Hello all, I've just added two new links under the Friends section. One is Garrett Bucks' blog, who is currently in Sweden on a Fulbright scholarship. The other is Ian Miller's, who is doing the Peace Corps in Vanuatu. Enjoy their antics with mind-enhacing roots and Swedish pop stars.
Bonus Bonus!: NYTimes discovers that continuing the Howell Raines tradition of alienating half their national audience isn’t a good business plan.
The New York Times Co. said Tuesday it would cut about 500 jobs, or about 4 percent of its work force, as part of an ongoing effort to reduce costs. The reductions come atop another 200 jobs that were cut earlier this year.
Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. tries to explain the Times’ decline on the economy:
"We regret that we will see many of our colleagues leave the Company; it is a painful process for all of us. We have been tested many times in our 154-year history as we are being tested now.
Given the continued financial challenges and the cloudy economic outlook for the remainder of the year, we believe it is prudent and necessary to initiate this additional reduction. We will be working through the bargaining issues with our unions and will observe all contractual obligations, including severance where applicable. The Company plans to manage the staff reductions in such a way that we continue to provide our readers, users, listeners and viewers with journalism of the highest quality and that our operations function smoothly on a day-to-day basis. This will help ensure that we achieve our long-term strategic goals.”
But Gannett, owner of over 300 newspapers including USA Today, is doing just fine. Unless making money isn’t one of Sulzburger’s strategic goals he better wean his editors off of advocacy journalism real quick.
*Ask me about how the Sulzburger family stripped the New York Times Co. shareholders of all meaningful voting rights therefore removing the last barrier of oversight capabile of keeping the once great grey lady from slipping into liberal crapulence. Do it! Do it!
BONUS: The ombudsman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting believes NPR programming is extremely biased and that the resulting alienation this has caused is producing an audience that is completely counter to the populist objectives of the CPB’s founding charter; wefare media for the wealthy.
"Like many metropolitan areas, Washington has multiple NPR and PBS outlets. One evening this summer, Boaz was listening to public radio when a commentary by liberal former Labor Secretary Robert Reich was aired. Boaz switched to another NPR station, only to hear the views of liberal commentator Daniel Schorr. "That's not just liberal bias," Boaz says, "it is a liberal roadblock."
PBS President and CEO Pat Mitchell assured the Senate subcommittee that "our viewers and our supporters reflect and mirror very closely the demographic make-up of our communities." Potential advertisers are told instead of a 2003 Mediamark poll commissioned by NPR. Compared to the general public, NPR listeners are 152 percent more likely to own a home valued at $500,000 or more; 194 percent more likely to travel to France; and 326 percent more likely to read the "New Yorker."
I really, really despise(d) Paul Krugman, but I know this already has been talked to death elsewhere so I’ll be brief. I’m just amazed that the ombudsman of the NYTimes has come out publicly stating that the left’s best known economist is a serial liar. Better still -- despite knowing of Krugman’s deceptions, the editorial staff of the paper has apparently decided not to enforce its own editorial policies.
An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages "a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece."
The following refers to a recent column in which he misrepresented findings of the media panel regarding the outcome of the 2000 election, and then lied about them again in his correction of the first column.
All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction. Each Op-Ed columnist has a page in nytimes.com that includes his or her past columns and biographical information. Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn't explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong. Since it hasn't been officially published, that posting doesn't cause the correction to be appended to any of the relevant columns.
If the problem is that Mr. Krugman doesn't want to give up precious space in his column for a correction, there are alternatives. Perhaps some space could be found elsewhere on the Op-Ed page so that readers—especially those using electronic versions of his pieces -- could get the accurate information they deserve.
A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times's credibility more than having no policy at all?
So now having been officially reviled by his own paper, I don’t think anyone can argue he has any meaningful credibility anymore. He’s done.
