Err…nope.
No, not really…but, given the news below, how can he not come November?
Bob Barr is slated to be the only presidential candidate on the ballot in Texas after Republicans and Democrats missed the Aug. 26 deadline to file in the state.
“Unless the state of Texas violates its own election laws, Congressman Barr will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot,” says Russell Verney, campaign manager for the Barr Campaign and the former campaign manager for Ross Perot. “Texas law makes no exceptions for missing deadlines.”
The Texas Secretary of State Web site shows only Bob Barr as the official candidate for president in Texas.
No joke. Check out the screen shot below (click to see larger):
Republican? Nothing. Democratic? Nothing. Libertarian? Bob Barr and Wayne A. Root! Woohoo! Everyone start jumping for joy, right?
Eh. That would be quite naive…
Anticipate injustice. As a subsequent press release from the campaign put it:
“Agents of the GOP are twisting the law to have Bob Barr thrown off the ballot in Pennsylvania,” says Russell Verney, campaign manager for Barr and a former campaign manager for Ross Perot, “while the law has to be twisted for them to get on the ballot in Texas. Rules are rules, except when they inconvenience those who make them.”
…
“Third parties are never given second chances when it comes to getting on the ballot,” says Verney. “And third parties are often thrown off the ballot for the most minor infractions of ballot access laws. In Texas, we have a clear deadline that was not met by the Republicans and Democrats, but it is all but certain that some way, some how, the establishment candidates will find a way on the ballot. Some people are just above the law.”
I say “communists” because appearing at :23 in the video is a World Can’t Wait sign – WCW being an organization with clear Communist origins.
Anyways, check it out. It’s actually somewhat scary: a video – posted a few hours ago at youtube – of “Recreate 68″ protesters physically assaulting Fox News staffers outside the DNC.
Effing brutes.
(As an aside, the weirdest part of the video is at 1:32 where an old hippie with sunglasses and a French beret awkwardly yells, “Some people say Fox is a corporate whore.” Haha…”Some people“? You sure about that? Clearly, this is someone who never took the dictum “owning your words” to heart.)
Anyways, it totally reminds me of ISO. Back in 2006, I wrote up an essay regarding my experience of the organization, which I’ll excerpt below.
One of the few thriving organizations at UIC is the ISO (an acronym for International Socialist Organization), a rather confrontational left-wing group that has recently dedicated all its efforts to expelling military recruiters from campus. Possessing a passion that seems to interpret everything as black or white, the socialists see the recruiters as a deceptive and destructive force (which may or may not be true), and – as such – an evil that must be purged. When word gets out that the recruiters are on-campus, in a heartbeat, the ISO is on the scene: actively screaming, yelling and – when necessary – even exerting physical force, whatever it takes to abolish what they perceive to be a non-negotiable evil. At the very least, this translates into censorship, into stifling the recruiter’s right to free speech.
Concerned with what I continuously observed to be a complete disregard for a fundamental freedom, I went to one of their meetings and asked why two opposing views couldn’t co-exist – why they couldn’t simply respect the recruiter’s the right to speak while simultaneously providing the student body with contrasting information. This way, two vessels of purported knowledge would be at work and it would be up to the rationale of the college student to decide the superior. In response, I received not an answer but a fanatical reaffirmation of their position: that the recruiters were lying “monsters” coercing our young people to die in the name of a criminal war.
Last week was notable for me.
Incidentally, the same week I celebrated one-year at my current (awesome) job, I also achieved the 100-post mark as a blogger.
Zing!
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A week or so ago, I was watching Chicago Tonight, specifically a piece on Sikia, a brand new, 11-day old “fine-dining” restaurant in Chicago’s impoverished (and often dangerous) Englewood neighborhood.
“Fine-dining” in Englewood? My immediate reaction…one of suspicion. Political suspicion. I mean, I don’t doubt that the restaurant is amazing and the food is excellent. It’s the location.
There’s a reason why people have reacted with statements like “I can’t believe it’s in Englewood“. People can’t believe it’s in Englewood because, really, there’s no economic reason for such an establishment to organically pop up in Englewood. In the last ten years, Englewood has experienced more than 700 murders (within a population of roughly 40,000). And 43% of that population live below the poverty level.
So Q: What sensible businessman would open a “fine-dining” restaurant in such an incongruent environment? (Attention hyper-sensitive PC crowd: not saying that residents of Englewood are unworthy of “fine-dining”…I simply question Sikia’s market potential given the the high crime rate and limited disposable income.)
The answer is that a business, in all likelihood, would not open something like Sikia in Englewood. Considering the investment, it’s just too risky. But a government-subsidized culinary school with an unlimited – yes, unlimited (see below)- supply of taxpayer funding? Bingo! Risk is no longer a factor.
