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Can the democrats ever control the message?

There was a great piece in the New York Times today discussing why the Democratic party is unable to gain support from the middle class, even though history shows that when the Democrats are in control the middle class does better.

The premise is that Republicans are against ‘big government’ (or .. put another way.. “government”) therefore the Democrats must be for government and that today, more than ever, people feel estranged from government and therefore, find it hard to side with the party that is ‘for’ government.

This really struck a chord with me – it seems spot on.  And, it seems to explain what’s going on in Washington today.  The Republicans, ever the strategists, know that they want ‘smaller’ government and know the best way to achieve this is to get the rest of the country to become disgusted with government.  How can one do that?  How about sabotage the ability for the government to get anything done.

Once again, it just seems, honestly, brilliant. As always, the Republicans are driving the conversation and the Democrats are left on their heels trying to defend what becomes an indefensible position – that Government can work (while we all sit and watch the (albeit Republican generated) stagnation in Washington).

The Dem’s approach is to show that the Republicans are the bad guys, unable to compromise and unwilling to solve the problem.  It will be interesting to see (next fall) whether this approach will work.  Will the electorate remember who was responsible for the quagmire? Or will they just walk away with a stronger sense that indeed, Government doesn’t work and I guess those Republicans were right all along, and that I’d be better off with my own money in my pocket rather than in the public coffers.

It’s hard to imagine the Dem’s message will survive the next year of campaigning while the Republican’s is so much easier to see.

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Osama, Obama, Abbottabad

My thoughts on the killing of Osama?

This was a man who had clearly declared and waged war against the Unites States. It’s hard to imagine he’d surrender. It’s hard to imagine his ability to get a fair trial with a jury of his peers. It’s hard to imagine his not making a mockery of the court and using it as a platform to incite more violence.

No one is arguing his innocence.  Is this not a man who would be sentenced to death?  What would we really have gained with a trial?  Would we have proven our case to anyone who doesn’t already believe it? Does that mean we should give up on Civil Rights?  Of course not.

How did the government, the military, and most specifically Obama handle it?

The decision to call for a strategic strike was spot on.  No drone strikes here.

The decision to provide a proper ceremony with a burial at sea spot on.

By all appearances, the strike team executed the operation with exceptional diligence and professionalism.

Would you have told the Pakistanis?

Yes, we did the right thing.  Yes, Obama deserves some (and not all) credit.

 

No, I don’t think we should hold mass celebrations – dancing in the streets, chanting U.S.A. feels crass and barbaric. So does publishing photos.

Yes, it’s sad that we had to take a life – any life. But sometimes that’s how it is.  Life isn’t as ideal as we’d like.

 

So Fuck you Osama.  You asked for it, and we delivered. Rot in hell.

 

Now let’s get on with working on building good will and celebrating life and not give him the power that he wanted to tear us apart.

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A Twitter campaign that actually worked (sort of)

I was recently the recipient of a twitter campaign that actually kind of worked.  And it was from, of all places, The Weather Channel.

Every day I get the random follower on Twitter.  A lot of times it’s spam in the form of some woman’s name followed by some random characters – these accounts are just that, spam.

But every now and then, there’s a ‘legitimate’ account that’s trying to reach out.  These are usually sites of one kind or another that are following me because of the keywords found in my bio (hiking, traveling, photography, skiing, etc.,).  Clicking through to these accounts usually results in a lame twitter page with a bunch of crud tweets.

Recently I was followed by @TWCFromtheEdge and today I decided to check it out.  It’s actually a new show on The Weather Channel that follows a nature photographer around.  The twitter account is pretty active.  The tweets are not that great and the account is not maintained by the actual photographer (lame).  But it’s clearly active, it’s targeted and there’s a link to the show’s website where there are videos, photos, etc.,

This is the first time that I can say that I was actually interested in a random follower – the site was actually pretty compelling (to me) and I would consider watching the show.

Unfortunately, they only make the shows available on TWC on cable, and not available streaming online so I don’t imagine I’ll actually watch.  (Who can remember to sit down at 8pm every Wednesday and tune in to The Weather Channel?)

But good job The Weather Channel for actually making a compelling pitch.  I wouldn’t have pegged you as the first.

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what poor returns!

