LSAT BLOG DELAYS

ARGH THE ANALYTICAL SECTION IS EATING MY SOUL

Very quick blog post here. I'm terribly busy studying for my big LSAT exam on Saturday at some ungodly hour in the morning, but I figured I'd put something out here just for habit's sake.

Edwards Out; I Mourn
First Dodd dropped out, one of the very few men in the Senate, or anywhere else, for that matter, willing to stand up for the rule of law against warrantless wiretapping. He based his campaign on noble Constitutional principles and got completely ignored, which is a pity.

Yet, when he was free of the campaign, what did he do? He went right back to fighting the warrantless wiretapping and telecom-amnesty bill in the Senate, and won. Twice, so far.

He would have made a fine President.

Now we have Edwards stepping aside, in no small part due to the abysmal performance he got in the Nevada caucus. It was the first time they ever conducted one, caucuses are designed to ensure that only two candidates get any real support because of their run-off nature, so he was doomed from the start, but he seems to have taken it personally, which is a real shame.

Edwards stood for the poor, the downtrodden, for everyone who's lost out in the marvelous Bush 'economy'. He's fought this same fight for decades, to mockery, to attacks, and to deafening silence. I expect he'll keep fighting it. Good for him.

Now we're left with whoever the Republicans dig out of the crypt, and the lesser of two mediocrities on the Democratic side. All the idealism and vibrancy has been systematically drained out of this primary season, leaving a group of candidates with all the appeal of cold gruel, or in Obama's case, all the substance of a marshmallow.

Sigh. I keep telling myself, at least it won't be Bush...

Source: Raw Story

For information on the Telco Immunity Bill, go to Firedoglake. They have a lot of material, and liveblog it whenever the bill comes up in the Senate.

New York City Wants to Secede
So here's the deal: NYC pays the state of New York 11 billion dollars more in taxes each year than it gets back in services. This has left the city somewhat unhappy, and proposing to secede from the state of New York.

Now, I know that word secession has nasty, Confederate connotations from the Civil War, but remember, there's legal precedent for seceding from a STATE but staying in the COUNTRY; we let West Virginia do it during the Civil War, after all.

(It's a sad sign of what a comic book nerd I am that I keep thinking of Marvel when I type 'Civil War')

At any rate, there's a plan going around to change that pay imbalance the hard way:

Emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's testimony in Albany this week that the city's taxpayers pay the state $11 billion a year more than they get back, a City Council member is offering legislation that would begin the process of having New York City secede from New York State.

Peter Vallone Jr., a Democrat who represents Queens, is pushing the idea, and the Council plans to hold a hearing on the possibility of making New York City the 51st state.

"I think secession's time has definitely come again," Mr. Vallone, who spearheaded a similar push in 2003, told The New York Sun yesterday. "If not secession, somebody please tell me what other options we have if the state is going to continue to take billions from us and give us back pennies. Should we raise taxes some more? Should we cut services some more? Or should we consider seriously going out on our own?"

I'm all for it, on paper at least. In practice though, as the article points out, there would be some issues with this plan.

He added that Albany and the rest of New York north of the Bronx border does have some redeeming qualities. "The city needs upstate — it's where the city gets its water. It dumps its prisoners upstate," Mr. Stern said.

I left out Mr. Stern's quote immediately preceding that because he said you can't secede from a state, which I already mentioned is actually not true.

There's also the matter of the fact that the people who'd have to vote on this plan are, err, unlikely to support it.

Mr. Vallone's legislation would create a commission to study the issue and then recommend whether to put it to a referendum. Since secession would have to be approved by the Albany legislators, its passage would be unlikely. Another to council member, Simcha Felder, who chairs the Governmental Operations committee, said the bill will be considered this year.

This is how governmental inertia works, folks. Revolutions are hard to conduct. That's sort of the idea.

Source: The New York Sun

Oh, Now THIS is Going to Be a Headache
The Kosovar government is threatening to announce its independence from Serbian Yugoslavia as soon as the Serbs finish their election.

This absolutely cannot go well.

Kosovo will proclaim independence within days of Serbia's presidential election on Sunday regardless who wins, the breakaway province's prime minister said Wednesday.

"The developments in Serbia do not have any influence on Kosovo. Kosovo has its own path," said Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.

Hardline nationalist Tomislav Nikolic will dispute the Serbian presidency with pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic in a runoff vote on Sunday. Opinion polls indicate the political battle is too close to call.

"The independence of Kosovo will happen in the next few days, regardless if Tadic or Nikolic wins," Thaci told journalists in the provincial capital Pristina.

Pressed to predict a possible date for a declaration, a senior Kosovo government official told AFP: "I would choose the second or third week of February.

Man, Putin's going to put his boot down if that happens, and then we'll be in the mess, and we're talking thick.

Sigh. Kind of wish we still had our international credibility and military presence, huh?

Source: Raw Story

Billy Boy Earns My Respect Again
Now he's on target, putting that temper of his where it belongs: aimed directly at the lunatic fringe.

The Clinton campaign may be stopping President Bill from taking on Senator Barack Obama in his public appearances on his wife's behalf. But that doesn't mean he can't go on the rampage against '9/11 hecklers.'

