews to create the podcast), and Dave and Bruce are primarily discussing Holy Fire, Bruce’s newest release at the time. It’s high on my list of Sterling-work, and the interview shows off both Dave’s interviewing style, and Bruce’s philosophy on writing and technology. It’s a winner.

Switching to politics, the Fora.tv panel discussion should go in your queue if you’re looking for a broad discussion of the presidential nominees…both as people and as policy standard-bearers. The panelists range from Democracy Now’s progressive host Amy Goodman to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. The discussion ranges far and wide, and presents thoughts and discussion on both of the candidates from many different viewpoints.

One thing to note is that the panel took place on July 1st of this year…I find reviewing work like this from a few months in the future gives me a way to critically evaluate the veracity of various claims. (Among other notable topics was a discussion of potential VP nominees for both parties; it’s worth listening to and thinking about just for that bit).

And finally, if you’re an RPG’er, and in particular a fan of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, you should immediately go check out Yog-Sothoth.com. The site is a treasure trove of info and upcoming events regarding gaming in the Mythos, and the podcast is simply excellent! I really, really enjoyed it…I often have a hard time with group podcasts, but this one was fun, informative, and left me wanting more. And since I came in on episode 30, I’ve got plenty to go back and check out.

We learn by doing: seems obvious, but it apparently isn’t, at least for me.

I need to be reminded once a year or so; I learn best by doing…by trying, accepting my mistakes, and then correcting my efforts. More often than not, my procrastination at tasks like my website, general hackery/development, writing, or even just blogging comes down to a reluctance to just throw something out there and give it a try. (What if it’s not quite right!?) That first bit is seldom perfect, but it gets me started, and it’s a LOT easier to just move along on pure inertia once started.

Lately, I’ve found myself spending far too much time just THINKING about the subjects of blog posts; going over them carefully in my head to make sure I’m covering most of my points before anything ever hits paper (keyboard, whatever). Which…um…then doesn’t happen. This is not conducive to blog throughput. *grin*

But it’s time to retrain myself. I’ve also started carrying a writing journal again (Moleskine, natch), and I’m forcing myself to just pull it out (as I’ve done with the start of this post!) and knock out some paragraphs. Years ago, I found journaling very addictive, so I hope to get that going again. (Sure, I’m editing the hell out of this as I transcribe to my blog, but it gets me moving. It’s all upside!)

The other tweak I’ve finally gotten around to making is an addition my blogging framework to allow me to hide drafts until they’re ready to be published. Yep…I don’t (er, didn’t, until recently) have a way to edit before publishing, except by working on posts somewhere else (I had been using my personal wiki.) So finally, it’s time to fix that and take away a crutch. Amazing how much more I can get accomplished if I can get part of it down permanently!

I briefly flirted with switching out my Django backend for a blogging framework (probably WordPress), but I decided against it. There’s nothing I can’t do in Django, really, and no reason to add additional work (moving all the data) just for the sake of shiny and new. Just took a quick programming session to add the the is_published attribute, and then track down the edge-case references (like the RSS feed). All done, and now I can edit! Yeah, it’s a small victory, but lately, I take what I can get. *grin*

Test post only…flipping all the various bits to (finally!) enable me to edit posts before publishing. Whew!