On a mail­ing list with some local and not so local acquain­tances of mine, we’ve been dis­cussing pol­i­tics recently, and because I’m as left wing as Rachel Mad­dow and some of the oth­ers are as right wing as Sean Han­nity, it gets a lit­tle heated. So much so that I’d stopped read­ing it recently more than just quick skim­ming when I have a lit­tle spare time. But when I saw the quote below from a small busi­ness owner who makes about the same as the boss of Joe the Plumber, I was com­pelled to com­ment in a bit more depth.

“Even if I pay $1 more in taxes because of Obama, I can’t expect that the gov­ern­ment will use it bet­ter than I can.”

Really, sir? You can, and do, build roads and bridges, build schools, pay teach­ers and defend the secu­rity of the nation all our of your own pocket? Seems like a bit of a stretch on the mea­ger prof­its your self-​owned busi­ness pro­vides you after all your expenses.

The fact is tax­a­tion is the dues we pay to live in Amer­ica. With­out them, we’d be no bet­ter off than folks in Soma­lia or Afghanistan. We live in a soci­ety where even the worst off is still doing bet­ter than most of the peo­ple in those coun­tries, and that’s the direct result of lib­eral gov­ern­ment poli­cies that lift us ALL up rather than forc­ing every­one to fend for him­self. You know why we work­ing stiffs have week­ends at all, rather than work­ing seven days a week? Because of Unions. You know why the water that comes out of your tap is safe to drink? Because the gov­ern­ment man­dates that this be so.

If you’re really so sure you’d be bet­ter off keep­ing every­thing for your­self, I invite you to leave this land of plenty and set up shop in Afghanistan with your wife and kid. You’ll be able to keep every­thing that you make, and you won’t have to worry about lib­er­als unfairly inter­fer­ing in your liveli­hood. You won’t have safety, secu­rity, or pos­si­bly even elec­tric­ity, either, but those should be a prob­lem for a self-​starter like you, should they?

Or you could cut the BS and admit that you ben­e­fit from liv­ing in this nation, that you’ve only achieved what you have because other peo­ple sac­ri­ficed to cre­ate the oppor­tu­nity for you. That you’d be noth­ing with­out the infra­struc­ture of the nation in which you live. The core of patri­o­tism is car­ing about the other peo­ple who share soci­ety with you, and other peo­ple have been patri­otic enough to pro­vide an envi­ron­ment that allows you the oppor­tu­nity to excel. Show some appre­ci­a­tion and quit being such an incon­sid­er­ate greedy douche bag for once in your pathetic life, willya?

I doubt you’ll take my advice. I expect you’ll con­tinue to ben­e­fit from the advan­tages of being an Amer­i­can while shak­ing your tiny fist at the injus­tice of it all. Poor man, indeed.

From the Live Mesh blog:

Thank you for using the Live Mesh for Mobile client! For users who saw a fail­ure to add their mobile phone to their mesh, we have deployed an updated build of Live Mesh for Mobile. You will need to down­load the Mobile Installer from http://m.mesh.com/install/wm6/LiveMesh.cab again. Once you have the new installer on your phone, run it and the installed client will be upgraded to the new ver­sion. The new Mobile Live Mesh Client is ver­sion num­ber 0.9.3424.6 (check this through Menu -> About). Now you can start Live Mesh, sign in, and you should be good to go.

Sure enough, I installed it on my Treo this morn­ing, was able to log in and start sync­ing fold­ers. Synced fold­ers can be on inter­nal mem­ory or the stor­age card, and open up in File Explorer when you click on them. Every­thing is editable just like any­thing else on your device. By default Live Mesh syncs your device with the mesh every 30 min­utes, but you can change this if you need to.

My part­ner in crime on Max­i­mum Geek wasn’t so lucky, though. He was told that there were a lim­ited num­ber of allowed users and was unable to reg­is­ter his device with the ser­vice. Now does that mean there’s a lim­ited num­ber of peo­ple who can con­nect at any one time, or that there’s a user cap on this beta? Let me know in the com­ments if you can get it working.

