Monday, July 19, 2004

Note to the Peter Deutsch Campaign (or why Flash is a bad idea) Today I was looking at referrers to my blog and was mildly surprised to see a link from an MSN search on the term "peter deutsch's position on the federal marriage amendment".  Out of curiousity I checked the search and sure enough, my blog is the top result, even though I have never disclosed the Representative's position on the issue (I have mentioned both the Federal Marriage Amendment and Peter Deutsch but not the two together).  I was intrigued to see that there was only one other hit in the results that actually mentioned Peter Deutsch (and it wasn't his campaign's website, which would ideally be the top hit). At first I wrote this off to a poor search by MSN, but after a search on Google returned similarly poor results, I was hit by a "flash" of insight. Peter Deutsch's campaign  website is enclosed in Macromedia Flash.  If you go to the site and you do not have flash installed, you are faced with two boxes saying "click here to get the plugin" and one link to a press release.  Nowhere is there a link for those who do not have the Flash plugin installed.  (I have it for my Firefox install, but not my Mozilla Suite).  When you make a website that is Flash only, without a regular HTML alternative, there are a few negative consequences.  One is that you greatly restrict the number of people who can access the site.  For example, if I remember correctly, the computers in the libraries here at Florida State do not have Flash installed, and one cannot opt to install it (for general security reasons). (and this is the case at most publicly accessible computers).  The second negative consequence is the pertinent one for the curious case of the MSN search.  A website enclosed in Flash is opaque to the spiders of search engines.  Because of this, it does not return hits that are inside the website.  For example, a search on "Peter Deutsch Fighting Bioterrorism" does not return any hits to the campaign website, even though the phrase is present in his Homeland Security platform.  The campaign's website would be much more useful for all concerned if an html only version of the site were available. Lastly, a note to whoever did the afformentioned MSN search.  His platform contains the following: For over two decades, I have worked to ensure that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, receive equal protection and equal rights under the law. I have opposed – and in the Senate, I’ll continue to oppose – efforts to amend the Constitution to restrict marriages to those between a man and a woman. Politics comment []11:37:08 PM   trackback []

Georgia Senate Primaries tomorrow Steven Taylor's post reminded me that the Georgia primaries are tomorrow. I haven't followed the race too closely, but I've looked around for some reading to do in front of the vote. It is telling that searches on Technorati and Feedster for the Republican candidates turn up many more hits than searches for the Democrats. The Chicken Whisperer has a decent roundup of the Republican candidates. Also, for those interested he has also written about some of the House races as well. BlogoSFERICS predicts a runoff between Cain and Isakson. Political State Report has tidbits from races at all levels in Georgia Southern Appeal has several mentions of goings on on the Republican side. Captains Quarters has a post about the debacle of the Democrats. Confessions of a Political Junkie says that the Republican race is tighter than polls indicate. (Zogby has Isakson at 46%, with Cain at 16%) Politics comment []10:43:42 PM   trackback []

Summer Pulse 04 Misinformation A couple of weeks ago I posted about Summer Pulse 04, the exercise that has put seven aircraft carriers to sea at one time. An article in the Straits Times reported Chinese sources as saying that the exercise is designed to put seven carriers within striking range of China. This "news" has bounced around different forums of the internet (including that of the Kerry campaign). Most recently it was in a column published in the Los Angeles Times. Now, I know that people in the know aren't exactly relying on the Los Angeles Times for their military news (think of their (non) coverage of Paul Bremer's departure speech), but still , I cannot let this slip by. Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan. Quietly, by being on the front cover of the Navy Times, minimum coverage being articles in every newspaper in Navy towns (Norfolk, Jacksonville, San Diego, etc). While part of the Summer Pulse '04 exercise is in the Pacific, that is nowhere near the whole thing. It is going on in all regions, Europe, South America, and the Middle East, in addition to Asia. Nowhere has the Navy said that this exercise is solely about China. Check out the official website yourself. This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster. The first sentence would be true if that event were to occur. However, as I stated before the plan isn't to have all seven carriers in the same place. They are all over the world. Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon Actually, the idea for the Fleet Response Plan came straight from the CNO, who charged the Atlantic Fleet commander, ADM Natter to work out the details. If this were a massive build-up around China, I could see where one would want Congress to be notified. But as this is routine business (notable only because this is the first time we've tried it), I don't see anything that would warrant extra special attention. According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons. Yes, when I want solid information about what our military is doing, I immediately turn to the press of Undemocratic Communist China (to use the name given by Klingenfuss). Again, the reason for the exercise isn't to amass forces in one area, it's to show we can have forces in multiple regions at once. (Neocon count=2 now) It goes on to imply that we are looking to start a war with China, with this exercise being the provocation. To see that we aren't amassing our Carriers in one location, one only need to do a bit of research. As a Virginian-Pilot article reports, the Enterprise is playing with the Europeans, and is due back at the end of this month. The Kennedy went out to relieve the George Washington, which is now homeward bound (apparently cleared the STROG today). The Kennedy is now in the North Arabian Gulf. The Ronald Regan left Norfolk in late May to make the swing around South America to arrive in San Diego on July 23. The Truman, like the George Washington, is homeward bound after completing its deployment. The ones that are playing in the Western Pacific are the Kitty Hawk, which got underway today and will be joining the Stennis. To see this for yourself, you can look at Status of the Navy, and the mildly disconcertingly detailed Where Are the Carriers? Using Chinese propaganda to back up paranoid fantasies about neoconservatives is really shoddy. But what do I know? After all Blogging is especially amenable to introducing negative information into the news stream and for circulating rumors as fact. (LA Times) LATER: Submitted to Beltway Traffic Jam. EVEN LATER:  Some linking madness:  - A post entitled Don't Tread On Me with a cool picture of the Truman and Enterprise and other ships sailing together.  - A sampling of the forums I mentioned. -Some saner coverage from Winds of Change and EastSouthWestNorth. Military comment []4:55:42 PM   trackback []

Johnnie Byrd for Senate campaign news 20040719 Today the Byrd campaign released that it has received an endorsement from the National Right to Life Committee and that Byrd received the "Go To Guy Award" from the Florida Sheriffs Association. Florida Senate Campaign, Politics comment []3:20:14 PM   trackback []

Senate Campaign News 20040719 It's been pretty quiet for the past three days. Here's what the press has been writing about the race: Nearly one third of Betty Castor's cash has came from the fund raising group called Emily's List. Peter Deutsch is unhappy with this, according to the St Petersburg Times. An article in Jacksonville's Florida-Times Union says Deutsch got the attention stolen away from him by Representative Corrine Brown at a round table discussion on health care held by his campaign The Miami Herald writes about Mel Martinez' Cuban background and how his support of the Bush Administration's policy sometimes conflict with the views of the Cuban community. The St Pete Times has a biographical article about Martinez. Florida Senate Campaign, Politics comment []10:39:45 AM   trackback []