Now I can focus on Robert Reich…
It's been podcast here for posterity. I haven't gotten the chance to listen to it yet, so I don't have a lot to say about it. However, I think Galloway is a contemptable turd on the order of Tom DeLay and I would looooovvvveee to see him verbally thrashed.
For the actual argument's sake I'd much prefer someone like Jon Stewart do battle with Hitchens (who has made some of the best reasoned cases for the war in Iraq that I've read), but this will do.
But I'm quite curious to hear what y'all think, so have at it...
More foolishness from Mr. DeLay:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.Then there's this from his collegues:
Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.
"My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet," the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing.
Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."
"This is hardly a well-oiled machine," said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. "There's a lot of fat to trim. ... I wonder if we've been serving in the same Congress."I'm not putting this up there as a means to say, "Oh, look this is Republican, look how dumb and corrupt he is, that is a good example of how dumb and corrupt all Republicans are." I'm pointing at him because he, as an individual, is a contemptable liar who needs to be made fun of and put in his place (which should be as far away from the halls of congress and power as possible). Dean and Feinstein may be contemptable, but they're not quite as outragous (to me at least) as this piece of shit.
American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene said federal spending already was "spiraling out of control" before Katrina, and conservatives are "increasingly losing faith in the president and the Republican leadership in Congress."
"Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression," he said.
Mr. Keene said annual nonmilitary and non-homeland security spending increased $303 billion between fiscal year 2001 and 2005; the acknowledged federal debt increased more than $2 trillion since fiscal year 2000; and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill is estimated to increase the government's unfunded obligations by $16 trillion.
Here’s some pretty good commentary on the state of the confirmation hearings from Dahlia Lithwick – who I typically disagree with. After listening to some of the hearings yesterday on my way home from work, I too came to the conclusion that the Senators would have been best served to allow some to assume they're stupid than open their mouths and prove it. Especially Joe Biden – who I think may actually be retarded.
John Roberts is putting on a clinic.
He completely understands that he needs only to sit very quietly, head cocked to signal listening-ness, while senator after senator offers long discursive rambling speeches. Only when he's perfectly certain that a question has been asked does he offer a reply; usually cogent and spare. Here's a man long accustomed to answering really hard questions from extremely smart people, suddenly faced with the almost-harder task of answering obvious questions from less-smart people. He finds himself standing in a batting cage with the pitching machine set way too slow.
It's increasingly clear that Senate Democrats are giving up. They are taking a cue from the petulant Joe Biden, who telegraphs exactly who these hearings are really for when he refuses to let the nominee answer any of his questions. When Sen. Arlen Specter growls at Biden to let Roberts finish just one answer, Biden growls back: "I don't have much time." Later when Biden complains of Roberts, "But he's filibustering!" it's without any sense of irony. How dare this man use our own childish games against us?
The power is out in Los Angeles – and where the hell is George W. Bush?
Why hasn’t he said anything empathetic yet? It’s been hours!
Does he even care what the people of Los Angeles are going through? Not everyone in Hollywood can just get into a Range Rover and turn on the air conditioning. Some people only have Mercedes and BMWs and red Corvettes.
How long is the rescue effort going to take? Surely, Bush is not waiting on the mayor and the governor again. Big-foot them now! I’ll bet Bush is playing his silly banjo.
Hee Hee
Wow.
This morning, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to the Reliant Park this offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.
While on the tour of a shelter with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.
The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''
They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.
Christopher Hitchens, the contrarian, and Jon Stewart get into a reasonable, fun argument on Iraq. Here's the video. (Check it soon, it may be gone or hard to find after two weeks or so.)
I'm not sure who I think "wins" but the discussion is invigorating. I could watch them go at it for hours so wish this clip wasn't limited to 8 minutes. Enjoyable none-the-less.
Here is a list of charities compiled by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for Hurricane Katrina relief. I apologize for the belated nature of this post, please give what you can.
