be the change you want to see in the world

Bush and his Republican followers want to spread democracy around the world. What brand of democracy? A quick look at why Tom DeLay, former Republican house Leader, quit politics shows a brand that is rotten to the core.

The Justice Department later issued a statement from Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher. “The American public loses when officials and lobbyists conspire to buy and sell influence in such a corrupt and brazen manner,” Fisher said. “By his admission in open court today, Mr. Rudy paints a picture of Washington which the American public and law enforcement will simply not tolerate.”

Rudy’s statement admits to a far-reaching criminal enterprise operating out of DeLay’s office, an enterprise that helped sway legislation, influence public policy and enrich its main players.

The court documents say that Rudy “routinely performed official acts for or at the behest of Abramoff.” Rudy admitted that, while on DeLay’s staff in the summer of 2000, he helped scuttle an anti-gambling bill opposed by an Abramoff client, eLottery Inc. As The Washington Post reported in October, Abramoff then arranged for eLottery to pay a foundation to hire Lisa Rudy’s consulting firm. In all, the court papers say, Abramoff and his clients funneled about $86,000 to the firm while Rudy worked for DeLay.

The Abramoff scandal goes much deeper. More people will be implicated, charged and convicted. The Republicans have shown that adage to be true that states “power corrupts.” Sadly, they undermine democracy on a global scale if this is the example they provide for those nations struggling to raise themselves from dictatorship. If things are seen to be business as usual under a different name, corruption will not be beaten by elections, only whitewashed.

Looks like Bob Rae and Michael Ignatief will face off for the Liberal Leadership. Some of you may not know (or care) that theirs is a friendship and rivalry that goes back; way back. In fact, their fathers were also friends and rivals.

But while Rae, the social democrat, opted for politics, Ignatieff, the liberal, carved out a career as an academic, writer and political commentator. “I’m the thinker, and he’s the doer,� says Ignatieff. “The doer always knows more about what’s possible politically. If he had gone into the Liberal party, there’s no limit to what he could have done. That he went into the NDP put a ceiling on how far he could go. He taught me a lot about conviction and paying the price of conviction.�

Looks like one will come along with the other, regardless of who wins. Get used to their faces.

I made a mistake when replacing my battery on my 3G iPod today. I didn’t understand how careful I was supposed to be when opening the case. The ribbon cable that connects your earphone jack to the main board is quite delicate, especially after several years. In fact, it almost looks like it is deliberately under-manufactured, but nobody would do that, would they? The ribbon cable is barely held on to the jack by a tab of plastic that seems to have deteriorated over time. The plastic came right off and with it, some of the ribbon cable. I pressed the plastic back on, to no avail. The end result is no earbud functionality. Silence. A moment of, if you please.

The iPod still works great though, and I use it with the Griffin Roadtrip in the car and my iHome clock radio. And of course, it still makes a great firewire back-up device for my older PowerBook DVI. The battery life is much better now. It had deteriorated to about 30 minutes. Of course, now that I don’tr use it in any scenario where it isn’t connected to power, the battery upgrade is kinda, well, you get it.

Anyway, here’s my tips for battery replacement on 3G iPod: Read more

I suppose it was inevitable, but it seems like a backward step…I thought we wanted Mac OS X on ALL computers, not the other way around.

Apple Introduces Boot Camp

People were doing this on their own, though, so I think it will be best if Apple gets in on the act and does it right. There are situations where you have to run Windows in order to use a specific application (not many, mind you) and having this capability will be a better solution than Virtual PC.

Now, if they can make it switch back and forth like user accounts do now, I’ll be really impressed.

My partners at Catalyst are always cautious about my tendencies to invite participation in the online portion of ad campaigns for customers. You need to make sure your model doesn’t have big hole in it, and they are good at pointing out holes.

I think there is much to be gained by inviting your target audience to do more than stare. Be careful though, because, as this example shows, sometimes things don’t work out as intended. Chevy’s agency decided it would be a good thing to allow website visitors to make commercials for the Tahoe. Activists got wind of it and did their own thing, which entailed making video spots against the SUV format.

Check out some of the results…