GIN AND TACOS

The three remaining presidential candidates have each taken turns suffering through the same "crisis" over the last two weeks. It is entirely a creature of the New Media age with its endless airtime to fill and heavy reliance on the Duelling Pundits format.
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Of course I'm referring to the fact that each candidate has taken heavy criticism on account of someone else's big mouth.

McCain has gotten criticized over John Hagee's virulent anti-Catholic rhetoric. Hillary had to deal with Geraldine Ferarro's enlightened views on race. Obama has taken heat over his pastor's different yet equally enlightened racial views. Personally, I find these discussions diversionary, pointless, utterly irrelevant, and unfair. Unfair? Yes. You may argue that it is fair to criticize the company a candidate chooses to keep. You may also argue that the candidates should be held to account for the views of those who endorse them. If either of those things crossed your mind, I want you to try a little thought experiment.

You wake up tomorrow morning and, through some series of events not relevant here, you are your party's nominee for President, Governor, the Senate, or some other high-visibility political office. Media descend on your home in droves. Everyone you've ever met suddenly claims to be very close with you and is giving TV interviews about you. Many of your friends and family are thrilled to support you vociferously. Now, tell me how long you believe it would take for someone you know to say something asinine on camera. In my case? Given some of the knuckleheads I know?

Three hours. Tops.

Think about all the people you know. Think about how bat-shit insane some of them are. Think about all the bizarre views some of them hold. Think of how completely and totally unprepared they are to have a camera shoved in their face and be interviewed for an audience of 100 million. Think about how terribly, terribly wrong things would go if some of your acquaintances, co-workers, friends, religious community, or family members were given the chance to flap their gums on camera. We don't even need to play the degrees-of-separation game; one degree would be just fine for most of us.

While it can be argued that public figures like Geraldine Ferarro should know better, my point holds – would you find it fair to be held accountable for the words and actions of anyone and everyone you know? I didn't think so. Now consider the fact that Clinton, Obama, and McCain are running for president and their pool of associates prepared to say something stupid is several orders of magnitude larger than yours. Frankly, it is extraordinarily unlikely that this wouldn't happen at some point. Too bad we waste so much time and effort blowing hot air when it does.

I am the world's only satisfied user of Windows Vista. Honestly. Bugs aside, it's amazing. Yes, that's an awful lot like saying "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" But this past weekend, as I talked yet another person off the Fuck It, I'm Going Back to XP Ledge, something struck me: why in the name of God is the buying public doing Microsoft's product testing?

Several factors contribute to my status as one of the first and most satisfied Vista users. I build my own computers, and I don't care what anyone says, it makes a difference.
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Big manufacturers use cheap components and load their machines with so much bullshit – trial versions of everything, games, help tools for idiots, ridiculous multimedia software – that even deleting it will cause problems thanks to Vista's flaw of collecting bits and pieces of old registry files.
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For instance, if you delete a trial version of Symantec AV your networking capabilities will be messed up beyond belief. Symantec has created specific tools for Vista users looking to uninstall the programs. Most users probably are not aware of this – they know only that they paid $400 for the damn software and they can't wirelessly connect to the internet.

This is just one example, of course. We're 18 months into its release and they are still finding new bugs and scrambling to fix the old ones. I cannot shake the feeling that Microsoft got very, very lazy here. They figured, "Hey, fuck it. Release it and we'll mop up the few bugs as they happen." Unfortunately it's not a "few." And the average consumer does not expect to pay that much for something half-finished.

Not only is Vista buggy, but frankly most of the machines out there are not powerful enough to run it properly. Microsoft confidently predicted that it would work on "95% of existing PCs" with no modification. Dual-core and newer P4 systems will handle it well, but the kinds of machines that fill computer labs on campuses, public libraries, government offices, middle schools, and so on are not going to run an OS designed to compliment dual-core architecture. We tend to forget this in tech-porn land, but the overwhelming majority of computers in use are old pieces of shit. Their users are not interested in maximizing system performance or keeping the latest and greatest hardware installed. I have no problems running Vista – on a spankin' new Core 2 Duo at 2.8ghz. But I am 0.01% of computer users. I can't imagine installing this on the PCs at your local library or in your dentist's office.

I've never abided the general public rage toward Microsoft but I certainly have cause to question their collective intelligence after this debacle.
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It would have been far more logical to wait another year for the product to be refined and for the end users' hardware to catch up a little. What's done is done, though. Feel free to contact me if you need to be talked off the ledge.
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*Or you could take my advice: back up, format, and do a clean install. There seems to be a growing consensus among Vista users that "upgrade" installs never work.

There's been an awful lot written in the last week on the left side of the blog-o-world about John McCain's involvement in the recent Department of Defense decision to award its contract for new aerial refueling tankers to Airbus (a subsidiary of German-French-Spanish aerospace conglomerate EADS) rather than U.S.-based Boeing. Here is an example, by no means the only one, of the America Should Be Buyin' American commentary. Boeing claims (although I don't fully believe) that nearly 9,000 U.S. jobs could be lost as a result. And what sense does it make for our military to be dependent on foreign suppliers? Valid points, these are.

To which I respond, Where the hell have you been for the past 30 years? You'll find fewer foreign products in Pier 1 Imports than in the hands of the average American soldier.

Italian pistols (the Beretta M9), German submachine guns (H-K MP5), Belgian machine guns (various FN Herstal models), British jet engines (Rolls-Royce)….

the list could go on. And that's not even counting the hundreds of "American" vehicles and products composed largely of foreign parts. The military has traditionally bought only from U.

S. companies as a matter of policy. In practice, the aforementioned foreign companies would simply open up an American office; so we're technically not buying from Beretta, we're buying from "Beretta USA." To say that this is little more than a convenient legal fiction of "American" origin is an understatement.

I regularly get up in arms (pun intended) about the continued exodus of manufacturing work from the American economy, but this case feels an awful lot like trying to close the barn door long after the horses escaped.

Like American consumers, the American military's buying habits focus on superior-quality foreign products and polyglot products made of parts and labor from all around the globe but branded by U.S.-based multinationals. Even if the Air Force "bought American" in this case, the Boeing 767-based entry isn't really "built" in Washington. "Assembled" is the better word – of parts made in the U.S., China, Japan, Britain, Canada, Mexico, and half of the other countries on the damn planet.

Today a Honda Accord (built in Ohio and Indiana, containing 65% domestic parts) is a foreign car while a Chevy Aveo (built in Korea, containing 4% domestic parts) is American. If it hasn't already become so, the concept of American- or foreign-made is on the fast track to becoming completely meaningless. The reality of this situation is no different than the reality of your consumer purchases. Do you make yourself buy a Ford out of a sense of duty to the country? Or do you remind yourself that American cars are merely cheaper – and in every other way inferior – on your way to the Honda or Toyota dealership? Let's can the phony outrage at the idea that the military is doing exactly the same thing. If Boeing's creaky, four-decade-old design had anything going for it other than "It's cheap!" and "You're honor-bound to buy 'American'!" we might not be having this conversation.