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Campus personalities present and past Rebecca C. Brown and Tommaso Sciortino tackle the issues. This week on a very special CalJunket: Rebecca learns not to chew with her mouth open and Tommaso finds out his best friend is addicted to no-doze. Site feed: caljunket.blogspot.com/atom.xml
AIM Rebecca:
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Republicans find 300 billion in government waste Tommaso Sciortino, Affairs Betterer In a shocking revelation today Republican lawmakers have found a government department that has been wasting upward of 300 billion dollars each and every year that it has been operational. “When our first tax cuts created a 300 billion deficit we explained that we would pay for it by cutting government waste instead of raising taxes.” Explained House Majority leader Tom DeLay, “Well, that’s exactly what we did.” The government office responsible for this historically unprecedented level of waste, the Department of Betterin’ Affairs, is thought to have escaped detection for so long because of confusion between it and the much more well-known Department of Veteran’s Affairs. A relic from the New Deal, most of the Department’s 300 billion dollar budget was spent on “Just making things better…” said one newly unemployed staffer, “like sidewalks. Maybe they got gum all over ‘em… or maybe you see some guy and he’s got a bad hair cut… we’d buy that guy a hat.” Republicans have not rested after their victory but have instead planned to pass more tax cuts. Quoted Grover Norquist, “We hope that at the current rate, no American will ever have to pay taxes after 2008. Also, the government will be so lean that it'll be able to run on the change that government workers find lying in the streets.” (0) comments NEWSBREAK: Democratic Party Dusts Off Pair of Severely Atrophied Balls Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Bush is poised to sign a bill banning partial-birth abortions. I, oddly enough, am not wrangling up my picketing materials. But, though I think partial-birth abortions, which take place in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, are ugly and should be discouraged, I don't feel that the law has any place in the matter. By week eight into a pregnancy, the fetus already has a developing nervous system and will, even if the feeling isn't perceived by the fetus' brain, react to a physical stimulus. By the thirteenth week, the second trimester, the fetus has a fairly devolped nervous system and can move on its own volition. Premature fetuses that are born after only five months of gestation can survive, indicating that a "baby" has at that point been developed. I reluctantly say that I cannot support terminating the pregnancy in the second trimester, though nor do I feel particularly strong about this. Abortions in the third trimester, which represent only about 1% of abortions in the US, are fairly gruesome and should be strongly discouraged unless bringing the pregnancy to term would be harmful to the mother (or if it is discovered that the fetus will not survive through childbirth). One very disturbing aspect of this bill is that it represents a stepping stone to the abolition of all abortion, no matter at what point during the pregnancy or under what circumstances. And by "circumstances" I am alluding to more than rape and incest; I believe that the sincere desire to not have a baby is a circumstance that justifies abortion. What disturbs me most about the standard Republican stance on abortion is that they claim very ardently that they want to support a "culture of life" and eliminate a "culture of death." Wait, huh?! Is this not the political party whose platform supports the death penalty? The death penalty. Or the party (with congressional help from the pandering Democrats) that is currently waging a war in Iraq where Americans, Iraqis, soldiers, and civilians are being killed? (That's correct. I said currently.) Or the party who is more comfortable letting pollutants (pollutants that deplete the quality of and/or shorten life) into the ecosystem than regulating pollution and potentially stifling the economy on a temporary scale? I don't belive Republicans are attempting with this bill to encourage a culture of life. At the risk of sounding radical or making a potentially offensive analysis (new territory for me), I believe this party's stance on abortion is rooted in anti-feminism and a distortion of Christian ideals (the latter obviously engendering the former). The word "God" has managed to litter the politics of the right to this day in such an un-Christian way. I have read Biblical texts for myself, and though I do not believe Jesus would support partial-birth abortions (if only we could ask him his stance on this, and stem cell research, and comprehensive admission standards for public universities), I also do not believe he would support putting criminals to death, or for that matter participating in any war. The only good that will come of the soon-to-be passing of this bill is that the issue of abortion will once again, I predict, be taken to the Supreme Court and once again the Supreme Court will decide in favor of abortion rights. I don't know how many times the precedent will have to be set on this matter. Dammit, I hate Republicans! (0) comments |
Elliott Smith dies in apparant suicide.
Plus, comedy show tonight at the Bear's Lair at 8pm.
