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Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).




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Saturday, October 04, 2008
 
More C# Discoveries

C# doesn't support #include--unlike C and C++. My first reaction was, "That's disgusting! How do you share data across source files?" The answer is that if you really need to share information across source files, you probably need to define that information as a static or const member of a class (depending on whether it is going to change or not). Then you can access that information in a more elegant and object-oriented manner. For example, in C or C++, you might let everyone know that there are a maximum of fifty customers with an include file that had this line in it:

#define MAX_CUSTOMERS 50

Then everyone that needed access to that information would #include the file containing that statement (and probably dozens of other #defines that weren't needed). This is not only ugly, but slows down compile time. It is surprisingly easy to end up with dozens of include files, each containing hundreds or even thousands of definitions--and eventually, they start to conflict, or worse, nested #includes produce an incomprehensible mess. (I speak from painful experience.)

By comparison, the equivalent in C# would be to add to your class Customers the following line:
public const int maxCustomers = 50;
Now anyone and everyone that needs to know the maximum number of customers just uses Customers.maxCustomers. (Of course, properly designed, there should be no reason for any class other than Customers to need to know this.)

Labels:


posted by Clayton at 3:30 PM permalink

 
Visual Studio's Unit Test Facility

I'm discussing a possible contract job in Bend, Oregon, and in those discussions, I learned that Microsoft Visual Studio has some built-in facilities for running unit tests--creating stubs for testing individual methods of a class, and then running those unit tests. Here's a description of it for the Visual Studio Team Test version.

Unfortunately, the Visual Studio Express Edition (which is free) doesn't have the unit test facilities in it. But I managed to come up with a reasonably good approximation--and I learned a bit more about C# along the way.

First of all, C# doesn't fully implement the # preprocessor facilities of C and C++. However, DEBUG is defined for the debug build, but not for the production build. So I put #if DEBUG...#endif wrappings around the unit test code. (The Debug.WriteLine method apparently does generate a small amount of compiled code in release versions if compiled--hence my enclosing it in #if DEBUG...#endif blocks--so that it doesn't get compiled except for the debug version.)

#if DEBUG
private void unitTestToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
          // We only run these unit tests if DEBUG is set non-zero.
          Eat1Test();
      }

public void Eat1Test()
      {
          // EatWhiteSpace and Eat1 tests.
          Debug.WriteLine("starting EatWhiteSpace and Eat1 unit tests");
          String whiteSpaceBefore = " death and taxes";
          int index;
          index = Eat1(whiteSpaceBefore, 0, "death");
          if(index != " death ".Length)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(whiteSpaceBefore, 0, \"death\") returned " + index);
          index = EatWhiteSpace(whiteSpaceBefore, 0);
          if (index != 1)
              Debug.WriteLine("EatWhiteSpace(whiteSpaceBefore, 0) returned " + index);
          String noWhiteSpaceBefore = "death and taxes";
          index = Eat1(noWhiteSpaceBefore, 0, "death");
          if (index != "death ".Length)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(noWhiteSpaceBefore, 0, \"death\") returned " + index);
          String multipleWhiteSpacesAfter = "death    and   more taxes";
          index = Eat1(multipleWhiteSpacesAfter, 0, "death");
          if (index != "death    ".Length)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(multipleWhiteSpacesBefore, 0, \"death\") returned " + index);
          String nothingThere = "";
          index = Eat1(nothingThere, 0, "death");
          if (index != 0)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(nothingThere, 0, \"death\") returned " + index);
          index = EatWhiteSpace(nothingThere, 0);
          if (index != 0)
              Debug.WriteLine("EatWhiteSpace(nothingThere, 0) returned " + index);
          String onlyNewLineThere = "\n";
          index = Eat1(onlyNewLineThere, 0, "death");
          if (index != 1)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(onlyNewLineThere, 0, \"death\") returned " + index);
          index = EatWhiteSpace(onlyNewLineThere, 0);
          if (index != 1)
              Debug.WriteLine("EatWhiteSpace(onlyNewLineThere, 0) returned " + index);
          index = 5;
          index = Eat1(onlyNewLineThere, index, "death");
          if (index != -1)
              Debug.WriteLine("Eat1(onlyNewLineThere, 5, \"death\") returned " + index);
          index = EatWhiteSpace(onlyNewLineThere, 5);
          if (index != -1)
              Debug.WriteLine("EatWhiteSpace(onlyNewLineThere, 5) returned " + index);
          Debug.WriteLine("ending EatWhiteSpace and Eat1 unit tests");
     }
#endif
Pretty obviously, this is hardly a comprehensive test of even the Eat1 and EatWhiteSpace methods--but along the way, as I was writing the tests, I realized that there were some conditions that I hadn't considered when writing these methods--such as what happens if you pass EatWhiteSpace a starting index beyond the length of the string? So I improved the method to handle that error condition (which would otherwise cause an exception), and added a unit test for it.