"9/11 was not an inside job, it was an Osama Bin Laden job," President Clinton proclaimed in the campaign stop.

"We look like idiots, folks, denying that the people who murdered our fellow citizens didn't when they are continuing to murder people all around the world," he added. "So we heard from you, you go away."

Bravo, Billy. It's beneath the Former President of the United States to talk whacko conspiracy theories with some crackpot glue-huffer, and you told him as much, though in much nicer language.

My hat, if I wore one, would be off to you today.

Source: Raw Story

Roommate's Assignment
This is what my roommate had to turn in as an assignment for a class, when asked for a small bit of flash animation: an Old One slaughtering some poor scientists at the Mountains of Madness.

More Random News

Let me show you..

..how much I care.

Polite Society Means Not Discussing Politics At Dinner
Even if you're the President, it seems.

President Bush followed up a mild lecture about expanding democracy among the Mideast's comfortable dynasties with an opulent picnic at the desert playground of one of the region's wealthy leaders.

Bush traded his suit for a casual jacket and took a helicopter as close as he could get to this remote encampment where Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheik Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, raises horses and prize falcons.

...

Bush has avoided any direct criticism of human rights or political freedoms in the governments hosting him in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Arab world, although U.S. allies surely knew who he meant when he decried the treatment of opposition political candidates and dissidents in the region.

Yeah, he meant 'Those people that you can round up and shoot for all I care, so long as there's seconds on that tasty lamb.'

Source: Raw Story

Drug Resistance Spreads
While Bush dines at his rich oil patrons' expense, we have some rather serious emerging problems here at home that a less anti-science administration might be tempted to deal with.

First, a new, tougher and quite nastily contagious strain of MRSA, or Multiply Resistant Staphyloococcus, has emerged, centered on the gay community in San Francisco. So expect to hear a lot more of that special right-wing gay bashing rhetoric we get with regard to AIDS (you know, the 'gay plague' stuff).

Source: BBC News

Meanwhile, a much more dangerous and agressive form of an Adenovirus, the wimpy little common cold bugs, has broken out, hitting the military community amongst others. It causes a nasty form of pnuemonia, and has led to a few deaths already. Since adenoviruses are normally so non-threatening, there really isn't anything medicine can do to treat it if it gets out of hand. We're not talking Captain Trips here, of course... but, you know, two serious disease outbreaks might prompt attention from a slightly more competent government. Instead, we have Bush trying to appoint a rabidly anti-gay minister as the Surgeon General. So it goes.

Source: CNN.com

The War on Terror Never Comes Home
So we're committed to fighting terrorists, world-wide, whenever they rear their ugly heads, right El Presidente?

Unless of course, they're Cuban terrorists plotting to overthrow Castro.

Tristam Korten and Kirk Nielsen, writing for Salon.com, profile a group of Cuban exiles who are believed to have plotted attacks against Cuba and continue to operate in Florida with virtual impunity.

"[O]ther than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country's government," they write.

"In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora, Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups -- Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana -- are so common they've taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons."

Ahh, Miami. What a cesspit.

The article also brings up the long-running outrage that is the U.S. giving sanctuary to an anti-Castro terrorist by the name of Posada Carriles, who is wanted for a series of hotel bombings and the downing of a plane in 1976 that killed 76 people. He's also implicated in an assassination attempt in Panama, and was tied up with our gun running in Central America during Iran-Contra. He recently fled into this country to avoid prosecution, and the Americans fudged Venezuela's extradition request so that he can stay here, indefinitely. He won't even be prosecuted for that pesky illegal immigration.

Border fence? Only for the dirty Mexicans, not bloodthirsty bombers.

Source: Raw Story (from a Salon article)

Thin is In
So Apple has a new laptop in the works that is about three quarters of an inch thick at the thickest point. It's absurdly slim, weighs 3 lbs, and costs about 2 grand.

Think of it as the extremely high-priced cousin of the EEE PC from Asus, or, alternately, the laptop so thin you have to worry about breaking it in half all day long.

Either or.

Source: Macworld

Ahh Fox, Is There Any Corporation Not Your Master?
Except for GE of course, because they let that mean old Olbermann on the air.

This time it's Fox Noise berating John Edwards, Nurses, and humanity in general for being too hard on Cigna, who denied a woman the liver transplant she needed and her doctors wanted, until of course, she died.

I'd wonder how they sleep at night, but I suspect they don't get much rest, as they're all on day-leave from Hell.

Source: Raw Story

One More Time (News)

Make your decision you know that it's long overdue....


Who Needs Working Fire Systems In a Warzone Anyway?
So the continuing spiral of corruption in constructing our huge (bigger than the Vatican), fortified (yet still in range of Iraqi mortars) compound... err, embassy in Baghdad gets worse every time you look. This time?

It turns out the fire systems, aka sprinklers, detectors and the like... doesn't work. Or to be more precise, since it's not been tested, is likely to catastrophically fail in the event of a fire.

Specifically at issue here are the underground pipes that feed high pressure water into the sprinkler system.. pipes which don't seem up to code.

