hi. michael still isn't back from work yet (which seems a bit odd), so I thought I'd take this opportunity to borrow his computer and let everyone know how I'm doing. apartment 12 is working out pretty nicely so far. it's a lot better than apartment 13, that's for sure. first of all, they have tivo here, which is pretty nice, since I usually only get to watch tv in the middle of the night, and there's never anything good on. but now, when everyone is asleep, I can just come on out and watch the newest "the o.c.". seriously, once you've tried tivo, you can't imagine how you ever lived without it. secondly, they have a game cube and game boy advance, and technically a ps2, although if I want to play it I have to go back over to apartment 13. (ffX2 is a bit campy, but really fun, by the way.) plus, I get to use michael's room whenever he isn't around, and his bed is very comfortable. like I said, it's pretty nice.

but anyway, I should get going. michael will be back soon, and I'm getting a little bored of surfing the web besides. oh, by the way, I'm planning to scurry around a bit behind the stove, and maybe dart across the living room to behind the couch later tonight. call my cell if you want to come along. later.

Comments: 8 Posted by the mouse on 30 January 2004 at 7:53 PM

These days the Internet can do just about everything. Today I took a few online quizzes and I now know the presidential candidate that I should support. And he is either Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, or Dennis Kucinich. Actually, on the two quizzes I took today, those three names did come up at the top of one or the other, but right beneath them on both quizzes were strong matches to John Kerry and John Edwards. Of course, since these are issue-based quizzes, they didn't ask questions like "Do you want the United States to be the laughingstock of the world?" If they had, my answer would have eliminated Nader and Sharpton and possibly Kucinich. (Although I have a secret desire to see Al Sharpton win some delegates, I know that it's not going to happen and that I should just get over it.) So this leaves me with Kerry and Edwards.

Not sure how to proceed based on the results from the first two quizzes, I took a third. The results of this third quiz galvanized me. I had a 100% match with John Kerry (although Sharpton and Kucinich popped up near the top again). This struck me as a bit odd, because I'm fairly certain that Kerry and I disagree on a few of the issues covered on the quiz. Nevertheless, when I'm directed by an Internet quiz owned by AOL, I follow. So if you'll excuse me, I'll be outside putting Kerry '04 bumper stickers on my car.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 28 January 2004 at 1:42 PM

Today the Supreme Court announced that it will hear a case on whether the execution of juveniles is a form of "cruel and unusual" punishment and is therefore banned by the constitution. This comes on the heels of a recent ruling in which the high court banned the execution of the mentally retarded.

The court's four liberal members, John Paul Stevens; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Steven Breyer; and David Souter, are on as record as opposing the death penalty for juveniles. If a considerable number of conservatives join them in opposing the death penalty, you may be seeing a move by the Rehnquist court to strengthen the argument for the death penalty. By whittling away the grey areas around the death penalty, the high court will be taking away a great deal of momentum from anti-death penalty groups.

On the other side of the coin, this might be the beginning of a process that culminates in the abolition of the death penalty, but I don't find that to be likely. By removing the most questionable aspects of this issue, the court will leave a majority of Americans who either strongly support the death penalty or are no longer outraged by the deaths of those who were either too young or too addled to comprehend their crimes. A final, and in my mind more important, step in this process would be to add more oversight to the death penalty process to ensure that the wrongly convicted are not executed.

Once such a system is in place, it will be very difficult for death penalty opponents to rally supporters to their cause, and the death penalty will be even more firmly entrenched in America than it already is.

So this is the conundrum that death penalty opponents find themselves in: embrace the victory in one battle or hold out for the whole war.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 26 January 2004 at 2:23 PM

All of the liberals out there should take heart in the knowledge that the historical record does not look favorably on a second term for George W. Bush. The twentieth century saw five major military conflicts in which the US participated: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Persian Gulf conflict. All of the presidents who presided over these wars had aborted final terms or failed to gain a final term. Here's the full tally.

Woodrow Wilson campaigned for his second term in office using the slogan "he kept us out of war," but within a month of taking the oath of office he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Mr. Wilson saw us through the World War I, but suffered huge setbacks in his post-war plans when his allies rejected nearly all of his 12 Points and the Senate then refused to affirm the Versailles Treaty. He suffered a stroke after a nation-wide tour to publicize the need to ratify the treaty. Mr. Wilson was largely incapacitated by his stroke and the government was largely run by his wife. Although Mr. Wilson could have run for a third term, he did not.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected to a record four terms in office and he successfully guided America through the Great Depression, but he did not live to see the end of World War II. In the waning days of the war and only a few months after his fourth inauguration, Mr. Roosevelt expired from a cerebral hemorrhage while posing for a portrait in Warm Springs, GA.

Harry Truman was re-elected after presiding over VE-Day and VJ-Day, but his reckoning came in his second term. Truman was the last president eligible to run for an unlimited number of terms, but after a strong start the Korean conflict had turned ugly and public sentiment had turned against the president. Mr. Truman's dismissal of General MacArthur, while a military necessity, did nothing to bolster his faltering public opinion. Mr. Truman opted against running for a third term, and Dwight Eisenhower won election based on a campaign that promised the former Supreme Allied Commander would personally go to Korea and fix things.