On the whole, very impressed so far. This is going to help enor­mously with NaNoW­riMo, which starts tonight at the stroke of midnight!

Live Mesh for Win­dows Mobile is offi­cially avail­able. Only it doesn’t work. Maybe.

Since rolling out the lat­est Live Mesh release this after­noon, a num­ber of cus­tomers have reported trou­ble installing the Live Mesh for Mobile soft­ware. We have iden­ti­fied the prob­lem and are cur­rently work­ing on a new build. We don’t yet have an esti­mated time of avail­abil­ity, but we will post updates here, on the blog, as we know more.

In the mean­time, please do not try to install the Live Mesh for Mobile soft­ware on your mobile phone because instal­la­tion will fail in most cases.

So watch this space for more info. I’m going to install it any­way and see if I luck out, but I obvi­ously don’t rec­om­mend this. Yet. I think.

NaNoW­riMo is just over 52 hours away as I write this. I’m incred­i­bly excited. I’ve only done this once before, in 2006, and it was a blast. If you’ve never tried it, the point is to get as many peo­ple together around the world as pos­si­ble to sup­port each other as they each try to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of Novem­ber. That’s only 1,668 words a day, 30 days in a row, doesn’t seem all that impossible.

It’s every bit as hard as it sounds. In ‘06 I started off strong, over 3,000 words the very first day, but I hit a wall about mid­way into week 2, com­pletely blocked and mis­er­able. I fought back, and squeaked in on the very last day, fin­ish­ing with less than 51,000 words by mid­night, Novem­ber 30. It’s tough, but I’ve never had so much fun writing.

The great thing about NaNoW­riMo is that you have to turn off all your inter­nal fil­ters. You just write, no time for sec­ond guess­ing or won­der­ing if it’s good enough. Para­dox­i­cally, this often leads to amaz­ing break­throughs as your inner voice shines through with­out hav­ing all the magic wrung from it by your con­scious fil­ter. My ‘06 project was a Mars novel, and I wrote some amaz­ing things that even­tu­ally I’d like to revisit and make into a pub­lish­able book (at the very least, add in all the punc­tu­a­tion I left out because I was typ­ing too damn fast).

This year is Ghost Ronin, the final ver­sion of what my long­time read­ers have seen as In Shin­ing Armor. I’ve changed a lot of the story, brought it kick­ing and scream­ing into the Post-​Dubya 21^st cen­tury, and I expect a wild ride. A nan­otech­no­log­i­cally enhanced Army Ranger turned Zen assas­sin fight­ing to save the world. Yee ha.

And of course, because I can’t do any­thing the quiet, sim­ple and easy way, in addi­tion to mak­ing my daily word counts and hold­ing down my day job, I’ll be blog­ging about the whole expe­ri­ence here. I don’t know if I’m going to have time to keep up the fre­quency of posts on tech­nol­ogy and pol­i­tics, my other two pas­sions, but if writing’s your thing, I hope the pages of this blog will be both enter­tain­ing and instruc­tive through­out Novem­ber. And I invite you to join me. If you’ve ever thought about writ­ing a novel, even if just to see if you can do it, this is your chance. Head on over to the offi­cial National Novel Writ­ing Month web­site for all the deets, and I’ll see you back here to start the adven­ture in just a few days.

For me, this elec­tion is essen­tially over. I dropped by one the early polling places (two, actu­ally) yes­ter­day and cast my vote for Barack Hus­sein Obama (and Joe Biden, Mark Udall for Colorado’s sen­ate seat and Ed Perl­mut­ter for my con­gres­sional dis­trict). I voted at the sec­ond polling sta­tion because the line at the first one was a good fifty meters long at least, most of that peo­ple two or three abreast. And this is early vot­ing, a full week before elec­tion day.