Not that it's easy to get excited about a comedy show when one of the best songwriters of the last decade dies. I'm terribly sad about this. I just happen to have had one of his albums, Roman Candle, in my CD player for the last week. Come to think of it, probably not a week has gone by since I was 17 that I haven't listened to Elliott Smith. His music has had the amazing ability to console me in my down moments, despite his own meloncholia. This is very sad to me. I hope that if you haven't heard his work extinsively that you now give it a try. This is so incredibly disappointing.
(0) comments
Saturday, October 18, 2003
For those about to rock.
Yet another subtle reminder to check out the very good If Six Was Nine blog (ifsix.blogspot.com), wherein six sexy coeds offer their insights into the world of music. Also note that we now have a neat-o masthead at the top of the page with pictures of all six of us in alphabetical order. (That means I'm the one on the far right, kids.) My initial plan when I got into the blogging madness was to never let my readers (besides the ones whom I know in person) know what I look like. Well, now you do. Sexy. That's what I look like.
I'd also like to remind you that the Heuristic Squelch will be hosting a swell comedy show this upcoming Wednesday at the Bear's Lair at 8pm. It's only $5 for a whole night of laffs. Find us on Sproul.
What, by the way, did you all think of the most recent issue of our fine little humor mag?
Make to sure to celebrate the end of midterms responsibly. For example, don't celebrate the end of one midterm by ceasing to study for a week, only to remember that you have another midterm within the next few days.
I drove around the streets of Berkeley and Albany for the first time last night. I don't have my license yet, only my permit, but I am a very fast learner. I didn't drive when I was a teenager because I simply didn't have the money for insurance and gas and a car. (I, like a sucker, was saving my earnings for college. Psshh.) But now I'm an excellent driver. Definitely.
(0) comments
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Everyone's stupid but me
Also, pardon my hiatus.
A dangerous, covert terrorist lurks in our midst. A greasy, scrumptious terrorist. A capitalist terrorist who is poisoning Americans with its life-shortening and money-sucking death substance. That's right, it's the restaurant industry, and it's killing our nation's citizens with fat. Fat! Fattening fat deep-fried in 100% fatty fat. Or not. Who knows. Whatever.
This article is about how the three-fifths of RedWhiteAndBlueicans who are overwieght may have spurred legal action taken against the restaurant industry, who has facilitated rampant fat consumption. One option is to legally mandate that nutrition information be included on restaurant menus.
Every person (over the age of, let's say, thirteen, at which point if you can't cook your own dinner than you're a big loser) has complete control over what he or she eats, and every person has the option of asking for vague-to-specific nutrition information about the food he or she receives from a restaurant, so conceivably every person should know semi-accurately how many calories and fat grams he or she has consumed per meal, thus every person who is overweight has no one to blame but him or herself. Thus I think suing McDonald's or Chili's for America's obesity is frivilous and unfair.
But why not mandate that nutrition information, specific and accurate information, be available for all food no matter where it is being eaten? If people want to eat lard all day, oh for god's sake let them. But if some people ardently do not want to chug lipids for sport (and as a result possibly suffer heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, snoring, etc.), they should be able to have information assisting them in their pursuit readily available. There's no need to sue the restaurants that have helped this nation devolve into 250,000,000 corpulant turban-fearing cowboys (I guess they're only responsible for the first adjective), but there's also no need to withold information from the consumer.
An argument could be made by those of you who believe in individual self-determination and oppose institutional interferance with consumers' decisions. That argument might go something like this: "If folks are surprised that they're getting a spare tire after years of Big Macs and pepperoni pizzas, then they're big durfs who obviously don't understand how eating and digestion work. Man, are they big durfs." Hey, I agree with you. Especially about the durf thing. If there's one thing I can't stand it's a durf who doesn't understand stuff.
But I also believe that an informed consumer, perhaps even and over-informed consumer, is an ideal in a capitalist economy. Further, a citizen cannot truly be self-determining and free of interferance until he has every fact about what he is consuming at his disposal. Every person has the right to decide what is best for his body, so long as he knows exactly what is going into it.