Then I added a menu item "Unit Test" again wrapped inside of #if DEBUG...#else...#endif for the menu of the WebPageLinkAuditTool.

#if DEBUG
              this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.AddRange(new System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem[] {
              this.webPageToAuditToolStripMenuItem,
              this.pageSetupToolStripMenuItem,
              this.printPreviewToolStripMenuItem,
              this.printToolStripMenuItem,
              this.exitToolStripMenuItem,
              this.unitTestToolStripMenuItem});
#else
              this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.AddRange(new System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem[] {
              this.webPageToAuditToolStripMenuItem,
              this.pageSetupToolStripMenuItem,
              this.printPreviewToolStripMenuItem,
              this.printToolStripMenuItem,
              this.exitToolStripMenuItem});
#endif
This isn't quite as elegant as the unit test facility built into the non-free versions of Visual Studio, but it isn't too terribly ugly.

Labels:


posted by Clayton at 3:00 PM permalink

Friday, October 03, 2008
 
Lalita Tademy's Cane River

I started reading this book at my daughter's place (which is my old house in Boise). While the first several chapters were a bit amateurish in writing style, once past that point, it improved quite substantially. This is, I gather, Tademy's first novel. Like some other first novels that I have read, it appears that she substantially improved her skills along the way--and I find myself wondering why her editor didn't go back and have her do a rewrite on those first few chapters. The rest of the book, while I wouldn't call it spectacular writing, is certainly entertaining, and well enough written.

I confess that I stuck through those first few chapters because black history was one of my specialties in grad school, and I am always curious to see how well the history gets translated into historical fiction. In this case, the answer is "very well." Of course, Tademy has the advantage that her novel was built around the actual historical facts of her family, the Louisiana descendants of blacks, Indians, and French settlers. She has taken some liberties with the facts, she tells us, to make a better story. It is also obvious that she has filled in many of the blank spots with her imaginings--but they work well.

One historical aspect of Cane River that pleased me is that Tademy has recognized and illustrated the transformation of racial attitudes--how interracial romantic relationships that were tolerated (if kept discrete) in antebellum Louisiana became increasingly unacceptable by the close of the 19th century. There are many little details of interactions and relationships between the races that convey the complexity of real people, with real differences. Everything doesn't boil down to the binary models that many people (including many intellectuals) just assume for the period.

Do you have a long plane flight to go on soon? You might find this sitting in the used book store for a few dollars--and you could do a lot worse.

posted by Clayton at 9:11 PM permalink

 
The Threat of Martial Law

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) makes a claim in this video on the floor of the House that is absolutely shocking--and makes me think that the time may be coming when we're going to have to take our government back. He says that the pressure put on members of the House to pass the bailout included the claim that martial law would have to be imposed if the bailout bill didn't pass.

Note: Rep. Sherman is a Democrat! Who was putting on this pressure? Who was telling him that martial law might have to be imposed? I think it is important for him to say who said this. Either Sherman is making this up, or there are some incredibly scary and dangerous people running Congress. (Yes, I've seen Nancy Pelosi's eyebrows. They qualify as incredibly scary.) We are fast approaching the point where it may be time for the people to draw up a new Constitution.

UPDATE: Here's an interview where Sherman says that this panic talk about martial law was from other members of the House--more like "this could happen" not a threat.

Labels:


posted by Clayton at 8:44 PM permalink

 
The Mansourian Candidate

The Obama candidacy just gets weirder and weirder. This article in the September 26, 2008 British magazine The Spectator indicates that Obama's law school tuition was paid by someone named Khalid al-Mansour (hence my pun on The Manchurian Candidate). And who is that? And why should you care?

A few months ago, a claim was made by former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton that Obama had been funded through Harvard law school by Khalid Al-Mansour, a ‘mentor’ to the founders of the Black Panther party and advisor to ‘one of the world’s richest men,’ Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. It was Prince Alwaleed whose $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan after 9/11 was refused by New York mayor Rudy Guiliani because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks.

According to this story by Kenneth Timmerman, Camp Obama denied this claim -- and referred to a story on Politico.com in which reporter Ben Smith wrote that ‘a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally’ said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments. But when contacted, Sutton’s family not only denied that Sutton had misspoken but also said they had never even heard of Kevin Wardally – who appears to work for a Harlem political consulting firm.

So the claim that Obama was funded through Harvard by a radical Black Muslim activist with ties to the Saudis remains on the table.

Jack Cashill also has a column pointing to the unlikelihood that Obama wrote the book that made him rich, and some curious aspects of the al-Mansour connection, again relying on Sutton--although less certain as to who al-Mansour is:

A Manhattan borough president for 12 years and a credible candidate for mayor of New York City in 1977, Sutton spoke knowingly about the Obama candidacy. Although unspecified as to date, the interview likely took place within the last few months.

"I was introduced to [Obama] by a friend," Sutton told the interviewer. The friend's name was Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and the introduction took place about 20 years ago.

