Month: February 2008

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Super Duper Tuesday

(paraphrased from an email sent to a friend overseas summarizing Super Tuesday)

So the night started off interestingly early with Obama picking up Georgia with like 88% of the black vote and he only lost the white vote like 60-40. Clinton quickly replied with wins in new Jersey and new York both by 15 points. Obama won his state by 32 points. Obama picked up quality wins in Missouri, Connecticut and Kansas but Clinton has California, Massachusetts and Arizona to battle back.

I really hate the Super Delegate system where the party establishment has votes on who to give the delegates (look at attached picture below). Based on total voting delegates only! Clinton has a lead of 475 to 451 (only up by 24 delegates) but if you add super delegates 668 to 557 (lead goes up to 111)*. Gives Hilary quite the boost.

So the democratic race goes on with states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas still to vote all of them have triple digit delegates so we’ll see.

*note: numbers subject to change as more districts report numbers.

For the republicans, McCain kind of kicked butt but Huckabee surprised me picking up several states (WVA, TEN, ARK, ALA)… they are talking about a McCain / Huckabee ticket which is quite scary for America…

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Super Tuesday

It is Super Tuesday in over 20 States across the country and you better go out and vote today. It does not matter who you vote for as long as it means you know some things about the candidates and you go out and vote for the one you prefer most.

Look for an update tonight after 9 PM on the results.

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FBI To Keep A Biometric Database

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expected to announce in the next few days a $1 Billion, 10 year contract to help complete a biometric database that will consist of every American’s palm prints, eye scans and even tattoo mapping.

The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect. – Article

If you did not think America was a surveillance society before, maybe this wake up call is what you needed. I know a couple of people who had been talking about things like this for a little while now and it certainly does not come as a surprise to me that they are announcing this. Only thing that caught me off guard was that they just came out an announced it, I thought they would have been a little more subtle with things like this. I guess throwing in that it is used to identify dangerous criminals and potential terrorists.

This is always comforting that they already had full access to pretty much do what they wanted with no oversight and now publicly announcing a plan like this just gives them more authority to do what they want. Certainly there are civil liberties group who are speaking out against the issue. “It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.

Only time will tell how big of a Big Brother this will develop in our society but by no means is this a good start.