Entries in Life

This week, I’m in Tennessee with other people from the Clark tech team. This morning, we did “visability” at a Kerry rally. I had fun convincing the Kerry supporters that we weren’t all just Clinton supporters.

It started snowing last night and this morning it began to stick. That alone made this trip worth it. It only got better when a CNN reporter decided to do a live feed outside the Kerry rally — but not about the rally. She was talking about the “thing of the week” — Janet Jackson’s breast exposure at the Superbowl. So we had fun waving Clark signs behind the woman as she talked. Till the Kerry supporters noticed. Then Anita Bailey, a Kerry staffer, shoved her way through our line. dcm took a hit for the team.

If it wasn’t clear enough when McDermott executives talked about moving their IT center to Dubai then it has become clear while working with a bunch of Democrats (a fair number of whom are protectionists), listening to the occasional bit about IT jobs leaving for India on CNN (which is always on at work, but usually muted), and reading articles in Wired. I’m going to have to get creative over the next couple of years in order to continue to make a living.

I’ve not yet decided just what I’ll be doing, but I’m sure that it’ll involve something more creative than just baby-sitting other people’s infrastructure.

Former Red-Hatter dcm has published pictures that he took of our co-workers and myself. You’ll notice a number of un-shaven men. This isn’t their normal state.

A few weekends ago, just before Fred left us, we were eating at Vino’s when the beard meme started. “Rally Beards”, we called them. Our own superstitious effort to boost Clark’s chances at getting the Democratic nomination.

Now, we’ve had exactly one caucus and one primary and the focus has shifted from Dean as the front-runner to virtual nominee Kerry. Shaving looks like it is in many of these guys future. The number of people who’ve actually voted is approximately equal to the number of people at the Super Bowl in Houston, but somehow the match has already been decided and everyone assumes that Kerry and Bush will face off this November (with Bush winning, of course).

Perhaps if more Democrats and the media thought there was a real chance that Bush wouldn’t be re-elected, then things wouldn’t feel as if they were already decided.

Of course, I’m influenced by what I read in the paper, hear on the radio, or see on the Internet. And because of that same influence, a few weeks ago, I thought the race was between Dean and Clark. There is still plenty of time for the published wisdom to be proven wrong — and I hope that it is.

In Walker Percy’s Second Coming, as Will Barrett is almost killed by a stray bullet and, through the close encounter with death, discovers that he has barely been living. Newly aware, He asks his wife’s priest “Do you believe in God?” and watched the priest dance around the answer. It simple question that the priest should have been able to answer, even if it were just “sometimes” or “I try to believe”. Even “No” would have meant something. Instead, the priest avoids a direct answer. The priest embraces safety rather than life.

Too many politicians make this same mistake and succumb to death even while they live. Clark isn’t any exemption to the rule. Today, a reporter asked him about his stand on abortion rights and earlier they asked weather he thought Bush really was a deserter.

A politician will avoid giving an answer that he thinks will hurt him and perhaps that’s what Clark was doing, but in doing so, it makes him look like he lacks principles. Instead of saying what he thinks — and let’s face it, any answer is going cost him votes somewhere — he embraced the safely ambiguous.

The claim was made that it doesn’t matter what he thinks (except when he appoints judges), but whether his opinion matters or not, he should be able to give his opinion and, later, act in accordance with those opinions.

From what I saw of Clark before tonight’s primary in New Hampshire, I think he is a principled person. To win some states next week, he needs to show those principles even more. Otherwise, it’ll be between the Dean and Kerry. Dean, because people see his anger and take it for principled action. Kerry, because some are simply voting for whoever they think can beat Bush.

Clark appears to be giving in to the siren song of politics. To avoid political death, he has to take some stands instead of avoiding them.

Now that I’m a LittleRocker, its good to know that there is a website that’s about all the city.

I thought I’d share what I consider to be the best picture ever taken of me. I woke up late Saturday morning and snapped this picture with my new camera-in-a-phone. Showed it to some other people here at the Clark campaign and they said it looked like I was stoned. “Wake-n-bake”. Whatever that means.