[This is the part of the post where I reminisce longingly/disgustedly about my years back home in Long Beach.] When I was home for the Summer in the months between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I stayed in my home town of Long Beach for the season and chose to get a job at McDonald's because no one else would hire me for just eight weeks. As you can imagine, the menu at McDonald's hinges upon fat. I would leave that place with beef tallow caked between the treads of my non-scuff shoes. It's all fat. Fat plus more fat. Everyone knows that. Except kids. A five year old should not have to concern himself with calorie-counting when he goes out to eat with his parents. And it would be one thing if his parents took him for fast food once, even twice a month. But when you work full-time at McDonald's in a dense urban area, you come to see that some families eat there twice, thrice, four times a week. The parent are already obease. The children, through no fault of their own, are quickly on their way. They are being introduced very early into our culture of fattening foods. It's a culture where eating animal fats and proteins is encouraged for fear of anemia and/or sissiness, but I'd wager more on the latter. It's a society where convenience takes precedence over health. Most importantly, it's a culture that has developed out of ignorance, and it reproduces itself everyday because consumers aren't demanding to be informed.
If people could see, could read, could process with their own eyes that a medium order of french fries at McDonald's has 22 grams of fat (30% of your RDA of fat), or that a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 47 grams of fat (and thus that a #6 on the big picture menu gives them 69 grams total) as they're ordering then they may reconsider their options. Or not. Who cares. Let them eat fat. Just let them know how much.
(0) comments
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
IT'S OFFICIAL!!
I now officially have no trust in the ability of the populous to elect the right people. I'm surrounded by 35 million doofers. Down with democracy! Up with highly centralized federal government!
On a lighter note, both propositions failed. Proposition 54 did not pass in any county at all, in fact. Even in Orange County, the coast's beacon of conservativism and illegal immigrant labor force, Prop 54 failed 51% to 49%.
In San Francisco County, Peter Camejo received about 1,300 more votes than McClintock. Yay! Gary Coleman got 21 more votes than drop-out candidate Peter Ueberroth. Yikes.
In Alameda County, write-in candidate Daniel Freedman received one vote. The Squelch Publicity Coordinator voted for himself.
Again on the lighter side, cheers to such high voter turnout. About 2 million more voted yesterday than a year ago.
On a curious note, how many of you were asked to provide photo ID when checking into your polling place? I was not asked, nor were any of the several other people I asked. Isn't such slack behavior conducive to voter fraud?
Here's how I voted:
Triple No plus Camejo.
I encourage you all to go back in time and do the same.
Here are all the exciting election returns from around the state!
New Squelch on Monday.
(0) comments
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Peter Camejo Rocks the Boat, My World
For those of you who didn't see Pete speak in Evans Hall on Firday at 6pm (which would be everyone on the planet save for about 400 of us), he was fantastic as always.
Seemingly the Green following in the Berkeley area is comprised of a bunch of hippies; who knew? Peter's appearance was hosted by the ISO, and apparantly socialists run on "commie time," wherein events start 15 minutes late (so much for the trains running on time), but the introductory speakers were few and brief and Camejo was speaking by 6:35pm.
In good third-party tradition, he came armed with some very indicitive and interesting graphs, including a chart showing that, when income and property and sales and all other state taxes are added together, the bottom 20% pay an 11.3% tax rate while the top 1% pays 7.2%. (Here's a link to that graph and report.) He also had a graph showing that taxes on corporations are as low as they've been since the mid-90s (I don't remember the exact numbers and I can't find Camejo's graph - I'd make a lousy political intern). Further, he outlined how the number of businesses in California is on the increase, as are their revenues; in fact, California's GDP was bigger last year than ever, which makes the current deficit that moch more amazing. In other words, Peter was artfully dispelling the myth so ardently perpetuated by Schwarzenegger and McClintock: that corporate and income taxes are driving the money out of this state. This simply isn't true! The Republicans may offer anecdotes saying otherwise, but emperical data cannot support the theory that California's current fiscal policies are forcing companies to move elsewhere.
But enough about the economy. The economy bores me to tears. (Luckilly, Camejo is a financial advisor and can find money exciting on my behalf.) What really incited enthusiam in me were Pete's invigorating stances on IRV and gay rights.
First, the latter: For him and the rest of the Green party, the issue of "gay rights" is not an issue. Gays are citizens and receive the rights thereof. No concessions, no compromises, no policies treating them as if they were legally different from "regular" people. Somehow, this is a stance that every plausable Democratic candidate (c'mon, no one's voting for Kucinich, and it makes me really sad) refuses to take, perhaps for fear of wierding out a good number of Americans, or perhaps because they genuinely don't believe gays are the same as everybody else.