Sutton described al-Mansour as "the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men." He also implied that al-Mansour was currently raising money for Obama.

Knowing that Sutton had friends at Harvard, al-Mansour asked Sutton to "please write a letter in support of [Obama] ... a young man that has applied to Harvard." Sutton gladly did so.

Although Sutton does not specify a date, this would likely have been in 1988 when the 27-year-old Obama was applying to Harvard Law.

Two years later, while still a law student, Obama improbably received an advance to write a memoir that would be called "Dreams From My Father" when finally published in 1995.

Not yet clear is who exactly this Khalid al-Mansour is. There are at least two candidates, one more troubling than the other. The first is a Muslim crackpot preacher who has not met the paranoid racial fantasy unworthy of his energy.

The second, more likely, is a Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, described as "an internationally acknowledged adviser to heads of state and business leaders in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America."

Apparently, al-Mansour serves on the Board of, among others, Saudi African Bank and was responsible for the Africa investment activities of Kingdom Holdings, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal's investment company.

Two other details argue for this al-Mansour's involvement in Obama's academic and literary careers. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University and has authored 24 books.

In short, al-Mansour fits the profile of the political godfather. When I was speculating whose "purposeful intervention" had steered Obama's career through its rough spots, I could not have imagined a more likely candidate.

Caution is warranted here. This story is still developing, not in the major media of course, but in the blogosphere, where just about all serious reporting now takes place.

The Spectator article also goes on to discuss Obama's connections to a collection of radical leftovers from the 1960s, such as William Ayers. Along with the apparent illegal contributions from countries such as Iran--why is this beginning to sound like something out of Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin? But you say, "If all this prep work was preparing Obama to run for President as a pawn of the left or Wahhabist groups, isn't this quite a big gamble, that this one guy might someday rise to the Presidency?"

The Soviet Union did a lot of very interesting work infiltrating deep cover agents into the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Many years ago, I remember reading a very interesting autobiography by a man whose father had moved to the United States in the 1920s from the Soviet Union, and who returned their during the Great Depression. The writer had been born in the U.S., but returned with his parents when he was five. Because he had an American birth certificate, the KGB spent considerable energy training him in American customs, creating an elaborate background of jobs that he had held--with companies that were out of business--so that he could look for work in American defense industries. (So why did the Obama campaign apparently provide a forged birth certificate to Daily Kos to prove that he was born in Hawaii? This is getting curiouser and curiouser.)

Eventually, this deep cover KGB agent saw that what he had learned in the Soviet Union about America was entirely wrong, and he became a double agent. I suspect that there were many other deep cover agents who were infiltrated into the U.S. by the KGB who did not change sides--and perhaps some who, for whatever reason, never ended up in a position to be useful. KGB Colonel and defector Vladimir Sakharov's High Treason discusses the role of deep cover agents and agents of influence in the West. It would not be impossible that Wahhabist factions in Saudi Arabia might have done their best to set up dozens or even hundreds of deep cover agents--knowing that at least a couple might eventually work their way into some significant positions.

There are just way too many weird, worrisome, and curious aspects to Obama to simply ignore them all.

Labels:


posted by Clayton at 8:11 PM permalink

 
Another Job Opportunity Bites The Dust

I had hoped that my limited teaching experience (two semesters) might be balanced out by my publication history (six books, and more law review articles and scholarly publications than I can immediately remember). But I didn't even make the interview list for full-time faculty at the community college.

posted by Clayton at 11:38 AM permalink

 
Not Even a Pretense Of Impartiality

ABC News has a report about the debate that opens with:
During the 90-minute debate covering everything from the economy, the Iraq War, foreign policy and health care, both candidates made claims that were, well, not entirely accurate.
Yet every single example that they give is of mistakes by Palin. They admit "both" candidates made claims that were "not entirely accurate" but they don't list a single example by Biden.

Labels:


posted by Clayton at 6:39 AM permalink

 
More Detail on the Subprime Mortgage Push

In this case, from Dennis Sewell in the British magazine The Spectator:
Let’s wind back to 1993 and Roberta Achtenberg’s arrival on the Washington political scene. Achtenberg had made her name in San Francisco as a civil rights lawyer and activist, campaigning to keep open the city’s gay bathhouses, and (I promise I’m not making this up) pressing for an increase in the number of gay Scoutmasters. Bill Clinton offered her a job in his new administration, and Roberta Achtenberg became the first openly lesbian nominee ever to receive a Senate confirmation. She duly took up her post as Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The main thrust of the Clinton housing strategy was to increase home ownership among the poor, and particularly among blacks and Hispanics. White House aides, in familiar West Wing style, could parrot the many social advantages that would accrue: high levels of home ownership correlated with less violent crime, better school performance, a heightened sense of commun-ity. But standing in the way of the realisation of this dream were the conservative lending policies of the banks, which required such inconvenient and old-fashioned things as cash deposits and regular repayments — things the poor and minorities often could not provide. Clinton told the banks to be more creative.

