Much like Sinistar, I live.

It’s been a long six months since I last posted. I left a job and moved. I started back at college. I got a new job. now I feel the need to post at least once or twice just to keep my hand in.

As I predicted, we’re headed for a government where a single political party controls two off the three wings of government. Barack Obama and the legislative Democrats have an awful lot of power on their hands. Let’s hope they use it wisely.

Uncharacteristically I do feel at least a little hope that things will get better. The press has been more vigilant about certain things over the last year, so I feel that if Obama and crew start to backslide on privacy and freedom issues that it will get brought to light. After the Rebulicans managed to get themselves tossed out on their ear over a number of scandals I have some hope the Democrats will try to avoid doing the same thing too quickly. I’m hoping the Blagojevich thing isn’t going to translate to the national stage. I did end up voting for Obama, so help me, mostly because I felt a McCain presidency would have been disastrous.

Anyhow, I hope to be able to post on a semi-regular basis at least for the next month or so. School is over until the start of the Spring semester, so I’ve got some time on my hands. I hope to get a post done soon, though unless someone asks otherwise I’m skipping the bailout as a topic. Enough’s been said by all sides on that already.

This is inexcusable.

Salon’s Article about the FISA “compromise” pretty much sums up what I’m thinking at the moment. That an overwhelmingly Democratic congress can’t seem to hold it’s ground against a president who has been a lame duck for almost two years now is astonishing to me.

Why retroactive immunity is a bad thing doesn’t take much intelligence to understand. If companies are allowed to break the law simply because the government asks them to it opens the door for unchecked government power. You can read the full text of the bill here.

Words cannot express how angry I am about this. This will absolutely affect my voting this November. I will be closely reviewing voting results for this bill, and I will vote accordingly. I will be sure to let my family and friends know about the voting as well.

My political philosophy and current dilemma

This link presents me with something of a dilemma. My normal political philosophy can best be described as “obstructionist”. I would generally much prefer to have a government at odds with itself. I will generally vote for one political party for the executive branch and a different party for the legislative branch under the theory that a government divided against itself is less likely to meddle, and therefore it will be lass damaging.

Unfortunately there are some things that are totally unacceptable. This is one of them. Warrantless wiretapping is the kind of thing I would expect to need to deal with in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, or any number of other dictatorships. I realize that this is something of a cliche, but it’s bears repeating. This is important.

So, I will not vote for McCain come November. His stance on the “wartime powers” of the president is too extreme for me to consider voting for him, even though I would normally be inclined to do so due to the predominantly Democrat-controlled House and Senate. I do not relish the idea of any political party controlling two of the three branches of government (as the Republicans did from 2001-2007) but it looks like that’s where we’re headed.

(Lack of) mission statement

There are a lot of changes happening in my life right now. I’m losing my job, I’m moving, I’m going back to school. I’m going from wearing a shirt and tie every day to being able to get away with my favorite T-shirt and shorts. I have NO clue what I’m going to be doing for money in another month.

And I’ve decided to start a blog. I’ve had one before; an abortive attempt at Xanga.com that I decided to abandon because I like the feature set here better. I don’t read many people’s peronal blogs (mainly Bruce Schneier and sometimes Wil Wheaton), and I don’t expect many to read mine. Mostly this blog is intended to be an exercise.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’d love to be a novelist, but even the idea of writing reviews and commentary articles appeals to me. I feel I have sufficient command of the English language to be one. I think I can be interesting enough. I think I have interest enough. What I lack is the discipline to write every day.

That’s what this blog is for. I intend to use it to get into the habit of writing every day. What you will see here (if you see it at all) will be a mostly random collection. Maybe I’ll post commentary. Maybe I’ll post news. Maybe I’ll post short stories. Maybe I’ll get distracted and not post anything. Here’s hoping I can hammer the habit into my head.