Second, the former: I strongly believe that instant runoff voting would make government far more representative of the public's wishes. If progressives who like like the Greens or conservatives who like the crazy Libertarians or the nut jobs who like the wacky nut job Reformists got to vote their concience, these underdogs could receive the recognition they deserve and could further play a role in the political process, without their supporters feeling like they're "stealing" votes. I can't see any reason to oppose IRV.
Lastly, the previously unmentioned: Sumbit articles to the Squelch. Especially newsflashes. submit@squelched.com
(0) comments
Friday, October 03, 2003
RCB Guide's Cheers and Jeers
Jeers to Arnold Schwarzenegger for groping unwilling women. Jeers again to him for admiring Hitler in any capacity. Then again, maybe Adolf had a stunning physique that only Arnie knows about.
Jeers to Arianna Huffington for bowing out of the race. She was giving many Californians a good reason to go to the polls, and has subsequently abandoned them, no doubt under pressure from more likely victorious liberal candidates.
Cheers to Peter Camejo and Tom McClintock for not.
Cheers, further, to the people who made it possible for Peter and Tom to be involved in the gubernatorial debates. Cheers to a minor undermining of the strict two-party/two-candidate political system that limits the democratic potential of America.
Jeers to whoever decided to have the Giants' first three playoff games take place while most people are at work or school.
Jeers to midterms.
Cheers to the Heuristic Squelch, which stands as a beacon of entertainment in the face of said midterms.
Jeers to President Bush. For any number of things.
Jeers to "The Simpsons" for not being funny for almost half a decade.
Cheers to having all three seasons of "The Family Guy" on DVD to compensate for the previous Jeer.
Cheers to all the cool kids who run If Six Was Nine.
Jeers to this idiotic TV Guide format.
Update:
Cheers to Luna Bars, Clif Bar's high-density food chunk designed specifically for women. Each bar has 10 grams of protein (22% of its calories); 350mg calcium; 100% RDA of folate, vitamins C, B1, B3, B6, and B12, and some other stuff I've never heard of; and only 180 calories. Furthermore, Luna bars use no animal products, and because B vitamins are normally so difficult to find in large quantities in plants, these mid-meal snacks are ideal for us vegans. Yay!
(0) comments
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Heuristic Squelch sneak peak and entreaty for submissions
I'll let you in on a little secret....don't tell anyone....alright? Shhhh... The cover of the next issue of the Squelch is gonna totally zing Chancellor Berdahl! Zing!!!! Sorta. I guess we're not really zinging him at all. I don't even know any more. I'll be happy as long as the magazine makes reference at some point to the Chancellor's jowels.
We're getting started on our second issue of the year, and my prediction is of pure hilarity. Keep those submissions coming! submit@squelched.com.
(0) comments
Yet another subtle reminder to check out the very good If Six Was Nine blog (ifsix.blogspot.com), wherein six sexy coeds offer their insights into the world of music. Also note that we now have a neat-o masthead at the top of the page with pictures of all six of us in alphabetical order. (That means I'm the one on the far right, kids.) My initial plan when I got into the blogging madness was to never let my readers (besides the ones whom I know in person) know what I look like. Well, now you do. Sexy. That's what I look like.
I'd also like to remind you that the Heuristic Squelch will be hosting a swell comedy show this upcoming Wednesday at the Bear's Lair at 8pm. It's only $5 for a whole night of laffs. Find us on Sproul.
What, by the way, did you all think of the most recent issue of our fine little humor mag?
Make to sure to celebrate the end of midterms responsibly. For example, don't celebrate the end of one midterm by ceasing to study for a week, only to remember that you have another midterm within the next few days.
I drove around the streets of Berkeley and Albany for the first time last night. I don't have my license yet, only my permit, but I am a very fast learner. I didn't drive when I was a teenager because I simply didn't have the money for insurance and gas and a car. (I, like a sucker, was saving my earnings for college. Psshh.) But now I'm an excellent driver. Definitely.
(0) comments
Everyone's stupid but me
Also, pardon my hiatus.
A dangerous, covert terrorist lurks in our midst. A greasy, scrumptious terrorist. A capitalist terrorist who is poisoning Americans with its life-shortening and money-sucking death substance. That's right, it's the restaurant industry, and it's killing our nation's citizens with fat. Fat! Fattening fat deep-fried in 100% fatty fat. Or not. Who knows. Whatever.