Meanwhile, Ms Achtenberg, a member of the kickass school of public administration, was busy setting up a network of enforcement offices across the country, manned by attorneys and investigators, and primed to spearhead an assault on the mortgage banks, bringing suits against any suspected of practising unlawful discrimination, whether on the basis of race, gender or disability. Achtenberg believed racism was a big factor in keeping minorities from enjoying the same level of home ownership as whites. She doubted if much could be done to change people’s attitudes on racial matters, but she was confident she, in cahoots with Attorney General Janet Reno, could use the law to change the behaviour of banks.

However, when little or no overt or deliberate racial discrimination was discovered among the mortgage lenders, HUD’s investigators turned to trying to prove ‘disparate treatment’ of minority groups, a notion similar to that of unintentional ‘institutional racism’. If a bank refused loans to proportionally more black applicants than white ones, for instance, the onus would fall on it to prove it had good grounds for doing so or face settlement penalties running into millions of dollars. A series of highly publicised cases were brought on this basis, starting in 1994.

Eventually the investigators would turn somewhat desperately to ‘disparate impact’, a form of discrimination so abstract and rarefied as to be imperceptible to its supposed victims, and indeed often only discernible at all through the application of multivariate regression analysis to information stored on regulators’ databases. In fact, by 1995 Achtenberg was actually having to rein in her zealots, issuing a clarification that the use of the phrase ‘master bedroom’ in a property advertisement was, despite its clear patriarchal and slave-owning resonances, not actually an actionable offence under the anti-discrimination laws.

I can't say that I am surprised that Achtenberg was involved. Back in the early 1990s, there was a brief media storm when it was discovered that the North American Man-Boy Love Association was holding meetings in a San Francisco public library. One of the local TV stations sent a reporter in undercover with a camera, and when the reporter eventually identified himself, the meeting broke up like cockroaches running from the light. (Sorry to insult cockroaches with this unfair comparison.)

So next the reporter went around to some of the gay bookstores in town, and discovered that all but one of the establishments he entered had NAMBLA's publication, BulliTEN (get it?) for sale. The reporter then went to talk to Robert Achtenberg, at the time, the only openly homosexual member of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, and therefore the most obvious gay leader to ask about this. Achtenberg made a big point of the fact that pedophiles aren't gay, that NAMBLA was not part of the gay community, and so on. Then the reporter asked Achtenberg why BulliTEN was for sale in nearly every gay bookstore. Achtenberg's response was that the First Amendment protected their right to publish a magazine--but simply refused to answer why gay bookstores were selling such a magazine, if NAMBLA wasn't part of the gay community.

I learned a lot that day about the intellectual integrity of Robert Achtenberg. I am not surprised to see that she played a part in creating this disaster.

Labels: ,


posted by Clayton at 6:22 AM permalink

Thursday, October 02, 2008
 
How Can You Tell That A Liberal Is Blogging?

Suzie Bright starts writing liberal fantasies about kidnapping Sarah Palin for lesbian rape. It's way too graphic to quote--but if you want to see where liberalism takes you....

There's a quote floating around to the effect that there are two political parties in the U.S.: the stupid party, and the evil party--and the writer acknowledges that he's a member of the stupid party.

Not every Republican is stupid (by any means), and not every Democrat is evil. But Suzie Bright certainly makes me prefer to associate with stupids, not evils.

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posted by Clayton at 7:26 PM permalink

 
Obamajugend

Watch this video, and ask yourself: do you see anything just a little worrisome about the way in which the left is idolizing this guy, like they did another great Leader some years ago? I'm pretty sure that Obama is going to be our next President. And I am terrified of where the lunatic left is going to try and take us. Maybe Obama isn't as deranged as his followers--but the followers are pretty scary. Maybe it is a good thing that I may not be employed for a while.

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posted by Clayton at 7:13 PM permalink

 
Honorless Thieves: Throw Them Out

Glenn Beck this evening was pointing out that this isn't a bailout bill with some pork attached--it's a pork bill with a side of bailout. He pointed out that Sen. Harry Reid's claim that this "wasn't for Wall Street, but for Main Street" is nonsense--it's for the lobbyists on K Street, who got their grubby little fingers into the cookie jar, at the expense of the American people. Beck called those who voted for this pork barrel montrosity "honorless thieves," then apologized to any actual thieves who were watching him. (And that's appropriate--all the thieves in America for a century couldn't do as much redistribution of wealth as this crookedly bipartisan bunch.)

Look, there are parts of this bill that aren't exactly horrible or ferocious--for example, extending the Craig-Wyden appropriations again for rural counties devastated by the spotted owl craziness. But passing all of this stuff as part of the bailout is dishonest.