Sikia is the facility of Washburne Culinary Institute, a school housed at the very new and very expensive Kennedy-King College campus (63rd and Halstead). It’s purpose is respectable enough: to provide Washburne students with industry experience and showcase their talents. The Trib calls the concept “innovative”. Ostensibly, I agree.
But Sikia wouldn’t exist without the gross financial irresponsibility (and, consequently, taxpayer slap-in-the-face) that lies at its base. Follow the connection. Sikia is the product of Washburne Culinary Institute and Washburne Culinary Institute is directly affiliated with Kennedy-King College, housed at the new Kennedy-King campus. This campus, for those of you unaware, opened years behind schedule and $62,000,000 over budget – yes, that’s 62 million dollars! – in July of 2007. Mayor Daley deflected criticism over last year’s boondoggle with the following statement (see video here [exact quote at 3:22]):
But again, when you say it cost overrun, you know what the thing that bothers me? It’s alright in the suburban area to build quality education facilities. But when it comes to Chicago it seems the media always talks about cost overrun. There’s no cost overrun when you put the best for a facility like this at Kennedy King. I have no problems justifying any cost overruns in regards to any program for Kennedy King or city colleges or board of education because you want to build the finest. And that’s what some people said, ‘Let’s not build the best for Washburne. Let’s make it the second or third best.’ Why? [emphasis mine]
Ugh, you heard it. The very concept, the very notion, of “cost overrun” doesn’t exist for the Mayor. Not when you “want to build the finest”. Of course, “the finest” in education happens to involve $62 million worth of waste, excess, negligence and/or fraud. Migraine forthcoming…
They tell me that:
“Sikia is symbolic of peace and harmony and depicts two fish biting each other’s tail with the message that “no one should bite the other”.
How ironic that, figuratively speaking, Sikia is bitting the other in the relationship, the taxpayer. I don’t know how else to put it: Sikia is a product of the flagrantly inefficient and demonstrably reckless philosophy that guides the Mayor (and his cronies’) taxpayer-funded educational investments. No matter how “innovative” the program, this place stinks. Plain stinks. I mean, locating the facility in Englewood and making it “fine-dining” – it’s as if the decision-makers don’t even want the restaurant to get out of the red.
What’s more, Mayor Daley appears to be proud of his ability to keep such a system going. He boasts with triumphant self-importance cloaked as public gratitude (see video here [exact quote at 4:24])::
Education is the answer to all the ills of society. And that’s why I want to thank the taxpayers – you are the taxpayers in Englewood, you are the taxpayers in Chicago – for helping the board of education and City of Colleges. We did not wait for state government. We did not wait for federal government. If we did, we’d be still out on the streets walking around waiting for another answer or waiting for money. We in Chicago get things done because it’s a priority of getting things done. It’s not a dream; it’s a reality.
Wow. It’s like anti-inspire. Cologne coming to a (subsidized) store near you!
Mayor Daley, you’re definitely not welcome.
During the spring, I bought The Killing Fields following a friend’s recommendation.
Just recently, I was able to sit down and watch the film, which – to say the least – is pretty powerful. Not exactly what I expected – less objective or documentary-style and more Hollywood, giving particular focus to the friendship of NYT reporter Sydney Schanberg and Cambodian interpreter Dith Pran, all within the context of the bloody historical event.
Despite the focused personal touch, there is a great section that takes viewers into what it was like to have lived through the Khmer Rouge and, moreover, Pol Pot’s “Year Zero” ethnic cleansing campaign (which killed over two million human beings). In a letter to Schanberg, Pran writes:
Sydney, I think of you often, and of my family. They tell us that God is dead and now the party they call the Angka will provide everything for us. He says, Angka has identified and proclaims the existence of a bad new disease – a memory sickness – diagnosed as thinking too much about life in pre-Revolutionary Cambodia. He says, we are surrounded by enemies. The enemy is inside us. No one can be trusted. We must be like the ox and have no thought except for the party. No love, but for the Angka. People starve, but we must not grow food. We must honor the comrade children whose minds are not corrupted by the past.
Sydney, Angka says that those who were guilty of soft living in the years of the great struggle and did not care for the sufferings of the peasant must confess because now is the year zero and everything is to start anew. I’m full of fear, Sydney. I must show no understanding, not of French or English. I must have no past, Sydney. This is the year zero, and nothing has gone before.
The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love, Sydney. And those who confess to the Angka vanish, and no one dares ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive.
To think, this really happened…
Check out the film’s trailer below.