This article is about how the three-fifths of RedWhiteAndBlueicans who are overwieght may have spurred legal action taken against the restaurant industry, who has facilitated rampant fat consumption. One option is to legally mandate that nutrition information be included on restaurant menus.
Every person (over the age of, let's say, thirteen, at which point if you can't cook your own dinner than you're a big loser) has complete control over what he or she eats, and every person has the option of asking for vague-to-specific nutrition information about the food he or she receives from a restaurant, so conceivably every person should know semi-accurately how many calories and fat grams he or she has consumed per meal, thus every person who is overweight has no one to blame but him or herself. Thus I think suing McDonald's or Chili's for America's obesity is frivilous and unfair.
But why not mandate that nutrition information, specific and accurate information, be available for all food no matter where it is being eaten? If people want to eat lard all day, oh for god's sake let them. But if some people ardently do not want to chug lipids for sport (and as a result possibly suffer heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, snoring, etc.), they should be able to have information assisting them in their pursuit readily available. There's no need to sue the restaurants that have helped this nation devolve into 250,000,000 corpulant turban-fearing cowboys (I guess they're only responsible for the first adjective), but there's also no need to withold information from the consumer.
An argument could be made by those of you who believe in individual self-determination and oppose institutional interferance with consumers' decisions. That argument might go something like this: "If folks are surprised that they're getting a spare tire after years of Big Macs and pepperoni pizzas, then they're big durfs who obviously don't understand how eating and digestion work. Man, are they big durfs." Hey, I agree with you. Especially about the durf thing. If there's one thing I can't stand it's a durf who doesn't understand stuff.
But I also believe that an informed consumer, perhaps even and over-informed consumer, is an ideal in a capitalist economy. Further, a citizen cannot truly be self-determining and free of interferance until he has every fact about what he is consuming at his disposal. Every person has the right to decide what is best for his body, so long as he knows exactly what is going into it.
[This is the part of the post where I reminisce longingly/disgustedly about my years back home in Long Beach.] When I was home for the Summer in the months between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I stayed in my home town of Long Beach for the season and chose to get a job at McDonald's because no one else would hire me for just eight weeks. As you can imagine, the menu at McDonald's hinges upon fat. I would leave that place with beef tallow caked between the treads of my non-scuff shoes. It's all fat. Fat plus more fat. Everyone knows that. Except kids. A five year old should not have to concern himself with calorie-counting when he goes out to eat with his parents. And it would be one thing if his parents took him for fast food once, even twice a month. But when you work full-time at McDonald's in a dense urban area, you come to see that some families eat there twice, thrice, four times a week. The parent are already obease. The children, through no fault of their own, are quickly on their way. They are being introduced very early into our culture of fattening foods. It's a culture where eating animal fats and proteins is encouraged for fear of anemia and/or sissiness, but I'd wager more on the latter. It's a society where convenience takes precedence over health. Most importantly, it's a culture that has developed out of ignorance, and it reproduces itself everyday because consumers aren't demanding to be informed.
If people could see, could read, could process with their own eyes that a medium order of french fries at McDonald's has 22 grams of fat (30% of your RDA of fat), or that a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 47 grams of fat (and thus that a #6 on the big picture menu gives them 69 grams total) as they're ordering then they may reconsider their options. Or not. Who cares. Let them eat fat. Just let them know how much.
(0) comments
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
IT'S OFFICIAL!!
I now officially have no trust in the ability of the populous to elect the right people. I'm surrounded by 35 million doofers. Down with democracy! Up with highly centralized federal government!
On a lighter note, both propositions failed. Proposition 54 did not pass in any county at all, in fact. Even in Orange County, the coast's beacon of conservativism and illegal immigrant labor force, Prop 54 failed 51% to 49%.
In San Francisco County, Peter Camejo received about 1,300 more votes than McClintock. Yay! Gary Coleman got 21 more votes than drop-out candidate Peter Ueberroth. Yikes.
In Alameda County, write-in candidate Daniel Freedman received one vote. The Squelch Publicity Coordinator voted for himself.
Again on the lighter side, cheers to such high voter turnout. About 2 million more voted yesterday than a year ago.
On a curious note, how many of you were asked to provide photo ID when checking into your polling place? I was not asked, nor were any of the several other people I asked. Isn't such slack behavior conducive to voter fraud?
