<--Do not question this man. Ever.

Focussing on local politicas for a change, Mayor Richard M Daley, mayor of Chicago since 1989 has won yet another term in office, despite -- nay -- because he is being invesitigated for corruption by the feds. The NYTimes reports:

There was no last-minute rallying of the troops. No visible excitement or nervousness. And no entourage.

During the campaign, Mr. Daley hardly acknowledged his opponents, Dorothy Brown, the clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court, and William Walls [who proposed replacing all heavy machinery at the O'hare expansion project with thousands of people with shovels], a former aide to Harold Washington, the city’s first elected black mayor. There were no debates.

After Mr. Daley voted, a reporter asked what grade he would give himself as mayor so far.

“You don’t give grades,” he said. “Grades are only given on Election Day.”

Damn Daley. That takes, if I may be so crude, cojones muy grandes. Mayor Daley is so awesome that he refuses to grade his own administration. Damn, he's good.

Cospicuously absent from the New York Times, though -- I suppose it wasn't News that's fit to print -- was the fact that only one-third of the city voted, and to be honest they were all either dead or recipients of a four pound ham courtesy of the Democratic machine. So let's see then, 71% of one third of the city voted for Daley, that is about 23% of the electorate, which I believe by Mr. Daley's own standards gives him an F-.

Just kidding Mr. Mayor! You know Chicago loves the mob. It does wonders for us. Please don't cut off my utilities now. Please. Kickback?

Thanks CNN

So today, a rgoup of investors bought TXU-Corp on the condition that they not build 8 of 11 coal fired power plants, and that they join an industry organization that lobbies for mandatory greenhouse emissions caps.

CNN decided to put the issue into perspective thusly:

Climate change has become a hot-button issue in the wake of a recent United Nations report that said with very high confidence that humans are contributing to global warming and the success of Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" - which took home an Oscar for best documentary the night before the TXU deal was announced.

Only on CNN could you find a massive scientific project, yielding thousands and thousands of pages which conclusively prove global warming, with an Oscar winning documentary that uses something vaguely resembling statistics to prove that Al Gore tried to stop Tobacco and cancer.

Some of you may remember that back in 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the IDF's use of children as human shields when conducting house to house operations was actually not such a good idea.

The IDF, though, continues to disagree.

Al-Jazeera reports that during the Israeli siege of Nablus:

At one point, a small group of nervous soldiers forced a Palestinian youth to lead them into a home. The soldiers then took him, along with several young Palestinian men, into a military vehicle.

[...]

The army had no immediate comment on Sunday's incident.

Again, Israel is using children as human shields in conducting their military operations. They are doing so not only in violation of international law, but in violation of their own Supreme Court as well. And for some reason no mainstream media in the US think this is newsworthy. Pain.

Honorary Blog Post

This is one of the greatest news inspired rants of all time:

http://sociologic.blogspot.com/2007/02/bursting-academic-bubble.html

The litigious dancer

<--These people are so getting sued.

Now many of you know that I am somewhat obsessed with the increasing resort to legal means to deal with social, political, and moral disputes. Now -- while this is certainly a problematic trend -- I'm not prepared to lament it quite yet. I mean, sure I think suing human rights violators for money you'll never collect is a bit of a problem, but what else are you going to do?

But now it's gone too far. The creator of the electric slide (boogiwoogiewoogie) has started suing people who do his dance incorrectly. Now come on, people! If there is a controversy over how to do the electric slide, we all know there exists but one valid way of settling the dispute: DANCE OFF!!!!

And we are live...

Well folks, I finally made the switch to Blogger. Pretty cool, eh?

Until I decide to post something, why don't you check out the earlier stuff at the totally immature and passe, livejournal: gimpybee.livejournal.com