Help, help, I'm being repressed

So right now, I'm living with a bunch of fellow college students, and you know what the Big Topic of Conversation has been around here for the past couple of days? Some new feature on facebook. It's kind of cool, actually. It streamlines the stalking process. Two hours worth of stalking can now be done in less than five minutes. That's progress, baby.
But anyway, within five minutes of the change, protest groups were formed, angry emails written, bashing facebook for violating their privacy.

Meanwhile, Bush is calling for more wiretap authority. While it's admirable that he's actually asking permission this time, instead of you know, lying to congress about it, this is still bullshit.

"The nature of communications has changed quite dramatically," Bush warned in an address here. "The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cellphones and open anonymous e-mail messages."

Or, they can rely on couriers. Like they've been doing.

Bah, I don't get some people. Bush is wiretapping their ass, and they don't raise an eyebrow. But when facebook.com, which, might I point out, is completely voluntary, has a redesign, they act like they're in a secret illegal prison.

El y yo

So I learned my second language mostly with books. It worked..sort of. I mean, I can read and write it pretty well. But it was awful boring, and I still have an accent that's so bad that native speakers laugh in my face.
For my third, I thought I'd go about it a different way. I don't like tapes, and immersion is too expensive. This is the best way:
1. Find somebody else who speaks about as poorly as you do. Currently, I've got a speaking vocabulary of less than 300 words and I can't fluently use the past tense. I found a Mexican whose English consists entirely of yardwork-related words and phrases.
2. Set a date for you guys to face off. Ours is June 1st, 2007. Whoever speaks the best then wins the whole pot.
That's right, I've combined my love of gambling with my love of being a gigantic dork. But if you think about it, the hardest part about learning a foreign language is staying motivated. Especially since for the first six months, you're going to sound like a complete idiot.

President Bush: not to be misunderestimated

No no, I haven't turned into a Republican over the--what has it been?--six months I've been AWOL. I haven't been making near enough money for voting Republican to be in my best interest. I don't even own stock.
So Bush is going "public" with the news of the CIA-operated secret prisons. You know, nine months after it was announced in the WaPo, and two or so weeks after the SCOTUS ruled that these prisons are probably illegal.
See, yeah, I like talking shit about the Bush administration as much as anybody. That's why I'm here, pendejo. But Bush isn't stupid, at least not when it comes to handling public image. At least not when it comes to getting away with shit. Look at this. This is brilliant. Bush is taking the CIA's secret prisons, something shameful, something that he should fucking /apologise/ for, and using it as political ammunition. Now he's calling for publically putting some of the suspected planners of 9/11 on trial. You know, something that everybody has been saying for *years*.

I told you so

If somebody goes on record admitting that you were right and they were wrong, scratch them off your shit list and /move on/. Don't keep giving them shit about it. That's childish. It takes a lot of cojones to admit you made a mistake, and a lot less people are likely to do it if they think that we're going to hate them regardless.
William F. Buckley, Andrew Sullivan, etc, are coming out against Bush and getting nothing but flack, and that is a goddamn shame. Mark my words, if Ann Coltier came out against this war, I still probably wouldn't be a fan, but I'd mail her my lucky "Bush Lied" sign and be done with it.

Mr. Congeniality

I've got to start remembering to bring sunscreen to these rallies. I am crispity as hell.
Anyway, if you were in the position to choose an Interior Secretary, what kind of qualities would you be looking for? I don't know about you, but charm isn't really high on my list. Why? Because I'm looking for an interior secretary, not a drinking buddy. I wouldn't want a guy who's a complete jerk, because then he'd be hard to work with, but beyond that? Who cares.
George W. Bush has something in common with the people who elected him: he seems to believe that a candidate's personality is an important deciding factor, so important that it makes up for serious performance problems. That's why he's going with Dirk Kempthorne, a man known mostly for being a real nice guy.

Don't worry Paul, I'm not talking about you.