Anyone that voted for the Senate bill needs to be tossed out in November, Democrat or Republican. I don't have much confidence that this is likely to happen--in spite of enormous popular upset about this bailout--because so much money gets spent protecting incumbents.

We are approaching the point where the corruption of Congress is so severe that it may not be possible to fix this system anymore through elections--but we need to make the try. We preserve our liberties with a series of boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. That's the right order--but the obscenely rich crooks that run this country (and at least as much through the Democratic Party as the Republican) need to be aware of the penultimate box, and the horrendous consequences if it gets that far.

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posted by Clayton at 5:04 PM permalink

 
Those Curious Campaign Contributions to Obama

Here's a longer article which shows that many of these clearly false contributions were made in small chunks--small enough to fall below the $200 level where individual contributors have to be identified in reports:

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

...

The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.

But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.

But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.

“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.

But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.

Some of these small contributions are clearly unlawful, exceeding the maximum allowed contribution by an individual, and made in small chunks to avoid reporting:

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.

Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.

In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.

Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.

In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.

Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.

But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Far more worrisome is that there are lots of overseas contributions--and some are clearly unlawful:

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.

But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.

With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.

In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.

At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.

The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.

Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.

In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.

“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."

Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.

The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.

Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.

But what about the contributions already made? The interest alone on some of these unlawful contributions has doubtless given Obama a leg up. What may finally make public campaign financing happen--assuming that Obama's foreign supporters don't successfully buy this election--is that it may be the only way to stop al Qaeda from getting the most malleable president that money can buy.

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posted by Clayton at 3:37 PM permalink

 
It's Nice To See Some Agreement About The Bailout

Dr. John Lott (who is an economist) has an article at October 2, 2008 FoxNews.com about how economists are responding to the bailout:
While some politicians were reconsidering their opposition to the bailout this week, there is one group that still expresses a lot of concerns with the legislation: economists.

Interviews conducted with a dozen prominent academic economists, Obama supporters as well as McCain supporters, found little support for the bailout bill. Indeed, even the one economist who supported the proposal passed by the Senate Wednesday night had serious reservations.

Jonathan Berk, an award-winning finance professor at Stanford University and a strong opponent of the bailout plan, expressed the concerns of many: “I have never been so frustrated, I have never wanted to speak out publicly before on these political issues, but politicians don’t know what they are doing, they know nothing about these issues.”

The economists did not all emphasize the same reasons for the current financial crunch and they all did not agree how serious the problem is. But there are a number of similarities that can be seen in all their answers.

There is little agreement on how serious the current problems are. Take the statements from three of the economists. John Cochrane, a professor at the University of Chicago Business School, worried that the solution was out of all proportion to the problem.

The legislation is like this: some boats are sinking, so rather than bailing those boats out, you blow up the dam and drain the whole lake.

Robert Hansen, senior associate dean and professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, summed up his view this way:

Does this justify some government intervention to jumpstart the market? Yes. Is this the best way to solve the problem? I don’t know. Does this justify this level of intervention? No.

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posted by Clayton at 1:04 PM permalink

 
Please, Tell Me This Isn't True

The bailout bill the Senate passed last night included an excise tax exemption for wooden arrows:
Excise Tax Exemption for Wooden Practice Arrows Used by Children. Current law imposes an excise tax of 39 cents, adjusted for inflation, on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years.
I suppose that we can more cheaply train our kids to become a nation of bowmen this way, so as to overthrow this corrupt and foolish government in a carbon-neutral way.

At least one of my U.S. Senators, Mike Crapo, had the good sense to vote no on this. Senator Craig (R-bathroom stall), apparently voted for it.

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posted by Clayton at 6:55 AM permalink

 
Where Is Obama's Money Coming From?

From people that don't exist. Mitchell Blatt reports on some worrisome findings:
Barack Obama has received more than double the legal amount of individual campaign contributions for real people from a number of fake people, including Pro Doodad, occupation Dfgfdg, and Good Will, occupation Sdfsd.

The contributions from Mr. Doodad were originally reported in February, and Obama’s campaign started refunding some of them, but Doodad has still contributed a total of $10,965 to Obama even after subtracting the refunded money. The limit for a real person is $4,600.

Mr. Will’s net balance to Obama’s campaign is $8,950.

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posted by Clayton at 5:39 AM permalink

Wednesday, October 01, 2008
 
Bad Places & Times For A Job Interview

I had a job interview this morning with a company that is expanding into the Boise area--and they went ahead and scheduled to meet at the Boise State University job fair, since they don't have an office here yet. So what happened? I guess no one told them that there was a football game scheduled this afternoon--you can imagine the parking problems! I'm glad that I arrived way early!

posted by Clayton at 9:40 PM permalink

 
Unbutton Your Beast

If you really want to see how rapidly the popular culture is in decline, Levi's has a web site titled, "Unbutton Your Beast." I am sure that someone thought that it would be so cute and clever--but it really shows the vulgarity that has taken over Levi's.