Here's how I voted:
Triple No plus Camejo.
I encourage you all to go back in time and do the same.
Here are all the exciting election returns from around the state!
New Squelch on Monday.
(0) comments
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Peter Camejo Rocks the Boat, My World
For those of you who didn't see Pete speak in Evans Hall on Firday at 6pm (which would be everyone on the planet save for about 400 of us), he was fantastic as always.
Seemingly the Green following in the Berkeley area is comprised of a bunch of hippies; who knew? Peter's appearance was hosted by the ISO, and apparantly socialists run on "commie time," wherein events start 15 minutes late (so much for the trains running on time), but the introductory speakers were few and brief and Camejo was speaking by 6:35pm.
In good third-party tradition, he came armed with some very indicitive and interesting graphs, including a chart showing that, when income and property and sales and all other state taxes are added together, the bottom 20% pay an 11.3% tax rate while the top 1% pays 7.2%. (Here's a link to that graph and report.) He also had a graph showing that taxes on corporations are as low as they've been since the mid-90s (I don't remember the exact numbers and I can't find Camejo's graph - I'd make a lousy political intern). Further, he outlined how the number of businesses in California is on the increase, as are their revenues; in fact, California's GDP was bigger last year than ever, which makes the current deficit that moch more amazing. In other words, Peter was artfully dispelling the myth so ardently perpetuated by Schwarzenegger and McClintock: that corporate and income taxes are driving the money out of this state. This simply isn't true! The Republicans may offer anecdotes saying otherwise, but emperical data cannot support the theory that California's current fiscal policies are forcing companies to move elsewhere.
But enough about the economy. The economy bores me to tears. (Luckilly, Camejo is a financial advisor and can find money exciting on my behalf.) What really incited enthusiam in me were Pete's invigorating stances on IRV and gay rights.
First, the latter: For him and the rest of the Green party, the issue of "gay rights" is not an issue. Gays are citizens and receive the rights thereof. No concessions, no compromises, no policies treating them as if they were legally different from "regular" people. Somehow, this is a stance that every plausable Democratic candidate (c'mon, no one's voting for Kucinich, and it makes me really sad) refuses to take, perhaps for fear of wierding out a good number of Americans, or perhaps because they genuinely don't believe gays are the same as everybody else.
Second, the former: I strongly believe that instant runoff voting would make government far more representative of the public's wishes. If progressives who like like the Greens or conservatives who like the crazy Libertarians or the nut jobs who like the wacky nut job Reformists got to vote their concience, these underdogs could receive the recognition they deserve and could further play a role in the political process, without their supporters feeling like they're "stealing" votes. I can't see any reason to oppose IRV.
Lastly, the previously unmentioned: Sumbit articles to the Squelch. Especially newsflashes. submit@squelched.com
(0) comments
Friday, October 03, 2003
RCB Guide's Cheers and Jeers
Jeers to Arnold Schwarzenegger for groping unwilling women. Jeers again to him for admiring Hitler in any capacity. Then again, maybe Adolf had a stunning physique that only Arnie knows about.
Jeers to Arianna Huffington for bowing out of the race. She was giving many Californians a good reason to go to the polls, and has subsequently abandoned them, no doubt under pressure from more likely victorious liberal candidates.
Cheers to Peter Camejo and Tom McClintock for not.
Cheers, further, to the people who made it possible for Peter and Tom to be involved in the gubernatorial debates. Cheers to a minor undermining of the strict two-party/two-candidate political system that limits the democratic potential of America.
Jeers to whoever decided to have the Giants' first three playoff games take place while most people are at work or school.
Jeers to midterms.
Cheers to the Heuristic Squelch, which stands as a beacon of entertainment in the face of said midterms.
Jeers to President Bush. For any number of things.
Jeers to "The Simpsons" for not being funny for almost half a decade.
Cheers to having all three seasons of "The Family Guy" on DVD to compensate for the previous Jeer.
Cheers to all the cool kids who run If Six Was Nine.
Jeers to this idiotic TV Guide format.
Update:
Cheers to Luna Bars, Clif Bar's high-density food chunk designed specifically for women. Each bar has 10 grams of protein (22% of its calories); 350mg calcium; 100% RDA of folate, vitamins C, B1, B3, B6, and B12, and some other stuff I've never heard of; and only 180 calories. Furthermore, Luna bars use no animal products, and because B vitamins are normally so difficult to find in large quantities in plants, these mid-meal snacks are ideal for us vegans. Yay!
