US Presidential Debate

Last night I saw the US presidential debate and I found that Bush did the presentation of his life, but Kerry was nearly perfect. I've never cared for Canadian, Brazilian or US elections and have often not voted in Canada. But for a variety of reasons I'm am deeply interested in the US elections. I think part of it is my hatred of the things that have been happening in the US over the past 4 years. Not all of them are really Bush's fault but he was at the helm when they happened.
Things like:
  • Increased corruption of the election process. I'm sure some corruption has almost always happened in elections but never has elections been so close before as this time and the last election. Joke: "What's the difference between Hitler and George W. Bush? Hitler was elected!".
  • The RIAA has received carte blanche to sue their customers and extend DRM and draconian protection of DRM throught the induce act.
  • The push of NAZI like measures to control their own population all in the name of "fighting terrorism". Of course I'm talking of the Patriot Act, which is far from patriotic - the founding fathers must be turning in their graves.
  • The fear mongering that the republicans are pushing with their terror alerts. They solve nothing but cover the government's back in case an actual terrorist act occurs. Citizens can do nothing and change nothing in their lives based on these vague alerts. Follow the link for a comment by security expertBruce Schneier.
  • The realization though Marshal Brains blog and his Manna stories at the dire straights that the lower income people are in. How people on minimum wage (which hasn't changed in 7 years) is controlled by lobby groups like McDonalds and Wal-Mart which keep these values low (not even indexed to inflation). People on minimum wage need two jobs just to put food on the table.
  • The distribution of income in the US (an in most countries) doesn't follow a straight line or even an exponential curve, but is in fact an L-curve. Basically, it means that people like Bill Gates has all the wealth and the rest of us are just noise. It also means that it is the duty of the most wealthy to pay most of the taxes for the country, yet the Republicans and Bush gave them tax breaks. Note that the L-curve shown is for income, actual net worth is even worse with the poor owning almost nothing and the wealthy owning everything.
  • The increase of IP (Intellectual Property) ownership through patents (which are a mess) and copyright, which affects us all.
  • The Sonny Bono Act sometimes called the Mickey Mouse Act because everytime Mickey's copywrite is about to expire they change the copyright rules. Lawrence Lessig has a lot to say about copyright. My only hope is that enough people will be fed up with the rediculous situation that the laws will be changed drastically, but I won't hold my breath.
  • The breakdown of reporting the news in an unbiased manner. TV like the Fox Network (Ruper Murdock's station) is probably the worst offender, but newspapers have also had their share of trouble.
It is my feeling that the republicans have bent over backwards to do whatever the industry tells them to. In the past it used to be the agrobusiness and the oil industries that did this, now, in this modern times, we see the movie and recording industries that are pushing it.

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