I am a long-time user of Quicken software to track my accounts.  As a former employee of Intuit, I have always been a fan of their mission to simplify people’s financial lives.  But this mission hasn’t always translated into good product experiences.

So a couple of years ago I gave Mint a try and was very happy with their service.  It was (and still is) free and it offers a good view into the state of your accounts.

At least, it used to.

For some reason, investments have always been difficult to track. To my knowledge, there are no good tools that are reasonably priced that allow you to track the performance of your investments.  The biggest problem seems to be separating out initial investments from dividend or other returns.  Inevitably these get counted as additional purchases instead of reinvestments.  Mint suffered from the same algorithmic problems but I was willing to live with them.

But now it’s gotten so much worse.  I’m not sure if Mint is not being well tended to by it’s new parent company or if this is just some strange anomaly with my account .. Here’s a snapshot of my latest investment report from Mint

To me, the initially alarming aspect was the RED chart.  This is indicating by how much my investments are underperforming against the S&P 500.  This chart showing that I’ve had essentially zero growth in the last 6 months.  That’s disappointing (especially since I have a rather large portion of my accounts in an S&P 500 index fund.  It’s also not accurate.  A manual calculation shows that I’m doing relatively well against said index.

But perhaps worse than not reporting on the returns of my investments correctly, there’s something else horribly wrong with this report.  Horribly wrong.  (Unfortunately, for me).  And that would be, the value of my investments.  When I look at my account balances (as reported in Mint), my actual investment balance is somewhere oh .. let’s just say, WELL South of the number that is reported in this snapshot.  Where the hell did this number come from?  If only Mint operated as a bank and I could make a hasty withdraw..

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Ha Long Bay boat sinking

This morning I was surprised and saddened to see news from Vietnam that a tourist boat had sunk in Ha Long Bay.

Back in 2005 I took a very similar trip and it was a highlight of my visit to Vietnam.

evening in Ha Long Bay

The story is really horrible.  The boat sank – fast – at about 5am so most of the vacationers were asleep in their beds.  There were no rough seas, there was land (and other tourist boats) nearby.  This was an easily survivable accident had it happened at any other time of the day.

I’ve often read about tragedies like these around the world and wondered how close I’ve been to something like this.  When I think about these incidents, I always assume that I’ll be able to survive – that I have the right instincts that will show me the way (kind of akin to George knocking over the grandmother while running from the apt. fire in that Seinfeld episode, truth be told).  But an accident like this – in the middle of the night – it’s kind of hard to be ready for something like this.

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wanted: new Nikon lens designs

As I patiently (or not so) await the announcement and eventual arrival of the Nikon D700 replacement, it got me thinking about what ideal lenses I’d have for that camera.

Over the years many lenses have served the role as ‘primary’ on the various cameras I’ve owned.  Generally these days that falls to the 18-55 f/2.8 (- or something like that – My D300 hat the 1.4x crop factor and I still think in terms of 35mm focal lengths, so I actually think of that lens as my 24-70.. I can never remember the actual focal length..).

I like the lens well enough, the issue I have is the bulk of the lens.  The ‘pro’ series lenses are always large, I get that.  The problem is, there’s often a big step down from the pro lenses.

My understanding is that this is an area where Canon does well, offering a stepped down version of their top-of-the-line that is still really nice.  So that’s what I’d like to see from Nikon.

Nikon recently introduced an f/4 zoom lens, which sounds just about right.  The problem? It’s a 24-120.  I’ve owned one of those in the past (albeit the not-as-well-designed predecessor) and I had 3 primary problems with it:  First, the lens had pretty bad distortion; Second, it’s nearly as large as the F/2.8 lenses (because of the additional focal length); Third, because of the large focal length zoom the controls didn’t provide a solid feel.

So, what I’d like to see is this:

First, a 24-70 f/4.0 lens with the same handling and build quality of the pro f/2.8 line but smaller and lighter (because of the larger aperture).

Second, a refresh of the 70-300 incorporating the same f/4 aperture throughout the range.  If need be, restrict it to 200, but really that shouldn’t be necessary.  This can be a little larger than the current lens, but ideally not much.

Third, both lenses should share filter size so that 1 walk around set of filters can be applied to either

Finally, the 70-300 should be compatible with the latest 1.4x teleconverter for longer shots (and to obviate the need for something like the 80-400, itself in desperate need of a refresh)

OK Nikon, I’m waiting.