(0) comments
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Heuristic Squelch sneak peak and entreaty for submissions
I'll let you in on a little secret....don't tell anyone....alright? Shhhh... The cover of the next issue of the Squelch is gonna totally zing Chancellor Berdahl! Zing!!!! Sorta. I guess we're not really zinging him at all. I don't even know any more. I'll be happy as long as the magazine makes reference at some point to the Chancellor's jowels.
We're getting started on our second issue of the year, and my prediction is of pure hilarity. Keep those submissions coming! submit@squelched.com.
(0) comments
I now officially have no trust in the ability of the populous to elect the right people. I'm surrounded by 35 million doofers. Down with democracy! Up with highly centralized federal government!
On a lighter note, both propositions failed. Proposition 54 did not pass in any county at all, in fact. Even in Orange County, the coast's beacon of conservativism and illegal immigrant labor force, Prop 54 failed 51% to 49%.
In San Francisco County, Peter Camejo received about 1,300 more votes than McClintock. Yay! Gary Coleman got 21 more votes than drop-out candidate Peter Ueberroth. Yikes.
In Alameda County, write-in candidate Daniel Freedman received one vote. The Squelch Publicity Coordinator voted for himself.
Again on the lighter side, cheers to such high voter turnout. About 2 million more voted yesterday than a year ago.
On a curious note, how many of you were asked to provide photo ID when checking into your polling place? I was not asked, nor were any of the several other people I asked. Isn't such slack behavior conducive to voter fraud?
Here's how I voted:
Triple No plus Camejo.
I encourage you all to go back in time and do the same.
Here are all the exciting election returns from around the state!
New Squelch on Monday.
(0) comments
Peter Camejo Rocks the Boat, My World
For those of you who didn't see Pete speak in Evans Hall on Firday at 6pm (which would be everyone on the planet save for about 400 of us), he was fantastic as always.
Seemingly the Green following in the Berkeley area is comprised of a bunch of hippies; who knew? Peter's appearance was hosted by the ISO, and apparantly socialists run on "commie time," wherein events start 15 minutes late (so much for the trains running on time), but the introductory speakers were few and brief and Camejo was speaking by 6:35pm.
In good third-party tradition, he came armed with some very indicitive and interesting graphs, including a chart showing that, when income and property and sales and all other state taxes are added together, the bottom 20% pay an 11.3% tax rate while the top 1% pays 7.2%. (Here's a link to that graph and report.) He also had a graph showing that taxes on corporations are as low as they've been since the mid-90s (I don't remember the exact numbers and I can't find Camejo's graph - I'd make a lousy political intern). Further, he outlined how the number of businesses in California is on the increase, as are their revenues; in fact, California's GDP was bigger last year than ever, which makes the current deficit that moch more amazing. In other words, Peter was artfully dispelling the myth so ardently perpetuated by Schwarzenegger and McClintock: that corporate and income taxes are driving the money out of this state. This simply isn't true! The Republicans may offer anecdotes saying otherwise, but emperical data cannot support the theory that California's current fiscal policies are forcing companies to move elsewhere.
But enough about the economy. The economy bores me to tears. (Luckilly, Camejo is a financial advisor and can find money exciting on my behalf.) What really incited enthusiam in me were Pete's invigorating stances on IRV and gay rights.
First, the latter: For him and the rest of the Green party, the issue of "gay rights" is not an issue. Gays are citizens and receive the rights thereof. No concessions, no compromises, no policies treating them as if they were legally different from "regular" people. Somehow, this is a stance that every plausable Democratic candidate (c'mon, no one's voting for Kucinich, and it makes me really sad) refuses to take, perhaps for fear of wierding out a good number of Americans, or perhaps because they genuinely don't believe gays are the same as everybody else.
Second, the former: I strongly believe that instant runoff voting would make government far more representative of the public's wishes. If progressives who like like the Greens or conservatives who like the crazy Libertarians or the nut jobs who like the wacky nut job Reformists got to vote their concience, these underdogs could receive the recognition they deserve and could further play a role in the political process, without their supporters feeling like they're "stealing" votes. I can't see any reason to oppose IRV.