Turnout is amaz­ing this year. Looks very good for democ­racy. Nor­mally I’d slide into a rant about how the Dems are all about voter turnout and the Repub­li­cans, in the last sev­eral elec­tions, have done every­thing they can to sup­press voter turnout, pre­vent the peo­ple from mak­ing their will known. But I’m in such a good mood, I’ll just give that a pass.

Back in April when we did the ini­tial tech pre­view release of Live Mesh we empha­sized a vision for how the offer­ing would bring together your world of devices – a start­ing point to deliver on the data, devices, and peo­ple aspects of our vision. With this beta release we are mak­ing another sig­nif­i­cant step toward this goal. In par­tic­u­lar… with this Beta we are pro­vid­ing lim­ited avail­abil­ity of our new Mac and Win­dows Mobile 6 clients – pro­vid­ing users with a wider range of devices that can par­tic­i­pate in their mesh. Later this week as the beta rolls out, access to the Mac client will be pro­vided from the device ring expe­ri­ence at www.mesh.com. Instruc­tions for access­ing the Win­dows Mobile client will be made avail­able at this blog later in the week.

Live Mesh : Wel­come to Beta

This is the miss­ing piece (well, that and a OneNote Mobile that isn’t totally lame) of my mobile data strat­egy. I’ve been using Live Mesh for months, first just my desk­top to the web, then my desk­top through the web to my net­book and back. Just like my Exchange data, I’m secure that any­thing I change in once place will be the same every­where else I access it.

The free­dom this gives me is hard to explain. For my Exchange data, email, cal­en­dar, con­tacts and tasks, it doesn’t mat­ter if I use my desk­top, my net­book or my Treo to access any of it. I’ll use whatever’s most con­ve­nient at the time. I’m writ­ing this post on my desk­top at home because I’m get­ting ready to pod­cast, but I could just as eas­ily post it on my net­book from Chipo­tle (where there is, alas, no WiFi, so I have to tether to the EVDO con­nec­tion on my Treo), or from Mobile Pos­tIt on my Treo lying on the couch. My data is com­pletely inde­pen­dent from the device I hap­pen to use to access it. And now I’ll have the same free­dom with edit­ing doc­u­ments, spread­sheets, sync­ing music and videos to my Treo that I have with my other computers.

This is gonna be big.

Two igno­rant crack­ers got them­selves arrested today after plan­ning to assas­si­nate Barack Obama.

Law enforce­ment agents have bro­ken up a plot by two neo-​Nazi skin­heads to assas­si­nate Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama and shoot or decap­i­tate 88 black peo­ple, the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco Firearms and Explo­sives said Monday.

Assas­si­na­tion plot tar­get­ing Obama dis­rupted — Yahoo! News

Frankly, I’m sur­prised we haven’t seen more of this by now. I grew up in Texas, in a pre­dom­i­nantly black neigh­bor­hood. Seri­ously, there were three white kids in my high school, one of the larger schools in Hous­ton. Until I was ten or so, I thought I was just a really pale brother. But even so, I ran into enough big­oted red­necks to under­stand that the irra­tional roots of racism run deep in the south. It was only 40 years ago that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment had to inter­vene to guar­an­tee the right of reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing to African Amer­i­cans (which still doesn’t work that well, see Florida 2000, Ohio 2004).

There are still a lot of igno­rant white peo­ple in the south who just can’t accept the idea of a black pres­i­dent of the United States. It is lit­er­ally alien to their entire world­view. I think one of the few things the Repub­li­can party has done right this elec­tion cycle is keep­ing these wingnuts out of the news, sweep­ing real domes­tic ter­ror­ists like the Klu Klux Klan under the rug until the elec­tion is over. But those idiots are still down there, and they’ll still be there after Novem­ber 4^th. What do we do about them then?

I over­heard a dis­turb­ing story at the office today. A woman went out to din­ner over the week­end, and noticed that the waiter was wear­ing an Obama tie. She didn’t say any­thing through­out the meal, but when it came time to pay the bill, she struck up a conversation.

“So, you’re a big Obama fan?”

“Sure am,” the waiter said. “Pretty much believe in every­thing he stands for.”

