Politics and blogging...

I get home tonight and head over to one of my favorite sites .  Noticed that Kirk was making the point that politics has no place in Blogdom .  That's a pretty naive point in many regards although I don't disagree with the spirit of what he's saying. 

First, Politics seems to attract readers.  Period.  Casey pointed it out a while ago but he can write up and down about totally kick a33 things he does with technology, but strippers, politics and the like seem to create the biggest buzz.  He's write.  There's a lot of folks that show up at your site b/c of politics and whatever else.  I didn't make it so, it just is.

Second, unless your blog is billed as a tech only blog - who's to say it's a one category thing?  I agree, lots of people get really silly about stuff but I don't have to read it.  And I don't. 

Third, many people blog because they enjoy it not necessarily to please an audience to make the world a better place or whatever else.  Andy made this point really well in reply to KC's post.  Besides, maybe I like reading about some people's political viewpoints.

Fourth and most importantly- technology and politics are interrelated.  Why wasn't Cellular technology mainstream 20 years before it was here in the states?  Why were Roaming charges created?  Why doesn't Microsoft write Anti-Virus software?  Why isn't Broadband over Powerlines taking off quicker?  Why do Europeans call every Republican president a “Cowboy” (ok, that's not related to technology but I'm dying to ask).  All of this is because of Politics more than the market place.  So if Kerry wins Outsourcing will probably be cracked down on and lazy a33  programmers who stopped learning at COBOL will still be able find employment and demand wages they don't deserve.  India probably won't think real well of it and will in turn retaliate. And since I don't know a Lawyer without either  a John Kerry or a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on their car, I'm guessing that they smell an opportunity here that I'm not too sure means 'nothing' to people in the tech sector.  And considering that 'rich' is $70k a year for a family of two according to Gephardt and the gang, well, the 'rich' they want to tax means laughably people like me and probably most every other programmer out there.  

  What if Bush wins?  Well, more people overseas may be doing some of the work that's done now but that remains to be seen.  Almost surely there will be more assholes, I mean insurgents, killing innnocent people in Iraq and trying to destroy the oil flow which doesn't bode well for the stock market here.  And depressed equities markets don't exactly entice everyone to run out and go public.  Then you have old GW trying to prove he's a good guy by signing silly a33 spending bills and signing bills that make a mockery out of the Constitution.  (If Political Speech wasn't covered by the First Ammendment I don't know what was. And the Campaign Finance bill might as well have included a provision to  mandate that all toilet paper have the Bill of Rights on it so that everyone could see what the Bill's authors think of Free Speech for people other than themselves).  There's also probably going to be a lot more money being invested in getting state governments up to speed a la Homeland Security.  Either way, the election will definitely have a bearing on the tech sector and is probably pretty proximate to many people.  (The last three companies that I've worked for have derived a large percentage of their income from working with State and or Federal Governments)