Lastly, the previously unmentioned: Sumbit articles to the Squelch. Especially newsflashes. submit@squelched.com
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Friday, October 03, 2003
RCB Guide's Cheers and Jeers
Jeers to Arnold Schwarzenegger for groping unwilling women. Jeers again to him for admiring Hitler in any capacity. Then again, maybe Adolf had a stunning physique that only Arnie knows about.
Jeers to Arianna Huffington for bowing out of the race. She was giving many Californians a good reason to go to the polls, and has subsequently abandoned them, no doubt under pressure from more likely victorious liberal candidates.
Cheers to Peter Camejo and Tom McClintock for not.
Cheers, further, to the people who made it possible for Peter and Tom to be involved in the gubernatorial debates. Cheers to a minor undermining of the strict two-party/two-candidate political system that limits the democratic potential of America.
Jeers to whoever decided to have the Giants' first three playoff games take place while most people are at work or school.
Jeers to midterms.
Cheers to the Heuristic Squelch, which stands as a beacon of entertainment in the face of said midterms.
Jeers to President Bush. For any number of things.
Jeers to "The Simpsons" for not being funny for almost half a decade.
Cheers to having all three seasons of "The Family Guy" on DVD to compensate for the previous Jeer.
Cheers to all the cool kids who run If Six Was Nine.
Jeers to this idiotic TV Guide format.
Update:
Cheers to Luna Bars, Clif Bar's high-density food chunk designed specifically for women. Each bar has 10 grams of protein (22% of its calories); 350mg calcium; 100% RDA of folate, vitamins C, B1, B3, B6, and B12, and some other stuff I've never heard of; and only 180 calories. Furthermore, Luna bars use no animal products, and because B vitamins are normally so difficult to find in large quantities in plants, these mid-meal snacks are ideal for us vegans. Yay!
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Heuristic Squelch sneak peak and entreaty for submissions
I'll let you in on a little secret....don't tell anyone....alright? Shhhh... The cover of the next issue of the Squelch is gonna totally zing Chancellor Berdahl! Zing!!!! Sorta. I guess we're not really zinging him at all. I don't even know any more. I'll be happy as long as the magazine makes reference at some point to the Chancellor's jowels.
We're getting started on our second issue of the year, and my prediction is of pure hilarity. Keep those submissions coming! submit@squelched.com.
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Jeers to Arnold Schwarzenegger for groping unwilling women. Jeers again to him for admiring Hitler in any capacity. Then again, maybe Adolf had a stunning physique that only Arnie knows about.
Jeers to Arianna Huffington for bowing out of the race. She was giving many Californians a good reason to go to the polls, and has subsequently abandoned them, no doubt under pressure from more likely victorious liberal candidates.
Cheers to Peter Camejo and Tom McClintock for not.
Cheers, further, to the people who made it possible for Peter and Tom to be involved in the gubernatorial debates. Cheers to a minor undermining of the strict two-party/two-candidate political system that limits the democratic potential of America.
Jeers to whoever decided to have the Giants' first three playoff games take place while most people are at work or school.
Jeers to midterms.
Cheers to the Heuristic Squelch, which stands as a beacon of entertainment in the face of said midterms.
Jeers to President Bush. For any number of things.
Jeers to "The Simpsons" for not being funny for almost half a decade.
Cheers to having all three seasons of "The Family Guy" on DVD to compensate for the previous Jeer.
Cheers to all the cool kids who run If Six Was Nine.
Jeers to this idiotic TV Guide format.
Update:
Cheers to Luna Bars, Clif Bar's high-density food chunk designed specifically for women. Each bar has 10 grams of protein (22% of its calories); 350mg calcium; 100% RDA of folate, vitamins C, B1, B3, B6, and B12, and some other stuff I've never heard of; and only 180 calories. Furthermore, Luna bars use no animal products, and because B vitamins are normally so difficult to find in large quantities in plants, these mid-meal snacks are ideal for us vegans. Yay!
(0) comments
Heuristic Squelch sneak peak and entreaty for submissions
I'll let you in on a little secret....don't tell anyone....alright? Shhhh... The cover of the next issue of the Squelch is gonna totally zing Chancellor Berdahl! Zing!!!! Sorta. I guess we're not really zinging him at all. I don't even know any more. I'll be happy as long as the magazine makes reference at some point to the Chancellor's jowels.
We're getting started on our second issue of the year, and my prediction is of pure hilarity. Keep those submissions coming! submit@squelched.com.
(0) comments