WASHINGTON — The fire-fighting system in the mammoth new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who said that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

What reason could one have for cutting corners on such a huge project on which so many lives will depend, I wonder?

Last month, 19 days before he retired, State Department buildings chief Charles E. Williams certified key elements of the embassy's fire-fighting system as ready for operation, according to the documents McClatchy obtained.

His own fire-safety specialists and an outside consultant, however, had warned Williams and his aides repeatedly about numerous fire safety violations.

Moreover, Williams' thumbs-up was based on tests run by another contractor that was hired, not by the State Department, but by the company building the embassy, First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading Co. State Department officials, members of Congress and others have accused First Kuwaiti of shoddy construction and questionable labor practices.

Mindboggling.

Anyone want to lay odds that he has a financial tie to the contractors? This IS the Bush administration after all.

Source: McClatchy

Reason Enough to Vote For Him, Right Here
Reuters Headline: Corporate elite fear candidate Edwards

Apparently, according to various corporate lobbyists (aka, scum), the big money world is scared to death that Edwards might end up President.

That right there should secure your vote, ladies and gentlemen.

Source: Reuters

WGA Strike Grinds On; Oscars in Doubt
So the Writer's strike is grinding on due to complete intransigence on the part of the owners, despite their ever-mounting losses (now at 1.4 BILLION dollars to the Los Angeles economy), and now it looks like they're going to lose their single biggest PR move of the year -- the Oscars.

No red carpet, no Keira or Angelina, no best-dressed/worst-dressed lists, no goody bags, no limo rides, no parties and no champagne. Tonight's lacklustre Golden Globe awards will sound an alarm across Los Angeles: the show does not go on.

Hollywood is on strike and it is beginning to hurt the city built around the entertainment industry. People are out of work, the local economy is suffering and the biggest blow to both revenue and prestige could be yet to come - the cancellation of the Oscars.

See, the strike already killed the Golden Globes, because the nominees, and good for them on this btw, would not cross a picket line.

Usually one of the most glamorous events in the showbusiness calendar, tonight's Globes at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be reduced to no more than a one-hour press conference in which the winners' names will be read out. The losses incurred by caterers, hairdressers, hotels, jewellers, limousine firms, party planners, stylists and other support workers are estimated at $70-80m.

I actually feel badly for the collateral damage the strike is causing, but we all know who to blame -- the same people who won't share a couple percent of their revenue with the people who write their products.

For shame.

Source: The Guardian

Blackwater Coverup
So immediately after the shooting spree that led to the Iraqi government demanding that the mercenary company be thrown out of the country, Blackwater repaired and painted over all the vehicles involved.

Conveniently destroying all the evidence.

Blackwater SAYS there were lots of bullet holes and damage and such, and can produce unverifiable photographs to prove it -- but the actual cars are now mint.

So, either they were riddled with the enemy fire that most observers believe never existed, in which case Blackwater destroyed their best legal defense, or, in an attempt to obsfuscate their role in a spree killing, they repaired basically intact vehicles, then lied about what repairs they had done.

You can tell which theory I buy into.

Source: Raw Story/AP

Student Rights
Ahh, the University. A place of learning, of reasoned discussion, of disagreement in a civilized atmosphere.

Or failing that, a place where the administration can screw you because they feel like it.

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

...

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.


...


As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.”

I'm not entirely sure where oil comes into it, mind you, but, yeah, not a huge threat here.

The letter also said that in order to return as a student, a non-university psychiatrist would have to certify that Barnes was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and that he would receive “on-going therapy.” After he appealed, with endorsements from a psychiatrist and a professor, the Georgia Board of Regents “didn’t do the right thing and reverse the expulsion,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that defends students’ free expression rights and helped Barnes secure legal counsel.

Oh-ho, the changing goalposts defense! My how I love that one.

So his grand total of offenses runs: he made a collage, he had a link on his page to a photography contest, and he was cleaning his room to relax.

WHAT A MONSTER.

Yeeeeesh.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

I Hate You Obama People

Seriously, what is it about the guy you love so much? The emphasis on phoney 'bipartisanship'? The milquetoast political positions? The lack of any relevant experience? His reliance on Republican talking points? His self-importance?

You were right there, you ignorant cow-tippers. You had the chance to vote Dodd, or more realistically Edwards, and you went with Obama. Sickening.

Oh yeah. As expected, Republicans chose Huckabee. Snore. Let's see how fast he can wrap up this nomination so we can get to exploring just how crazy he is.

Then we can move on and hopefully ditch these thumb-up-their-butt Midwestern tools and their antiquated, nonsensical, anti-democratic nomination process that has such a grotesquely unfair and disproportionate influence on national politics. I'm so sick to death of hearing about how 'informed' these corn-husking backwoods hicks are; how useful it is to have our national presidential candidates parade in front of 6/100ths of 1 percent of America, pretending to care about their coffee and their grocery stores and their endless farm subsidies, only to fly out of the state and avoid it for 3 years THE NIGHT THE FRIKKIN RESULTS COME IN.

Are you people that big a bunch of narcissists that you think you deserve this power? Or that they care about you at all? Fools. Tools. Useless inbred hicks.