Marketing America

We are not going to be the world’s lone superpower for much longer. It’s about time we realized how bad that is for us if the rest of the world hates us when they move above us in the ranks. Bush, as much as I respect him for parts of his presidency, has flat out failed at this one. McCain doesn’t seem to be much better. It’s time to stop being the world’s cowboy. If Obama is good at anything, it’s marketing himself. This is not an issue I’ve heard talked about much, but in light how how poorly we’ve done at it in the last eight years, it’s one of the most important to me now.
Point: Obama

The Economy

(I’m tempted to include fiscal policy under this heading, but I’m going to force myself to separate out the two.) McCain has come right out and said he doesn’t understand the economy. And if that weren’t enough, Colin Powell gives this as his only truly concrete reason behind choosing not to endorse McCain. However, if I force myself to exclude issues of fiscal policy at a government level, Obama comes out neutral in by book, primarily because I just don’t know enough. Looks like I’ve found a spot where I need to do some more digging.
Point: pending

Fiscal Policy

Okay, this one pisses me off. As a nation, we’re wracked with debt, and an incomprehensible budget deficit is only making it worse, and yet both candidates are trumpeting their marvelous tax cuts. I honestly just don’t trust what either of them says, and have no idea what to expect on this. Both say they want to balance the budget, but every candidate says that.

Obama has proposed something along the lines of $800,000,000,000 in new spending. I don’t care what he thinks he can cut out of the budget to make that much room, I guarantee it won’t be that simple; we will have to pay for it one way or another. And no, pulling out of Iraq doesn’t free up any money, it only means we’re borrowing less. Then again, I do have to note that the Dems have a much better track record in recent years of paying down the national debt. I feel like this issue is a craps shoot, either way.
Point: neither

Health Care

I do not want socialized health care. Period. Our health care system is a mess, and I don’t think any one plan is going to fix it. I also think, with our national debt and economy in the position they are in, we simply cannot afford the cost of setting up a socialized health care plan, even if I liked it as an option. Besides costing over $400 billion, assesments of Obama’s plan have called it, “a potpourri of prior initiatives that lacks an integrated design.” E.g. It’s just a lot of band-aids.

McCain’s plan just makes sense. Separate insurance from employment; open the insurance companies up to more competition and let the free market bring things closer to the balance they need. Will it fix everything? Certainly not. But it’s a step in the right direction. Check out this article defending McCain’s plan.
Point: McCain

Education

This one’s another mess. I’ll be brief by saying, I believe in a free market economy. Let’s give McCain’s voucher idea a chance.
Point: McCain

Conclusion

I can’t decide. I want to vote for Obama. I really like the guy. I just don’t think we can afford his policies. I’m voting McCain. President John McCain. And Vice President Sarah… oh, crap!

I’m still working to finish up the main project, which admittedly is behind schedule, but it’s basically in the troubleshooting stage, and that shouldn’t require any more lists or “don’t forget to do X when you get to step n” notes.

Ah, this feels good.

• Prince Caspian - I loved the first movie, and while this is my least favorite book in the series, I’m still excited.
• Wanted - Looks really good
• The Happening - You can’t go wrong with Shyamalan, never mind what people say about his more recent works. I’ve enjoyed them all.
• Indiana Jones - My guess is this will be over-hyped, and cannot possibly live up to our memories of the originals after they’ve ripened for 20 years, but it should still be tons of fun.
• The Dark Night - Loved the last Batman movie
• Get Smart - I’ve been slow to warm up to Steve Carell, but his most recent stuff has been truly entertaining. Plus I used to watch the show all the time on Nick At Nite
• Hancock - Will Smith is just a regulary, lazy guy. With superhero powers. This looks hilarious.
• Pathology - it’s got Peter Petrelli in it!
• Defiance - True story about a group of Jews who fought back during WWII.

I love that it actually sends your login information before asking whether or not it should remember your password. I hate it when I would click “yes” only to discover it was an incorrect password, now saved and auto-completing every time I visit a favorite page. Brilliant work.

But he’s got a point: some things are still lacking in web apps. And regardless of how fast internet connections get, there will always be the sporadic downed line at home or dns error. There is a convenience to the speed and accessibility of a native application.

As developers, I think we need to start pointing ourselves even further ahead than the rising online SAAS model. Software available online is brilliant. But we need to strive to blur the line between online and native apps. I believe we can create applications with all the advantages of both.

Imagine a word processor that was installed natively, and saved local copies of your files, but also updated itself instantly every time it opened, and kept a copy of your files on a server, accessible from any computer. And if you lose connection for a few days, you could just continue working on the local files and it would see the differences and sync the online copies to match when you reconnected.

This may even be where the next generations of web browsers should point themselves: to be flexible window management programs. We’ve already jury rigged them to do that with AJAX, and it does a pretty remarkable job. Now we just need to find a way to create a closer tie between the JavaScript tools of Google Docs and a faster, locally-stored version of the same program.