, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
A parallel universe exposes John McCain's ignorance.
I haven't posted since my initial deal about how incompetent our Kansas politicians are at creating web sites, but a deal stuck in my head today and I'm going with it. In the past few weeks, John McCain has frequently (and by frequently, I mean every time he's mentioned it) mixed up Shia and Sunni. Quick primer: Sunni is the largest denomination of Islam. The distribution of predominantly Sunni Muslims goes from the western shores of Africa all the way to Indonesia. Majority Shia nations include Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. Al Qaeda is Sunni. Saddam Hussein was Sunni (although his government was secular, which gained him the enmity of groups like al Qaeda).
So John McCain's frequent inability to discern the difference between Sunni al Qaeda and Shia Iran, or Saddam's Iraq, which liked al Qaeda only slightly more than I like Christians who bomb abortion clinics, expresses a supreme and worrying ignorance about a Presidential candidate who claims that his biggest strength is foreign policy.
George W. Bush can be pardoned to some degree for being a moron on foreign policy. Americans knew what they were getting. He was a governor from Texas who'd never been to a foreign country apart from maybe a bender in Mexico. His 2000 campaign, if you remember that far back, was full of promises to stay out of other nation's affairs. Of course, we didn't find out until later that he'd been planning to invade Iraq at least as long as he'd been running for President..
Not that it's any surprise for McCain to be ignorant. After all, he was in that pesky press conference where one of his colleagues claimed Baghdad was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana." I still have a note I wrote to myself when that story broke. It reads, "Never go to Indiana."
But let's put the ignorance in perspective here. Let's create a hypothetical universe where, for some reason, the majority of Americans are Muslim. And let's say instead of antagonizing the Middle East for the last half century or more, we'd been meddling with Northern Ireland. You've got the IRA, the terrorist wing of Sinn Fein, a Nationalist political party. On the other side, you've got Ulster loyalists, the opposite number. Here in the United States, one of our candidates for President does not have any idea what the difference is between Catholics and Protestants or who's fighting for what side. But he claims that his knowledge of the conflict in Northern Ireland is the strongest point of his campaign.
I shudder to think of what the weakest point of that campaign would be.
So John McCain's frequent inability to discern the difference between Sunni al Qaeda and Shia Iran, or Saddam's Iraq, which liked al Qaeda only slightly more than I like Christians who bomb abortion clinics, expresses a supreme and worrying ignorance about a Presidential candidate who claims that his biggest strength is foreign policy.
George W. Bush can be pardoned to some degree for being a moron on foreign policy. Americans knew what they were getting. He was a governor from Texas who'd never been to a foreign country apart from maybe a bender in Mexico. His 2000 campaign, if you remember that far back, was full of promises to stay out of other nation's affairs. Of course, we didn't find out until later that he'd been planning to invade Iraq at least as long as he'd been running for President..
Not that it's any surprise for McCain to be ignorant. After all, he was in that pesky press conference where one of his colleagues claimed Baghdad was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana." I still have a note I wrote to myself when that story broke. It reads, "Never go to Indiana."
But let's put the ignorance in perspective here. Let's create a hypothetical universe where, for some reason, the majority of Americans are Muslim. And let's say instead of antagonizing the Middle East for the last half century or more, we'd been meddling with Northern Ireland. You've got the IRA, the terrorist wing of Sinn Fein, a Nationalist political party. On the other side, you've got Ulster loyalists, the opposite number. Here in the United States, one of our candidates for President does not have any idea what the difference is between Catholics and Protestants or who's fighting for what side. But he claims that his knowledge of the conflict in Northern Ireland is the strongest point of his campaign.
I shudder to think of what the weakest point of that campaign would be.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Why can't Kansas politicians make a web page?
I realize that my own page is not the most beautiful in the world, but I'm not trying to sell anything here, much less convince any of you to vote for me. But seriously, all our politicians are stuck in 1999 with their web presence. Let's start with the Democrats, though. Since I'm going to be on their side for the rest of the existence of this blog, we'll thrash them first.
Nancy Boyda for Congress - Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that when you Google this page, it misspells "incumbency" on the results, the page itself is quite bare. Also, it's wishing me happy holidays when April is less than a week away.
Jim Slattery for Senate - On a Google search for "Jim Slattery," you'll find this on page thirteen of the results. There's also nothing there yet other than a very short message, an offer to get on an email list, and a contribute button. But, seriously, page thirteen? That's 126 sites that rank better than Slattery's for his own senate page. Even if you amend the search to add the word senate, the link doesn't appear until page 3 of the results.
Lee Jones is the gold standard for Kansas democrats. Apart from the weird double checkmark next to health care (like there's an unnamed competing product that provides a health care plan but nothing else Jones does), he's got a grasp on what a modern campaign needs in a web site. The Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube links at the bottom, great information on what Mr. Jones is campaigning for. The only complaint I have is the slideshow of family photos before there's any kind of reason why I should vote for him. I'm kind of weirded out by that, actually.
On to the Republicans!