I’ve been listening all week to scores of pundits including Bill O’Reilly argue for caps on Oil Industry profits stating that they are profiting “unfairly” and have become increasingly infuriated at how general economic ignorance on the part of journalists is adversely affecting the understanding of basic economic principles within the public. Oil Industry executives are not Ken Lay Monopoly men using profits to light cigars with $100’s. Like all commodities providers, when demand increases, profit increases, and this profit is invested to provide even greater supply to create more profits. It’s happened since the Roman Empire and is happening yet again.
Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.
Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
Wow.
They don't need subsidies; the process should be commercially feasible with world oil prices at $30 a barrel. The energy balance is favorable; under a conservative life-cycle analysis, it should yield 3.5 units of energy for every 1 unit used in production. The process recovers about 10 times as much oil as mining the rock and crushing and cooking it at the surface, and it's a more desirable grade. Reclamation is easier because the only thing that comes to the surface is the oil you want.
And we've hardly gotten to the really ingenious part yet. While the rock is cooking, at about 650 or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, how do you keep the hydrocarbons from contaminating ground water? Why, you build an ice wall around the whole thing. As O'Connor said, it's counterintuitive.
But ice is impermeable to water. So around the perimeter of the productive site, you drill lots more shafts, only 8 to 12 feet apart, put in piping, and pump refrigerants through it. The water in the ground around the shafts freezes, and eventually forms a 20- to 30-foot ice barrier around the site.
Next you take the water out of the ground inside the ice wall, turn up the heat, and then sit back and harvest the oil until it stops coming in useful quantities. When production drops, it falls off rather quickly.
That's an advantage over ordinary wells, which very gradually get less productive as they age.
Then you pump the water back in. (Well, not necessarily the same water, which has moved on to other uses.) It's hot down there so the water flashes into steam, picking up loose chemicals in the process. Collect the steam, strip the gunk out of it, repeat until the water comes out clean. Then you can turn off the heaters and the chillers and move on to the next plot (even saving one or two of the sides of the ice wall, if you want to be thrifty about it).
Most of the best territory for this astonishing process is on land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. Shell has applied for a research and development lease on 160 acres of BLM land, which could be approved by February. That project would be on a large enough scale so design of a commercial facility could begin.
The 2005 energy bill altered some provisions of the 1920 Minerals Leasing Act that were a deterrent to large-scale development, and also laid out a 30-month timetable for establishing federal regulations governing commercial leasing.
Shell has been deliberately low-key about their R&D, wanting to avoid the hype, and the disappointment, that surrounded the last oil-shale boom. But O'Connor said the results have been sufficiently encouraging they are gradually getting more open. Starting next week, they will be holding public hearings in northwest Colorado.
If you haven’t heard this yet, you should. I had to check the web just to make sure what I heard in the car really happened. Essentially Cindy Sheehan melted down under softball questioning on Talk of the Nation. As soon as the questioning moved away from being able to talk about how Bush is a kid killer she said she had to go and then pretended that her phone connection was breaking up when it clearly wasn't. The next guest pointed out that this is a commonly used tactic of hers when she is challenged.
This is the communications vehicle provided by anti-war organizations to her cause. I seriously doubt that she had less than “5 bars”.
Just saw the Brothers Grimm. I didn't think it would be good, but I thought it might be ok, what with Terry Gilliam directing and all. There were definitely some decent scenes and redeeming elements, but all in all, not very good. It was very similar to Sleepy Hollow, which I also didn't care for.
MIT's Technology Review is a recent discovery for me. I started picking through them at the girlfriend's house and have found a treasure trove of geeky info. First off, in the most recent edition, there is an article about the next "big thing" in media storage, in the form of holographic disks.