“Well,” the woman said, “Obama’s all for the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, did you know that?”

“Uh,” the waiter said, con­fused as to where this was going.

The woman pulled out a ten dol­lar bill. “This is ten dol­lars,” she said. “I was going to give you this as a tip. You earned this. But instead, I’m going to give it to that guy out­side.” She pointed to a guy sit­ting on a bench out­side the restaurant.

“That’s not fair!” the waiter said.

“Hey, I agree,” said the woman, “but you said you agree with Obama, and this is what he’s try­ing to do.” She got up, leav­ing exactly the price of the bill itself, walked out the door and handed the ten dol­lar bill to the man on the bench.

Why am I telling you this story? Because as usual, it shows how the Repub­li­cans have it wrong. They’re ticked off because Obama’s talk­ing about rais­ing taxes on the rich (and cor­po­ra­tions, which despite what the law implies, aren’t really peo­ple) while cut­ting taxes for every­one else. They see this as unfairly tak­ing money from them, money they earned. And from their per­spec­tive, I can see how they’d feel that way. They’ve been allowed to be greedy for so long they’ve come to see it as normal.

Let me tell you a secret. All tax­a­tion is redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Every dime the gov­ern­ment col­lects from cit­i­zens gets given to some­one else, be that as enti­tle­ments like Social Secu­rity or as pay­ment for goods or ser­vices. The Repub­li­cans aren’t really upset at the idea of redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth (except the Ayn Rand lib­er­tar­i­ans who see all tax­a­tion as evil), they’re upset at the prospect of the money flow­ing from them rather than to them, as it has dur­ing most of the last 30 years.

What Obama’s really sug­gest­ing is every­one pay­ing their fair share. Those who have ben­e­fit­ted the most from Amer­ica can afford to give more back to help other Amer­i­cans up the lad­der of suc­cess. Fair share doesn’t mean a flat tax, either. A 10% income tax hits a school­teacher mak­ing $25k/​yr a lot harder than a CEO mak­ing $10M/​year. The school­teacher would have to get by on $22,500, while the CEO would still have 9 mil­lion dol­lars. Pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion is about giv­ing back to the soci­ety that made your suc­cess pos­si­ble pro­por­tion­ately to how much suc­cess you were able to achieve.

Really suc­cess­ful peo­ple, guys like Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fet, real­ize this. At the very least, the rich need to under­stand that if they end up with all the money, yay, they “win” but then there’s no one left that can afford to buy their goods. A strong mid­dle class means the rich have a viable mar­ket to sell to.

But in the end, that’s not what this is about. I’m almost pos­i­tive the woman in the story would actu­ally see her taxes go down under Obama’s tax plan. She’d ben­e­fit from an Obama pres­i­dency, but she’s been duped by the noise machine of the super-​wealthy into vot­ing against her own best inter­ests. She’s the real vic­tim in the story. How many more Amer­i­cans like her are out there? How many peo­ple have been fooled into think­ing that the Repub­li­cans are look­ing out for them?

I’m dis­heart­ened at how many working-​class peo­ple are still out there that have been deluded into think­ing that McCain, the mul­ti­mil­lion­aire with seven house, is one of them, while Barack Obama is a “Har­vard elit­ist” who doesn’t under­stand the “real America.”:

Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., main­tained last week that, “Lib­er­als hate real Amer­i­cans that work, and accom­plish and achieve.” Such notions get trac­tion quickly in today’s age of instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Walk around Durango High School, where the crowd was wait­ing for a McCain rally to start, and peo­ple spoke glow­ingly of the Viet­nam hero’s kin­ship with “real Amer­ica.” “It’s some­thing Barack Obama can’t pos­si­bly know, because he’s not one of us. It’s like the way (Richard) Nixon was able to talk to the hard hats,” said Jim Wil­son, a dis­trict attorney.