Jim Ryun for Congress - Ryun's page reminds me of one I designed for a band in 2000. Except my page was far more attractive. Ryun manages to combine the worst elements of every era of web design (except, mercifully, for the embedded midi files of the mid-'90s and the pointless Flash of today) to give us a page that is both useless and insulting. Given that Mr. Ryun's wife found it difficult to believe that I could be both a Christian and a Democrat, this is hard to say, but I'm actually less likely to vote for him after seeing that page.
Lynn Jenkins for Congress - This is one of the weirder things they do nowadays: a simple splashscreen that gives you the option to enter your e-mail address and zip code before you get to the main page. No one knows why they do this, but it's frequent (see the sites for all three major Presidential candidates). Once you get past this, you almost wish you hadn't. The main page has a helpful poll asking the balanced question "Why is Lynn Jenkins the most qualified candidate?" I mean, if you're going to have a poll, have it be something useful. What do you think is the best thing about me? Apart from that, it's much like Lee Jones's. It's telling that the more dark horse candidates in these two races are the only ones with modern web pages.
Pat Roberts does not seem to have a web page other than his senate.gov page. So good job on that.
Just because we're a rural state out here doesn't mean that we're a bunch of luddites. We can have nice things on the internets, I promise you.
Nancy Boyda for Congress - Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that when you Google this page, it misspells "incumbency" on the results, the page itself is quite bare. Also, it's wishing me happy holidays when April is less than a week away.
Jim Slattery for Senate - On a Google search for "Jim Slattery," you'll find this on page thirteen of the results. There's also nothing there yet other than a very short message, an offer to get on an email list, and a contribute button. But, seriously, page thirteen? That's 126 sites that rank better than Slattery's for his own senate page. Even if you amend the search to add the word senate, the link doesn't appear until page 3 of the results.
Lee Jones is the gold standard for Kansas democrats. Apart from the weird double checkmark next to health care (like there's an unnamed competing product that provides a health care plan but nothing else Jones does), he's got a grasp on what a modern campaign needs in a web site. The Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube links at the bottom, great information on what Mr. Jones is campaigning for. The only complaint I have is the slideshow of family photos before there's any kind of reason why I should vote for him. I'm kind of weirded out by that, actually.
On to the Republicans!
Jim Ryun for Congress - Ryun's page reminds me of one I designed for a band in 2000. Except my page was far more attractive. Ryun manages to combine the worst elements of every era of web design (except, mercifully, for the embedded midi files of the mid-'90s and the pointless Flash of today) to give us a page that is both useless and insulting. Given that Mr. Ryun's wife found it difficult to believe that I could be both a Christian and a Democrat, this is hard to say, but I'm actually less likely to vote for him after seeing that page.
Lynn Jenkins for Congress - This is one of the weirder things they do nowadays: a simple splashscreen that gives you the option to enter your e-mail address and zip code before you get to the main page. No one knows why they do this, but it's frequent (see the sites for all three major Presidential candidates). Once you get past this, you almost wish you hadn't. The main page has a helpful poll asking the balanced question "Why is Lynn Jenkins the most qualified candidate?" I mean, if you're going to have a poll, have it be something useful. What do you think is the best thing about me? Apart from that, it's much like Lee Jones's. It's telling that the more dark horse candidates in these two races are the only ones with modern web pages.
Pat Roberts does not seem to have a web page other than his senate.gov page. So good job on that.
Just because we're a rural state out here doesn't mean that we're a bunch of luddites. We can have nice things on the internets, I promise you.
Welcome.
This is really the first time I've felt moved to start a blog. My purpose here is fairly simple: nail John McCain, Pat Roberts, Jim Ryun, and Lynn Jenkins to the wall with their own words, and, to a lesser extent, excoriate the legislature.
So who am I? I'm, for one, the guy who does most of the stuff on www.lukeandjoe.com; I'm a Kansan. My family has been here, well, pretty much forever. In the upcoming election, I'm supporting Nancy Boyda, Jim Slattery, and Barack Obama.
This should be a fun election season, and I'm looking forward to a great debate for the unexpectedly swingy state of Kansas.
A few rules here, though. Civility is necessary. I'm not putting up with ad hominems. If you, like Hillary Clinton, can't attack someone's policies without attacking them personally (pointing out hypocrisy excluded) I don't want you here. You can call someone an idiot, but only if you can back up exactly why they're an idiot.
Anyway, more as I have time.
So who am I? I'm, for one, the guy who does most of the stuff on www.lukeandjoe.com; I'm a Kansan. My family has been here, well, pretty much forever. In the upcoming election, I'm supporting Nancy Boyda, Jim Slattery, and Barack Obama.
This should be a fun election season, and I'm looking forward to a great debate for the unexpectedly swingy state of Kansas.
A few rules here, though. Civility is necessary. I'm not putting up with ad hominems. If you, like Hillary Clinton, can't attack someone's policies without attacking them personally (pointing out hypocrisy excluded) I don't want you here. You can call someone an idiot, but only if you can back up exactly why they're an idiot.
Anyway, more as I have time.
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