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posted by Clayton at 2:40 PM permalink

 
What Does AMT Tax Relief Have To Do With This?

The Democrats' latest version of the Senate bailout bill contains yet another provision that has nothing to do with this crisis: AMT relief. From October 1, 2008 CNN:

The revised bill contains provisions that the Senate hopes will appeal to House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against the original legislation. The sweeteners include renewable energy tax incentives - for individuals and businesses alike - that have been on the table for several months and had a chance of passing at some point anyway.

The bill also includes relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, without which millions of Americans would have to pay the so-called "wealth tax."

The debate over extending AMT relief is an annual political ritual. It enjoys bipartisan support but deficit hawks on both sides of the aisle contend the cost of providing that relief should be paid for. Others argue it shouldn't be paid for because the AMT was never intended to hit the people the relief provisions would protect. Nevertheless, lawmakers pass the measure every year or two.

Look, I understand the arguments for AMT relief, and there is some merit to them. I also understand that you don't have to be fabulously rich to get stuck with paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. Some years ago, I had to exercise my stock options in a startup very carefully (some in one year, some in the next) to avoid getting hit with AMT. But for the most part, AMT is mostly something that people who are at least well off, and often quite wealthy, pay. I do wish that Democrats who keep talking about Republicans as the party of the fatcats will stop this pretense. The Democrats are at least as much the party of fatcats--and adding this provision to the bailout bill (already a massive subsidy to a few wealthy businesses and their stockholders) just demonstrates this all the more.

UPDATE: Call your U.S. Senators now! 202-224-3121 Assuming that you can get through!

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posted by Clayton at 12:54 PM permalink

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
 
Selling Houses: Slightly More Fun Than Dental Work

We have the house sold. We went back and forth with the buyer on price, and while the selling price is still pretty disappointing, it isn't quite as bad as the initial offer. If I had an engineering job right now, I would probably have rejected it out of hand--but who knows how long it will be before I can get a job?

UPDATE: Just to clarify--this isn't the new house with the view of the Payette River Valley. It is the old house in suburban Boise.

posted by Clayton at 8:10 PM permalink

 
The Senate's Version of the Bailout

I was watching CNN a few minutes ago, and one of their reporters was saying that the Senate is going to pass a bailout bill--but with "sweeteners" added to encourage the House to go along--individual items that are very popular, and therefore will allow House members to run ads emphasizing all the good things that were in the bill.

Some of the "sweeteners" are at least marginally related to financial institutions--such as increasing the FDIC insurance limit from $100,000 to $250,000. Oh yes, lots of ordinary Americans have more than $100,000 in the bank--you can see why this is so important!

Other "sweeteners," whatever their merits, simply have nothing to do with the bailout--such as requiring mental health parity on insurance coverage.

No bailout. As some members of the House pointed out yesterday, there's no point in a bailout until the core problem--the government forcing lenders to make subprime mortgages--gets fixed.

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posted by Clayton at 8:03 PM permalink

 
Amazing What These Fools Say

I am suddenly getting emails in which liberals expose their misogyny, and don't even realize it:

Here is a bold great directional idea for your next article. Why not a personal interview with the Democratic presidential candidate and his VP? What? You are not big enough in circulation to be able to get a personal interview with Obama himself. In fact, you don’t even have a personal interview article with McCain and the dumb broad VP sidekick. You know, the picture of that dumb broad looking down the site of a rifle really does scare me. She is liable to shoot one of your kids by mistake. [emphasis added]
You know, when someone uses phrases like "dumb broad," it really says quite a bit about them, doesn't it? I wasn't quite sure what to make of the claims by Senator Clinton's backers that the Obama campaign was misogynistic, but I see emails like this, and I am more inclined to agree.

UPDATE: A reader points out that "site of a rifle" suggests that in spite of claiming to be a gun owning, church going Republican, the writer probably isn't any of those things. Back in 2004, the musician Moby encouraged other liberals like himself to misrepresent themselves in chat rooms and online forums as disgruntled Republicans.

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posted by Clayton at 7:58 AM permalink

Monday, September 29, 2008
 
Some People Are So Articulate

The subject line of the email said:
You are a moron
There was no message body, except for the standard email signature block, identifying that the sender is a mechanical engineer. And this warning after that:

This e-mail message from Apex Drive Laboratories, Inc. is for the sole use of the intended recipient and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
Which confidential and privileged information do you think it refers to? My moronicity?

posted by Clayton at 9:51 PM permalink

 
Be Careful What You Wish For...You May Get It

I have been saying to myself for some time, "You know, even a low-ball offer on the old house would be fine--say, $10,000 below what we are asking." Well, we got an offer--and it was breathtaking how far below the list price it was. And from someone who is still working at HP. At this point, even some insulting low-ball offers on the house would be better--and would get accepted.

posted by Clayton at 7:25 PM permalink

Sunday, September 28, 2008
 
Eclipse Experts Out There?