Here are some of the more interesting bits:
...The disc has more than 60 times the storage capacity of a standard DVD, while the drive writes about 10 times faster than a conventional DVD burner. That means the disc can store up to 128 hours of video content--almost twice enough for the full nine seasons of Seinfeld--and records it all in less than three hours. It's likely to be one of the first commercial systems to use "holographic storage," in which bits are encoded in a light-sensitive material as the three-dimensional interference pattern of lasers. Unlike CDs and DVDs, which store data bit by bit on their surfaces, holographic discs store data a page at a time in three dimensions, enabling huge leaps in capacity and access speed.In the June issue, copyright lawyers Lawrence Lessig and Richard Epstein (this link is a crapshoot, for no rhyme or reason as far as I could tell, but keep tryin') go toe to toe on issues surrounding software licensing, i.e., the open-source model vs. the propietary model. I find myself more sympathetic to Epstein's argument, which falls between the two, describing the distinct advantages to both models being in the marketplace.
...Meanwhile, CDs and DVDs have already transformed how people listen to music and watch movies. But each of these storage technologies has drawbacks. The density of magnetic materials in hard drives is fast approaching a fundamental physical limit. Flash memory is slow, and a DVD is barely large enough to hold a full-length movie....Storing data in three dimensions would overcome many of these limitations. Indeed, the theoretical promise of holographic storage has been talked about for 40 years. But advances in smaller and cheaper lasers, digital cameras, projector technologies, and optical recording materials have finally pushed the technology to the verge of the market. And the ability to cram exponentially more bits into infinitesimal spaces could open up a whole new realm of applications.
By storing and reading out millions of bits at a time, a holographic disc could hold a whole library of films. Movies, video games, and location-based services like interactive maps could be put on postage-stamp-size chips and carried around on cell phones. A person's entire medical history, including diagnostic images like x-rays, could fit on an ID card and be quickly transmitted to or retrieved from a database."
"My qualified defense of proprietary software rests on my general approach to property rights. It may seem odd that I see land law as a place to begin thinking about copyright law in the digital age, but in the law, continuity counts for more than novelty. While we always have to tend to the differences among different forms of property, we are likely to make fewer mistakes by proceeding carefully from established understandings.Fascinating stuff if you're into this kind of thing.Every legal system in history has blended two separate property regimes: the private and common. Both are important to software and copyright. Private property confers on individual owners exclusive rights to the possession, use, and disposition (sale, lease, mortgage, gift) of some given tangible resource. Virtually all civilizations start with a decentralized system in which the person who first takes an unowned thing is entitled to keep it against the rest of the world. Providing a plot of land or individual object with a single, determinate owner facilitates its effective use. The farmer who sows today knows that she can reap tomorrow, without fearing the incursions of others. The ability to sell, lease, or mortgage property allows for everything from a simple transfer of land from person A to person B to the formation of complex cooperative ventures among multiple parties. The GNU General Public License (GPL) that Lessig so admires offers a shining example of how this last, iterative process works.
Any system of private ownership requires state enforcement, first, to protect private property from forced occupation, misappropriation, and invasion, and second, to enforce voluntary deals. But any theory of property rights that includes a key role for the state should also emphatically reject the use of centralized state power to determine who shall own what resource or why. Governments, for instance, should not pick technologies.
In all legal systems, however, a system of private property rests on an infrastructure of common property. The air we breathe, the roads we travel, and the language we speak cannot easily be reduced to private possession. They remain part of the commons because their separation impedes respiration, transportation, and communication. At the edges, we recognize useful exceptions. Although everyone may use the word "monopoly" to describe a market with a single seller, only Hasbro may market a board game with hotels and a jovial top-hatted mascot under that trade name. The private creation of a trade name pulls that name out of the linguistic commons for the limited purpose of identification."
I saw this once before, laughed my ass off and then promptly forgot about it, so I felt compelled to post it this time. It consists of a series of frames from a bootleg "Revenge of the Sith" DVD and contains the "direct English translation of the Chinese interpretation of what the script was saying," and it's hilarious.
For instance: "Let the force be with you," becomes, "ratio tile, the wish power are together with you." While not terribly funny, it at least offers a comparison. This is just plain funny.
"Giving first aid the already disheveled hair projection"
or
"I was just made by the Presbyterian church."
Whenever there’s a topical overlap between Paul Krugman and France, I gotta blog about it.
