Living in Chicago, my decision was an easy one. After all, we had elected Carol Moseley Braun, the FIRST female black Senator in US history! After the republicans claimed that she had meet with the wrong African dictator (as opposed to one of the right African dictators), she lost to Peter Fitzgerald. Peter Fitzgerald then (against the wishes of the republicans) recommended Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation) for US Attorney. When Patrick Fitzgerald went after the republicans in power in IL, from the Commercial Drivers License testers, all the way to the ex-Governor George Ryan (who is rotting in jail now, waiting for a pardon from GWB), Peter Fitzgerald decided not to run. When Carol decided not to run for Senator, it eventually ended up with a choice of Barack Obama or the carpetbagger Alan Keyes. Talk about a no-brainer! So, I had already voted for Barack before he ran for the Democratic Party's candidate for President.

My best example of why I would vote for him (as opposed to voting for him by default) is that when he was in the state legislature, he sponsored and led a new law where all homicide interrogations by police in Illinois MUST be videotaped. He convinced both Democrats and Republicans to vote unanimously for it! That wasn't easy. I plan on researching that law and posting more details about it.

Posted at July 5, 2008 9:10 PM in response to Open Post... When and Why did you start to support Barack Obama?

There are only about 14 million Dittoheads, versus 300 million Americans.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iDR-0y1qnnRT-JNM6NT2wxcQMZ1AD91MBJDG1

That is less than 5%.

He is just a big fish in a very little pond.

Posted at July 3, 2008 12:34 PM in response to How Politically Stupid Are We?

Even being a successful Naval Aviator is not an indicator that one should be President.

The "TOP GUN" pilot who shot down the most enemy planes over Vietnam was Randal "Duke" Cunningham, who is sitting in JAIL with I believe the longest sentence every received by a congresscritter.

He helped contractors take money from the DOD for shoddy work, which put our troops in danger!

On the other hand, being a poor pilot does not mean that one should NOT be President. This is just too "nuanced" for the public to deal with, so I think that Obama is correct not to go there.

Posted at June 30, 2008 11:21 PM in response to Clark Ridiculed McCain and the Left Doesn't Get It: What's Up With That?

You can remove the hard drive from your laptop, install it into a USB enclosure, and connect it to your home PC.

Download and burn a Knoppix (or other distribution) Live DVD or CD, or install it onto a USB thumb drive.

Boot the Knoppix DVD/CD/USB drive, connect to the Internet, create a Secure VPN Tunnel, and mount your remote laptop drive with Samba.

DHS/TSA may still take your diskless laptop, but at least your data will still be available at your home. The optional USB thumb drive can be wiped securely and discarded or donated.

The Department of Homeland Security may be able to decript the VPN Tunnel, but at least you are taking up some of DHS's CPU cycles while you browse TPM. Of course, they can still break into your home and "sneak and peek".

The country that you are visiting may consider the encryption a "Munition" and illegal, but you won't be breaking any US laws (yet).

Posted at June 30, 2008 10:42 PM in response to Laptop Searches in Airports Draw Fire at Senate Hearing

Christofascist is not a new term!

While Ronald Regan was president, George Carlin said it on stage.

I saw it recently on a HBO rerun. I played it back a few times to make sure that I heard it correctly.

Posted at February 19, 2007 9:58 PM in response to Blogging populism and the political establishment