We all have that friend. You know the one: that friend who never learns. That guy who always throwing his money into crazy get-rich-quick schemes, or that girl who dates loser after loser after loser. The friend who keeps complaining about the same problems, year after year.
Well, Donald Rumsfeld or Harriet Miers or somebody needs to take President Bush aside and tell him hey, Georgie, you might want to re-think the pre-emptive war doctrine. I know it's fun, but look at the track record: when has it ever worked?

Uni***sal H**lth C*re

(Also known as the eighth dirty word.)

So I was reading this article, about different governor's approaches to solving the health care crisis. There's two main approaches: trying to get more people covered, and reducing costs. The first one, championed by the Democratic governors, mostly focused on getting coverage for their state's children. Gov. Blagojevich, for example, is guarunteeing every child in Illinois health insurance. The GOP governors tended toward plans resembling Pres. Bush's "savings account" plan, which would reduce costs to the state (but increase costs to us).
The justification? "Advocates say these changes will restrain healthcare costs by increasing competition and making Medicaid recipients more sensitive to the services they use."
You know those Medicaid recipients. Always going to the doctor when they don't have to.

No blood for oil?

Yeah, I know I said I'd try to be more regular, but this whole full-time student thing is really throwing a wrench into things. Anyway, I thought I'd put this out there: if you were going to an anti-war march this Saturday, what would you put on your sign? I was thinking "no blood for oil" but that's kind of unoriginal.

Not that groupies wouldn't be nice.

I wish I were president. Not for the power, not for the groupies, but for the ability to get away with shit that no other person on earth can get away with.
Bush screwed up on the Dubai deal. He should've said "oops, my bad!" and backed down. Americans are a pretty forgiving lot. We'd have 'vetched about it for a couple of weeks and then went back to debating the pros and cons of torture.
But what does he do? He complains that 70% of the American population's opposition to the Dubai deal is ruining his diplomacy with the UAE. Never mind that what we're getting upset about is that they bypassed the mandatory investigation. It doesn't matter if it's a middle eastern company or our very own Halliburton.

Back from the grave

I didn't die or get arrested or get thrown out of school or become a scientologist. I was gone, but now I'm back.
I've been following the Dubai case for a couple of weeks now, and I think I've figured out what is going on. This isn't about Republicans versus Democrats. This isn't even about outsourcing national security to a country with diplomatic ties to the Taliban. This is about how much you trust this president.
And people are increasingly standing up and saying that they don't. 70% of Americans oppose the port deal, and most senators and reps. also oppose.

We elected a president, not a dictator

I need to make two things clear. First of all, the President needs to stop saying that the warrantless spying program could've prevented 9/11, because pretty much everybody except for him knows that it wouldn't have. The reason we didn't catch the hijackers wasn't because we couldn't get a warrant on them, it's because we didn't pay attention to the information that was already in front of our faces. We were sloppy, and it cost us.
Second of all, saying that you need warrantless wiretaps to keep us safe...okay, I'm going to use an analogy that I think fits pretty well. What if the chief of police said that he could clean up crime in your city, but not unless he was allowed to search people's cars without warrants? 'Truth is, that definitely /would/ keep the city safer, but fuck him. He should be able to do his job without breaking the law. It's not like there aren't already thousands of legal ways to stop criminals.

Bullshit is bullshit

Let's say that I'm a member of PETA. And I'm really serious about it. Not only do I not eat animal products, but I think it's morally wrong to give other people animal products to eat. Unfortunately, my fascist boss at McDonalds is getting tired of me not doing my job and lecturing everybody who orders a cheeseburger, so he fires my ass. Now my state's trying to pass laws saying that my "right of conscience" allows me to not do my job.

Sounds like a bunch of whack-assed liberal bullshit, don't it? Well, this is pretty much exactly what is happening in about half a dozen states right now, only instead of vegetarians not wanting to serve people meat, it's pharmicists not wanting to give people birth control.
Now, if the pharmicist's boss tolerates this behavior, then that's fine. I don't think we should require drug stores to stock BC any more than we should require them to stock cigarettes and tylenol. But you should be allowed to fire somebody for not doing their job.