If repealing Bush's puny marginal tax cuts makes Obama a socialist...

Then prepare yourselves to meet Presidents Ronald "Marx" Reagan, Richard "Trotsky" Nixon, and Dwight "Lenin" Eisenhower.




Anyone have any idea why I decided that wanted to be a lawyer?

I decided to be a lawyer because our world is full of people using language in nefarious ways, exploiting words like "socialist", "freedom", "diet", "healthy", "responsible", the list just goes on and on and on.....

I think that the law is a way for me to use precise language to advance something good, at the heart of the matter, where it counts.

What's the Best Way to Interrogate a Kid? Juliet Lapidos | Slate.com

Whew.... been following this case with something of a heavy heart and thinking about this article will just rock you. At least it has done so to me. WTF!

An 8-year-old Arizona boy charged with murdering his father and another man appeared in court on Monday. Police say the boy confessed to shooting the two men with a .22-caliber gun, but his defense attorneys told reporters that "there could have been improper interview techniques done." What's the "proper" way to interrogate a kid?

Read the full article here.

Ashley Todd

Ugh, I don't even know what to say. Racial, political, cuckoo, or just a desperate plea for attention?

UPDATE: cuckoo.

Stocks, shmocks

Ah, the markets are back down again. I forgot to prognosticate last night, and it would have been down again, but not this far. So much for my missed calling.

It seems there's some kind of amplification going on, a smaller version of which is the normal case with the markets; people see activity and they replicate it. But really, it's gotten to an outrageous level. We get a bad retail report and everything tanks? What a bunch of sissies. Everyone's so afraid of losing the value they just gained back so they cash out, which makes others cash out, and so on, until all the recently regained value disappears. It's just silly. If those first people would just refrain from cashing out, the markets would rationalize and things could get going again, a little dip here, a little jump there. Not these exaggerated swings. The market needs some BuSpar. :)

Mind you, we're still up from the weekend. And some individual stocks are performing pretty well, all things considered. If the freakouts would stop, I feel pretty confident that things would get back to normal, even a recessed normal. And frankly, I'm solidly in the group of people whose financial future is being shaped by these market happenings, so yeah, I have a stake in these matters.

I'm trying to focus on apps until the debate, I'll be back later no doubt.
PS: Tomorrow's market, I'm afraid, is going to be worse, if that is possible. Early-week gains may get wiped. Just sayin.

One man's propaganda is another's really cool dorm-wall art.

The WorldNet Daily site is using this poster image in their article about Louis Farrakhan essentially claiming that Obama is the Messiah. Now, I don't really care about WorldNet Daily OR Louis Farrakhan, except that they represent extremist viewpoints, with which an informed position compels me to familiarize myself.




Having said that, I REALLY LIKE this poster! If it evokes a sense of propaganda, perhaps it is just a bit ironic... it twists those existing notions to present something new in a familiar way. That's, um, art! Actually, that's also how I feel about this other popularized image of Obama, which was meant to evoke the dramatic old propaganda posters, and has accordingly had EVERY possible kind of message Photoshopped beneath it, from the optimistic to the obvious to the upsetting. I personally like this version, one of the two originals by Shepard Fairey of Obey. (Don't know yet who did the first poster but I will find out.)


If you ask me, which you didn't, these are two of the most beautiful political art posters I can remember. Food for thought: even if one evokes messianism or (GASP!) Africanism, and the other evokes revolutionary socialism, isn't the characterization truly in the eye of the beholder? And... what candidate in our lifetimes has inspired the myriad forms of creativity that Senator Obama has? Just chewin'.


NOW I'm taking the night off. :) Heh heh.

UPDATE: The Dream poster is by artist Ray Noland. Found this info originally on the blog of Steven Seidman at the Ithaca College Department of Strategic Communication. It also appears in a few different versions; in one, the same depiction of Obama appears surrounded by megaphones instead of rays, in another before a blue background (which, funnily enough, still kinda has rays). Interesting! The posters can be seen at http://gotellmama.org/, a Chicago-based organization on the stump for Obama.

The Herd

Aw, it hurts so bad.....

And that's just watching the Palin/McCain rally! Heh heh heh....

I am so wretchedly sore today. I look around my little home and see all the things I should have used my arms and shoulders to do before 5pm yesterday, like put away my laundry, or vacuum the cat hair off of my futon. I don't know how long it will be before I can safely or easily do these things again, but I have a guest tomorrow night so I suppose they will be done whether I like it or not. I have let Greg the trainer do things to me that I have never allowed anyone to do to me before, which sounds funny but is very, very true. I'm hoping that once I break all these muscle groups in, feeling this sore will be a thing of the past. Lord knows I've worked out plenty before, but I have never felt like this. Maybe I'm just getting flippin' old.

So, back to the rally, which is the real reason I dragged my arms onto the desk to post.

There are few things that make me more physically uncomfortable than when the cameras at a political rally focus on the glassy eyes and queer faces of a crowd chanting some punny political slogan. Just now it was "No-Bama!" and there were three kinds of faces in the crowd: those who were loving it, feeling all victorious; those who clearly felt awkward and lame about it but chanted it anyway; and, most frightening, those who appeared not to even be cognizant of where they were, just chanting away. For that group, it seems as if you could replace the "No-Bama" with "Heil! Heil! Heil!" and they would just be chanting along, all flat affect and lifeless eyes.

Brrr!

Now, I want to be clear, especially now that I've replaced a Republican chant with a Nazi one, that I'm not only talking about Republican rallies here. I attended an Obama rally, and I love the man, but I'm just not a chanter; when the "Yes, we can!"s begin, I think, "Ugh, no, I can't". I'm one of those people who feels wrong clapping along at concerts, mostly because I know that eventually everyone will get off beat and just screw everything up for the artist or the portion of the audience who does not believe that their participation in the performance is required. I guess the difference is, I'll clap at concerts when the performers encourage it (and start it off so that everyone in the rhythmically-challenged audience doesnt wander too far off the beat!), but no chanting for me, please. I don't think I'm too cool, I'm not ironic about these things, and I don't get easily embarrassed by shows of patriotism, political solidarity, idealism, etc. I just..... don't want to chant. Don't make me. And don't look at me like *I* am weird or some kind of loser for not wanting to do it. I don't know who really wants to do it anyways, people just do, it's like social clapping. Who goes to a rally thinking to themselves, "I hope we chant a lot tonight! I love that part!" People just do it, they need no motivation. And, ugh, cameramen- don't focus on those queer faces when the audiences are doing it. Brrr! Bleagh!

Learning from law school applications

...Specifically, learning how to describe myself aptly and powerfully in 3 pgs, 2 pgs, 500 words, 300 words, and in one case, a single sentence:

"I am an out & proud lesbian who was raised by a psychologically disordered single mother; I bring a singular perspective and a capacity to endure."

Damn.
That is crazy. It almost hurts to read it.
And brief. So much more I could say with 10 more characters?
And it is the truth.