A few weeks ago the left’s favorite economist wrote “The French Choice”, a NYTimes editorial arguing that despite a yawning gap in fiscal measures of standard of living; the French just have different and arguably better societal priorities. Since no leftist economy has ever managed to exceed the US standard of living (except for when we briefly had our own leftist economy under Carter) this un-provable argument has always been the refuge of last resort for the intellectually dishonest; first in the context of communism and now in the context of France. Next to a lobotomy such twisted reasoning is the only way to quiet the cognitive dissonance of educated leftists actively pushing the very same policies which are now pulling their dream state under. “It’s not worse…it’s just different!”.
Actually it is.
The only empirical measure for Krugman’s claim that the only difference between the French and American economies is “priorities, not performance” is the utterly dishonest comparison of productivity per hour. Per hour worked, France’s economic output is slightly higher than the US but to argue that this in any way reflects the productive value of an economy is disgraceful – especially for an Economist with a PhD from MIT. It would be the same to argue that some lucky rookie baseball player who has a hit his first time at bat is as good or better than Barry Bonds who fails to get a hit over 60% of the time. Through policies such as the 35 hour work week and regulations which make it nearly impossible to fire anyone, only the very fittest population in the French work force is employed. Productivity per hour is the only measure which hides the vast number of unproductive members of French society. When the entire population is taken into consideration, a picture less favorable to Krugman’s argument comes into view:
While Krugman admits the obvious: “that the typical French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out.” He attempts to put a happy face on the situation by arguing that having a minimum 7 weeks paid leave for the employed (it’s family fun all year round for everyone else!) is more than an adequate trade off for a lower standard of living. A generation ago, one could make such an argument and not get laughed at but the truth is that the current generation is swiftly becoming poorer. Fewer and fewer Parisians can even afford to leave their homes for the traditional August vacation. Instead they must sit on trucked in sand overlooking that glorified open sewer, the Seine.
And for as good as French schools may be, the future is bleak for their graduates. This quarter the US economy grew 35 times faster than the French economy.
Krugman is right to be concerned about France’s inevitable slide into poverty. It will be harder and harder for his lot to convince the US to take their medicine when the corpse of their last patient is rotting nearby.
I didn't really have much of an opinion about Rick Santorum, aside from thinking his stance in the gay-marriage debate was, like the President's, wrong and reeked of political posturing. Now I really don't like him. I read this quote on BuzzMachine the other day:
(From an NPR piece on Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family")
This whole idea of personal autonomy — I don’t think that most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. And they have this idea that people should be left alone to do what they want to do, that government should keep taxes down, keep regulation down, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, that we shouldn’t be involved in cultural issues, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world. And I think that most conservatives understand that we can’t go it alone, that there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and it has succeeded as a culture.
Uhhh, right. What Americans really want is to be told what to do by a sanctimonious prig. The "conservatism" he's talking about bears no resemblance to the conservative notions I've heard espoused by Republicans in every election since I've been alive. So what gives? Is he saying what other Republican congressmen think and believe but never say, or is he alone in this?
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government is the problem, not the solution." Now, I've been slow to see the wisdom of this statement in and of itself, because somewhere along the line I decided that history would remember Reagan was a hack and a fool. As I've gotten older, my view of him and his basic conservative philosophy has tempered to the point that I'm now finding myself agreeing with him (on some of the big stuff anyway). Reading this tripe from Santorum, the third most powerful Republican congressman, makes me wonder how much the recent up-and-comers from the GOP took Reagan's conception of conservatism to heart, or whether they were just paying it lip service to bide time for the big power grab.
How long will it take for the more libertarian/Reagan-style Republicans to reject Ricky and his power-trip and what will it look like? I will be disappointed if it doesn't come to pass, but of course if it's to happen, Republican's are going to have to break Reagan's 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." Here's hoping...