I'm trying to do something that ought to be really simple: tell Eclipse where to find a Java class. I have two classes, in two separate files (as Java generally prefers): ButtonDialog and ContextSensitiveHelp. ContextSensitiveHelp has the main; ContextSensitiveHelp needs to be able to find ButtonDialog class. When I run ContextSensitiveHelp, ClassNotFound exception happens.

Outside of Eclipse, this would be easy: set CLASSPATH to include the directory where both of these classes are located. But this is Eclipse--not so simple, it seems.

I've already discovered that Project->Properties->Java Build Path only tells Eclipse where to look for what to build; it doesn't set the CLASSPATH so that ContextSensitiveHelp can find ButtonDialog at runtime. So Run->Run Configurations takes me to a tab that lets me set the CLASSPATH--but both ContextSensitiveHelp and ButtonDialog are in the same directory. What am I missing?

UPDATE: It appears that the CLASSPATH started finding ButtonDialog after I closed Eclipse and restarted it. This is a bit surprising.

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posted by Clayton at 9:58 PM permalink

 
No Gun Involved...

But noteworthy because of the premeditation involved, and the positive outcome of what would otherwise have been a horrendous crime. From the September 28, 2008 channel 6 in Indianapolis:
David Meyers (pictured), 52, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after officers arrived following a report of a home invasion in the 3500 block of West 79th Street at about 3:20 a.m.Officers said they found Robert McNally, 64, on the floor with his arm around the neck of Meyers, struggling to hold him down.

When officers told McNally he could let go, they found that Meyers was unresponsive. Medics who were called to the scene then pronounced Meyers dead.

Indianapolis police Sgt. Matt Mount said Meyers had come into the home naked, except for a mask and latex gloves.

"He had rope, had a knife, had condoms, had a gag," Mount said.

Police said Meyers had gotten into the home through a window next to the girl's bedroom and that he knew the home well because his uncle owns it and he was an acquaintance of the family.
If you are wondering why this monster brought condoms with him, it wasn't concern about the victim. It's a way of making sure that you don't leave evidence that could get you convicted (as with the latex gloves). I have to explain that because there are a lot of very, very naive people out there. As a former co-worker explained once, for why no one should be allowed to own guns, "Why, there's all sorts of perfectly innocent reasons why someone might break into your home! Perhaps there's been a traffic accident, and he needs medical supplies!" (He claimed to be serious about this.)

This wasn't Meyers' first time in trouble with the law:
Meyers was a registered sex offender and was released from prison two years ago after he had served 10 years of a 20-year sentence for criminal confinement and sexual deviate conduct stemming from a case in Hamilton County.Meyers was also being sought in Boone County for failure to register as a sex offender.
There are some people that need to go inside, and stay there.

posted by Clayton at 7:09 PM permalink

 
More Scandal Involving the Housing Disaster

I've mentioned before that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has made some embarrassing statements to justify not cleaning up the mortgage mess before it became a crisis. This column by Jeff Jacoby in the September 28, 2008 Boston Globe has more on Frank's desire to see minorities with poor credit histories get houses:

As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn't take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. "What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?" I asked in this space in 1995. "Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today's self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?"

Frank doesn't. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that "these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis." When the White House warned of "systemic risk for our financial system" unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the "systemic risk" is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: "The private sector got us into this mess." Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he'll find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

But there may have been more involved than just Frank's desire to see minorities getting houses. This September 24, 2008 article from the Business & Media Institute reports:
The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking. Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest. Only six of the appearances dealt with the economy in general and two of those appearances, including an April 6, 2008 appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were about his opposition to a manned mission to Mars.

Frank has argued that family life “should be fair game for campaign discussion,” wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. “They’re the ones that made an issue of her family,” the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP.


The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae. The July 3, 1998, Reliable Source column in The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his “spouse.” Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his “lover” and that the two were “still friends” after the breakup.


Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk. Frank’s office has been unresponsive to efforts by the Business & Media Institute to comment on these potential conflicts of interest.


While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

Let me emphasize: Frank's homosexuality isn't the issue. If Rep. Frank's sexual relationship was with a Fannie Mae executive name Jane Moses, it would raise just as many questions about his integrity.

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posted by Clayton at 3:52 PM permalink

 
Tires

The rear tires on the Corvette needed replacing, and I held off as long as I could--but a light misting would be enough to cause serious traction problems, so I had some new tires put on Friday.

Regular readers may recall that almost three years ago, I replaced the Goodyear F1 Eagle runflats that are the factory recommended tire with Michelin Pilot Sport A/S runflats. They were dramatically quieter and less harsh than the Goodyears, although not quite as crisp in handling.

I had two rear Goodyears with a few thousand miles left on them which I had tried to sell on eBay--without success. My wife thought that it was silly to have kept them, but when the rear Michelins wore out a few months, I discovered that I couldn't get replacements! There was a temporary shortage, so I had the old Goodyears put on a few months back, and they worked well (although noisily and harshly) in the meantime.

