It looks obvious

I’m breaking the sudden silence of the blog, to tell you that we are going to be in New Hampshire from January 4th.
We, finally, made up our mind and volunteered as a family to go help the efforts in the NH primaries. I didn’t volunteered to any political activity since I was 16 years old, 24 years ago, and I’m rather excited. It is great to be part of those who are making history. What makes me particularly happy is the fact that we are going to do this as a family.

Rye, NH - here we come!

Lately I find it hard to get excited about the “real” important things - politic, foreign policy and maters of war and peace. I don’t really feel like writing about things of substance (and I guess some might argue that I never wrote anything of substance). I simply enjoy the time with my family. Seeing the girls growing up and developing is a great source of joy to me.

As usual more pictures can be found here and here.

Time really fly, I can’t believe that it is already two years.

More picture can be found here.

I love watching the political game, and how the political spin is working. Ron Paul’s remarks from today is a great example: a less known candidate which got some media attention for a very successful fundraising keep the with a controversial remarks aiming at the frontrunner. This is, when working, ensuring more media time and opportunity to increase the candidate’s “name recognition”. Increasing the horror effect on the faux news host is very simple - using a literary reference will be out of their league…:)

And the remark, by the way, was completely in place!

I am far from being fond of Mike Huckabee. His ideology and political agenda are completely the opposite of mine and He represent all the gone wrong with the GOP. While I believe in individual rights and liberty, Governor Huckabee promote the worse of all worlds - Big Government Conservatism - a brand of social conservative who believe in harnessing the power of government to impose their social ideals on other people. I hoped, however, that his foreign policy is more realistic, mostly because of his short statements criticizing the Bush administration for its arrogance.

Reading Huckabee’ foreign policy agenda I know that these hopes were false.

If it wasn’t tragic it might had been funny to read such a simplistic, ignorant and self contradicting document from a front tier candidate for the office of President of one of the strongest countries in the wold. The fact that it isn’t the first time in american recent history that its elected President was completely ignorant about the world, isn’t comforting at all - the damages created by such ignorant Presidents - Wilson, Truman, Kennedy, Carter and Obviously George W. Bush (and this is by any count a partial list) should be an alarming warning from even considering adding yet another one. The huckabee doctrine will attempt to lead the US into an attempt to illusion of building self sufficient energy market, ignoring the russian interests in the middle east (and the fact that it has more to loose because of american idiotic policies) and bombing current allies, ignoring the blowback of such policies.

I can only wonder which will cause more devastating damages - Huckabee’ foreign policies or his domestic agenda?

It is winter already, and we already had some snow and ice. And it is nice in the evening to watch some TV covered with blankets.

Is it a decade already?
It is hard to remember the world without blogs. Now it is time to find some tools that help us sort through the flood of content.

Gotcha, McCain.

The truth is that there is no real difference between the two situation - only that during the peace keeping mission in Somalia was during the Clinton administration and the non neoconservative in the GOP advocated for limited intervention.

This short clip is a good reminder that non-intervantionism was the mainstream republican policy not so far ago. It is interesting, and sad, to see how easy it become to make it into fringe ideology. One might argue that the 9/11 terror attacks change everything, but I doubt the wisdom of such argument. Yes, the 9/11 terror attack were horrifying - I will never forget the horror of that damned day - but it should should not have made non-intervantionism irrelevant, just the opposite. What in fact happened was that the 9/11 terror attack was used as an excuse to promote the neoconservative ready policy, which they drafted years before.

(via LRC)

The latest consumer protection, the French version, is so typical - the consumer has to pay more in the name of competition:

Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled. 
The action, brought in January 2004 by the French Booksellers’ Union (Syndicat de la librairie française), accused Amazon of offering illegal discounts on books and even of selling some books below cost.

The court gave Amazon 10 days to start charging for the delivery of books, which should at least allow the company to maintain the offer through the end-of-year gift-giving season. After that, it must pay a fine of €1,000 (US$1,470) per day that it continues to offer free delivery. It must also pay €100,000 in compensation to the booksellers’ union.

Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France.

It is one step forward two step back with france