I find this endlessly amusing. Having written a couple things for printed publication (college newspaper and small local magazines), I've experienced the thrill of seeing my name on a bunch of pieces of paper enough times to be somewhat jaded about it. However there's something much more thrilling, for me anyway, to know that I've been helpful to someone whose ideas and writing I respect. I got the chance to thank Jeff for providing some worthwhile information by giving a little back.
It harkens to something Kevin Kelley wrote for this months Wired:
... I run a blog about cool tools. I write it for my own delight and for the benefit of friends. The Web extends my passion to a far wider group for no extra cost or effort. In this way, my site is part of a vast and growing gift economy, a visible underground of valuable creations - text, music, film, software, tools, and services - all given away for free. This gift economy fuels an abundance of choices. It spurs the grateful to reciprocate. It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers.
Factcheck.org has a ridiculiously throrough timline of the Wilson/Plame/Rove business which features links to original source material where it's possible. This is for someone who really cares about this crap. I don't, so if you go to the touble of looking at all this stuff, tell us lazy folk what you got out of it.
ALSO: If you haven't thought to yet, check out Andrew Sullivan's blog. Dan Savage is filling in for Andrew while he's on vacation, and I for one think he's doing a fine job. If he had a blog instead of a sex-advice column, I'd read him more often. Plus he really doesn't like Rick Santorum (the biggest damn-fool Senator alive), so much so that he started a campaign to coin a meaning for the word "santorum" [warning, it's not for the faint of heart, but very appropriate - here's the backstory].
I’ve sort of wanted to blog about this for some time but, as Joe noticed, things are so slow news-wise that it seems like as good a political topic as any.
Every few weeks since November 2000 a story like this makes its way into mainstream media coverage parroting completely unsupported allegations of “voter disenfranchisement” while virtually ignoring stories such as this involving the attempted murder convictions of democratic officials seeking to kill a witness to voter fraud.
"In the state of Ohio, where they had fewer voting booths and long lines in minority neighborhoods and no lines and many voting booths in white neighborhoods, that the balance is not what it should have been." –Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
In fact, while Nancy Pelosi wails on about our inevitable return to Jim Crow, many stories such as the following get little or no national coverage.
1.) Paid democratic operatives who also happen to be Children of Democratic house members (not state) convicted of slashing the tires of Republican vehicles.
2.) Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee demanded release of far more ballots in 2004 than there are eligible voters and, predictably, there are 7000 more votes cast than the total eligible voting population of Milwaukee. (>100% turnout = Fraud; Milwaukee is heavily Democratic; Kerry only won Wisconsin by 11,000 votes)
3.)Yesterday Wisconsin Republicans released evidence that 9 individuals from Milwaukee voted several times in different cites.
And thats just Wisconsin who's news I still closely follow.
While I’m sure that we’ll continue to see news stories repeating vague charges of Ohio conspiracy well into 2008, like Florida, it’s clear that the lack of media coverage Democratic voter fraud has received continues to embolden activists to push ever farther beyond what is legal. Yes I tirelessly beat the drum of media bias for just about everything, but this is an example where it is having a tangible effect on the democratic process.
I haven't done much in the way of blogging lately, both because I've been settling into my new apartment and because there doesn't seem to be all that much going on in the realm of politics, at least nothing that I care all that strongly about....(I guess I would have liked to see a bigger push for the subidization of renewable energy research in the energy bill, along with more pressure on auto companies to increase fuel efficiency, but other than that, nothing really grabbing my attention). Oh, and people are starving in Africa again, which is bad.
I start school in a week and I still need to decide if I should do law school or not, which is somewhat dependent on my deciding what I want to do with my life. I was gonna try to eventually work at State or USAID, for which my MPA would probably be sufficient, but I'm feeling good about being in Indiana, and I think I'd grow frustrated by being an administrator. Now I'm leaning toward the dirty business of politics, where lawyers abound, and so i think the law degree might be more useful. Any of you wise people have any advice?
I'm off to a job interview with KAPLAN, the testing people. I will wow them with my new tie.