Anyway, when it came time to order up some rear tires, TireRack.com showed both the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S and the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus. The only apparent difference was that the Plus was $3 per tire more--and the UTQG wear rating suggested that I would get about 20% more mileage from the Plus. That was an easy choice! They didn't have them in the Nevada warehouse, but they were willing to split the difference on shipping between the Indiana and Nevada warehouses, so it was still a very decent deal.

Anyway, as with the Pilot Sport A/S, the Plus is distinctly quieter and less harsh than the Goodyears--and a bit less precise. As tread on tires wear, handling usually improves a bit--so I am comparing full tread Michelins with Goodyears with effectively no tread. Still, I am inclined to think that even if the difference in handling has little to do with the tread depth, it was a reasonable tradeoff. I'm not racing this car; I'm using it to run errands. Under those conditions, gran turismo is more important than the difference between 0.90g and 0.95g lateral acceleration.

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posted by Clayton at 3:30 PM permalink

 
How Can You Tell You've Upset An Idaho Liberal?

When you find that someone has subscribed you to email lists for repulsive gay pornography.

I suppose that this could be just random spam, but it appears that someone signed me up for this--and that sounds like the kind of stunt that I have learned to expect from the degenerates who represent the Idaho Democratic Party in the blogosphere.

posted by Clayton at 3:28 PM permalink

 
More About Illegal Aliens and the Housing Crisis

I mentioned previously Michelle Malkin's assertion that illegal aliens are at least a significant part of the subprime mortgage disaster--which is logical. Part of the strategy to empower minorities was to ignore bad or no credit history--and if there is anything that an illegal alien is likely to have, it is no credit history. Remember: they aren't here legally--and many are working under false names and Social Security numbers.

I heard from a realtor who tells me that he can't even hint at asking if someone looking to buy a house is illegal, although his first client volunteered the information that he was illegal. He tells me that the federal government sends around teams pretending to look for houses specifically to make sure that realtors aren't asking about immigration status--and mortgage companies are in a similar situation.

Gee, can anyone see why illegal aliens might be poor credit risks on mortgages?
  • At any time, the federal government might stumble across an illegal alien, and actually deport them. (Okay, the odds are very tiny, but it could still happen.)
  • An employer might have to fire an illegal alien, if the federal government started asking questions.
  • Because illegal aliens are disproportionately poorly paid, it seems very likely that any significant increase in interest rates on adjustable mortgages would make it hard to make the payments.
  • Even Americans whose command of English is perfect managed to get in over their heads because of sleazy mortgage companies, an inability to think six months ahead, and general shortsightedness. Do you suppose having a limited command of English might aggravate these problems?

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posted by Clayton at 10:52 AM permalink

 
Just Too Good To Be True

Not the implications that Obama has some skeletons in the closet, but the prospect of Rezko turning before the election. From the September 27, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times (thanks to Crime File News for the pointer):

Just weeks before he is to be sentenced, political fund-raiser Tony Rezko is in the midst of intense discussions with federal investigators, sources close to the investigation confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times.

There’s no question federal authorities are interested in Rezko, a former top adviser and fundraiser to Gov. Blagojevich, as a federal witness. But one source who spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned it’s too early to call the discussions full-fledged cooperation.

Already, however, Rezko has provided information to the feds, who are in the process of vetting it, sources said.

...

The implications of Rezko’s cooperation are innumerable. His reach as a businessman, political adviser, real estate mogul and political fundraiser has the potential to take federal authorities from Springfield to Iraq.

Rezko not only was privy to inside meetings with the governor, but engaged in numerous real estate dealings with his wife, Patti.

The governor’s office has denied that the first lady’s business dealings with Rezko had anything to do with his influence in her husband’s administration.

Federal authorities have long sought Rezko’s cooperation in their ongoing probe into the governor.

A few months before his conviction, Rezko wrote a letter saying prosecutors were pressuring him to give them information on Blagojevich and White House hopeful Barack Obama. At that time, Duffy told the Sun-Times that Rezko had never met with, or spoken to prosecutors.

One source with knowledge of the investigation into the governor and into his wife Patti Blagojevich’s real estate dealings say the probe is going “at top speed.”

The fact is that a non-corrupt Chicago politician is in the leprechaun category: theoretically possible, but so unlikely that I won't generally worry about it. U.S. Attorney are appointed by the President, and are generally political animals. Even if Rezko didn't have any dirt on Obama (which is most unlikely), the U.S. Attorney would have a powerful incentive to find something--and Rezko, who has not yet been sentenced, has a powerful incentive to come up with something.

This is a serious problem with plea bargains, sentence recommendations, and all the rest of the deals that get made in criminal prosecutions. It creates enormous incentives to deceive and mislead. But it also creates enormous incentives to expose corruption that might otherwise not come to light.

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posted by Clayton at 9:54 AM permalink

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