Last week I completed the sales site for the product I work on. TTIShipDirect.com used to just have a login page, but now we have some info about the product and some screencasts showing what it can do. If, for some reason, you have an interest in what I spend my days on, watch those videos and you'll have a good idea of how the application works.

Rumsfeld Resignation Summarized as a Mac OS X Screenshot:

via Boing Boing and Digg

The polls will be opening up in just over 12 hours. I hope everyone remembers to vote tomorrow. I want to specifically mention the Missouri race for US Senate. Very often it feels like one vote doesn't make much difference, but this is turning into a very close race. It's the closest of all the Senate races this year and it may end up deciding which party controls the Senate for the next two years. That means that your vote in this race is very important. And not just in the sense that every vote in every race is important.

Part of what makes Missouri politics so interesting is that we have a healthy population of independent voters. If anyone is still not sure about this race, allow me to make one final plea. Even if you don't feel strongly about either candidate, you can probably agree that we could use some more Congressional oversight in Washington. The Constitution gives Congress the very important duty of checking the power of the executive branch. When they fail at that task the nation can begin down a very dark path. I could throw out some scary words here, but there's no need. I'm sure you understand that a balance of power can be a very good thing. If only for this reason, I hope you'll consider voting for Claire McCaskill. There are lots of other reasons that I think she'll be a good Senator, but I thought that one might appeal to independent voters in particular.

And don't feel bad about Jim Talent being out of work. I'm sure that he'll get offered a high-paying job with his old lobbying firm, Arent-Fox, or with one of the oil or pharmaceutical companies that he's been so supportive of.

Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. Happy democracy, everyone.

Elections have been on my mind a lot lately, especially ways to improve them. Here are three reforms that could go a long way toward making our Democracy work better.

1. Instant-Runoff Voting - Builds consensus and gives third party candidates a better chance.

2. National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - Makes the popular vote count in Presidential elections instead of the Electoral College (but without amending the Constitution).

3. Clean Elections - Government-funded campaigns for candidates who say no to private donations.

There are pros and cons for each of these, but I think they would all be improvements over what we have now.

Dancing Bananas: Episode 2 is available for download.

We also already have some halloween pictures in the gallery.

Emma introduced her new cat, Beauty, in the first episode of her show, but what she didn't tell you is that Bearsmicks is gone. When we brought Beauty home, Bearsmicks hissed and growled at him a lot. After about a week, he went outside and we haven't seen him since. We put an ad with his picture in the paper, but we haven't heard anything. Emma has been pretty upset, but we're just hoping that he's found another good home.

Beauty is doing well and we've decided to get another cat to keep him company. Since the cats will be younger they should get along better. We're also going to introduce them more gradually than we did last time.

Nonpartisan political watchdog site, FactCheck.org has released a report saying that several of Jim Talent's ads are "misleading" and "deceive voters."

In four separate TV spots Republican Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri falsely attributes several unflattering quotes about his opponent to the Kansas City Star. Our examination reveals that the quotes actually come from rival Claire McCaskill's political opponents and critics, not from the Star's reporters or editors.

The Star has demanded that Talent correct or withdraw the ads.

When people started saying that the war in Iraq was about oil, I always thought they were paranoid or stupid. After all, it's not as though the US were just going to march in and seize the oil like some colonial-era invaders. I'm still not sure what I think, but there were two articles published on AlterNet.org that do as well a job of explaining the conflicts of interest as I have ever seen.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil
Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil (Part Two)

I really encourage you to read at least the first article. It explains some of the history and what is going to happen to Iraq's oil. I've tried to list the main points of the article.

1. Iraq has a lot of oil.
2. That oil is easy to get to and cheap to process.
3. Because of sanctions, Iraqi oil hasn't been on the market as much as it could be.
4. Oil companies want to get into Iraq and get a share of the profits by providing Iraq with oil services and buying and selling that oil.
5. The oil companies lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 90s, hoping to get more access to Iraq under a more West-friendly government.
6. In 2000, they got two of their own elected to the top two jobs in America.
7. Two weeks after taking office, Cheney held secret meetings with top oil executives while he was drafting the administrations energy policy.
8. The Bush White House had plans was determined to attack Iraq even before they began building a case.
9. As part of debt relief for Iraq, the US and British big four oil companies are negotiating production service agreements (PSAs) for the extraction of Iraq's oil. Under these agreements, the Iraqis technically retain ownership of the oil reserves, but the terms are lucrative for the oil companies and give them much more control than is normal.

The article gives sources and details for these points and greatly expands on number 9. Part two goes into even greater detail and examines Jim Baker's "eye-popping conflict of interest" in his involvement. I would like to hear your thoughts after reading the article. To me, it seems like some pretty damning evidence. I wonder when we'll start to hear more about this in the news.

Emma has her own show now. It's called Dancing Bananas and it will basically be her telling stories and jokes and generally sharing her perspective on life. In the first episode she explains how she got the idea for the name, tells a couple of jokes and the story of how we got our new cat.

There are several ways to get the show. The easiest is just to go to her website: Dancing Bananas and watch the YouTube version of the show. That may take the least effort, but it won't be the best quality. For the high quality version, you can download it from her site, or subscribe to the Broadcast Machine feed. You can then get all new shows automatically downloaded to iTunes, Democracy Player or your video podcast client of choice. There are subscribe buttons on Emma's site. I think Democracy might be the best way to get it. They just released a new version and it's a very cool program. This could be a good excuse for you to check it out.

If you have show ideas, questions or fan mail, please use the comment form on brendoman.com/emma. Emma can answer your mail in future episodes.

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.
--Wendell Berry, "Peaceableness Toward Enemies: Some Notes on the Gulf War, 1991

My friend Heath introduced me to Wendell Berry and for the most part I really like him. He occasionally comes across as a cranky old Luddite, but a lot of his ideas are very hard to disagree with. This essay, written after the Persian Gulf War has some observations that are still relevant today.