Is Barack Obama a real Amer­i­can or a Har­vard elit­ist? | MiamiHerald.com

Actu­ally, lib­er­als work. I work. I’ve got daily wage-​slave job just like every­one else in my tax bracket. These peo­ple clearly don’t know or don’t want to know that Barack Obama was raised by middle-​class heart­land folks in Kansas, that he and his sis­ter once only got by because their mother was able to get food stamps to buy gro­ceries. That he comes from begin­nings as hum­ble as any Amer­i­can. He made it to Har­vard by work­ing for it, by get­ting schol­ar­ships. Obama’s story is the Amer­i­can dream, work­ing his way up through dili­gence and hard work, and being rewarded for his effort.

But some­thing tells me that’s not the real story here. When peo­ple opposed to Obama say “he’s not one of us,” are they really talk­ing about him being elit­ist? Because any­one who’s read about Obama for five min­utes knows that can’t pos­si­bly be true. Or is it code? When they say he’s not one of us, are they really say­ing he’s not white?

The roots of racism run deep in Amer­ica. It took a hun­dred years after the slaves were freed before they could prac­ti­cally vote, and blacks in Ohio and Florida will tell you that’s not nec­es­sar­ily even the case here in the 21^st cen­tury. In my own state of Col­orado, the sec­re­tary of state is being sued for ille­gal purg­ing of the voter rolls. I can pretty much guar­an­tee the peo­ple purged off the rolls and denied the right to vote weren’t rich white folks.

What do you think? Is the cur­rent of us-​versus-​them “real Amer­i­cans” about class, or is it really about race?

The Wall Street Jour­nal (a pretty good source of infor­ma­tion if you avoid the edi­to­r­ial page) has an inter­est­ing break­down of the eco­nomic pol­icy changes pro­posed by both pres­i­den­tial candidates.

To respond to vot­ers who want imme­di­ate eco­nomic help, both can­di­dates have pro­posed spe­cific plans on how to jump-​start the econ­omy in 2008 and 2009. Sen. Obama pro­poses a $1,000 Emer­gency Energy Rebate to fam­i­lies ($500 for indi­vid­u­als) and penalty-​free with­drawals of 15% from 401(k)s and IRAs up to $10,000. He also wants to tem­porar­ily sus­pend min­i­mum dis­tri­b­u­tion require­ments for retire­ment accounts. Sen. McCain pro­poses cut­ting the capital-​gains rate on stock held for more than a year to 7.5%. He also would increase the amount of stock loss that is deductible against ordi­nary income from $3,000 to $15,000, and would tax with­drawals by seniors from IRAs and 401(k)s no more than 10%.

Obama vs. McCain: It’s About Your Money — WSJ.com

So Obama will off­set your energy bills by up to a grand, which will help work­ing fam­i­lies a lot this win­ter, and allow you take up to 15% of your 401(k) out to keep in the bank for pay­ing bills with­out penalty. Not bad.

McCain… really doesn’t sug­gest a damn thing for work­ing peo­ple. All of his sug­ges­tions cen­ter around stocks and mak­ing own­ing stocks more lucra­tive. Well, that’s great for peo­ple who own stocks, but what about the rest of us, John?

I have to admit I watched the Wall Street implo­sion over the last few weeks with no small amount of schaden­freude. I don’t own a lick of stock, so beyond the over­all impact to the econ­omy, I really don’t care what the stock mar­ket does. I may have lost buy­ing power due to the infla­tion we’re in for, but I per­son­ally didn’t lose a dime this month. Because I get 100% of my money from wages, the stock mar­ket doesn’t mean much to me.

That’s the key dif­fer­ence any­more between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans. Democ­rats are the party of peo­ple who work for their money. Repub­li­cans are the party of peo­ple whose money works for them. If you get the major­ity of your income from wages, as most mid­dle class fam­i­lies do, Democ­rats are the party for you. If you get most of your money from invest­ments, then Repub­li­cans are more your speed.

So, “thanks but no thanks”, John. Cut­ting cap­i­tal gains taxes doesn’t do a damn thing to put more money in my pocket. Your ideas don’t help me at all. I’m vot­ing for “that one.”