The Vietnam conflict did in three presidents. John Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet late in his first term. Mr. Kennedy had overseen the initial building up of troops in Vietnam, but was not subject to the great public outcry that his predecessors had to deal with. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Mr. Kennedy, further ramped up troop deployments in South-East Asia, but public sentiment had turned against him by late in his second term. Regardless, Johnson had withdrawn himself as a candidate for re-election in early 1968 in order to devote himself fully to the peace process without the hindrance of politics. Peace talks were underway when he stepped down. Richard Nixon presided over the end of the Vietnam conflict and was elected to his second term by the largest margins in modern presidential history. However, Mr. Nixon apparently suffered from extreme paranoia and this along with various criminal acts that would have resulted in his impeachment, led to his resignation in August 1974.

In the early 1990s, during the final military conflict of the twentieth century, George Bush sent American and allied forces to liberate Kuwait and Kuwaiti oil from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After weeks of air and missile bombardment, the 100-day Operation Desert Storm was successful in removing the Iraqis from Kuwait. However, as the economy in the US plummeted, Mr. Bush's approval rating also fell, and he failed in his re-election attempt in 1992.

What does this mean for George W. Bush and his "war on terror?" Perhaps nothing. It is a new century, after all. However, the historical record of the twentieth century seems to indicate otherwise*.

* In fact, the trend stretches even further into the past. Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley had aborted second terms while Andrew Johnson failed to be elected president in his own right.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 23 January 2004 at 6:55 PM

Does anyone else think the whole issue of concealed guns in Missouri is ridiculous? I lived in a state, Indiana, that allowed citizens to carry concealed guns with no exposure to any guns, concealed or otherwise, during the twelve years I lived there. So the pro-gun lobby has a string case in my mind. But the anti-gun lobby has a much, much stronger case. First, we have the fact that three or four years ago the voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed them to carry concealed weapons. This implies that the thinking in Missouri at the time was that a constitutional amendment was necessary to allow concealed weapons to be carried. This is an important fact, as we'll see in just a moment. Second, in a narrow vote, the legislature passed a bill (note: not a constitutional amendment) allowing the carrying of concealed weapons. Then, after Gov. Holden vetoed the bill, the legislature overrode his veto. However, even that action was not without controversy. A member of the legislature was inappropriately allowed to leave his active-duty military service in Cuba and return to Missouri with the express purpose of voting on this bill.

But now comes the kicker. You'll recall that conservatives first tried to to get concealed weapons in Missouri through a constitutional amendment. This is because the Missouri Constitution, specifically Article I Section 23, contains the following phrase following its affirmation of the US Constitution's second amendment: "this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons." Here's an article, originally published in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, that explains the motivations behind this clause. The money quote from Judge Thomas T. Gantt who proposed the text in question at Missouri's 1875 Constitutional Convention says that "the wearing of concealed weapons is a practice which I presume meets with the general reprobation of all thinking men. It is a practice which cannot be too severely condemned. It is a practice fraught with the most incalculable evil." Clearly, the intent behind this clause was to restrict Missouri citizens from carrying concealed guns. Jay Nixon, Missouri's Attorney General, has argued "that rather than prohibiting concealed weapons, the constitution merely states that Missourians enjoy no irrevocable constitutional right to do so. Nothing prevents the General Assembly from granting citizens the legal right to carry and conceal." This seems ridiculous. Concealed weapons are banned in Missouri until the voters choose to authorize a constitutional amendment that expressly allows them.

And I certainly won't be voting in favor of them anytime soon.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 23 January 2004 at 9:48 AM

The crash yesterday of a school bus on Highway 40 near I-270 (here's the latest article from the P-D) make you wonder why, of all vehicles, seat belts are not mandatory on school buses. Perhaps this has changed since I last rode a bus, but even some bus drivers only wear lap belts. Admittedly, Missouri's seat belt law only applies to front seat passengers (which is ridiculous, but another issue entirely), but section 307.178 has the following provision, which you would think would apply to school buses:

3. Each driver of a motor vehicle transporting a child four years of age or more, but less than sixteen years of age, shall secure the child in a properly adjusted and fastened safety belt.

Note the phrase "motor vehicle," not passenger car, which means this should apply to buses. But perhaps there is an exception elsewhere for them.

Regardless of the law, parents should demand that the buses their children ride in are equipped with seatbelts.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 13 January 2004 at 12:46 PM

Based on the strong* showing of CSI's first spin-off, CSI: Miami, CSI is launching a third spin-off. The location will be announced on Friday, but the rumor mill says it will either be New York or Louisiana. About a year ago I'd heard that a CSI: London might be in the works, and I think that might be the best choice for them. CSI: New York would be too much like Law & Order (i.e., a rip-off) and CSI: Louisiana would be too much like CSI: Miami (i.e., it would suck).

*Note: not actually strong.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 13 January 2004 at 11:59 AM

The excitement at apartment 12 tonight, besides the return of new episodes of The OC, was a fire. A pretty big fire. Somehow, a fire was started in one of the dumpsters behind our building. I noticed the light from the fire and michael looked out the window to see what it was. michael discovered the fire and called 911 while I moved my car, which had been parked only a few feet from the dumpster that now housed the fire. There's a fire station on Delmar, only a few blocks from apartment 12, and the fire personnel were here within minutes. They got the fire out pretty quickly and were much more thorough about hosing down the dumpster than I would have been.

After they left, michael and I investigated the contents of the dumpster. We couldn't really determine what caused the fire, but it looked like an abandoned dish washer had been burning, if such a thing is possible. We also noticed that the fire had been hot enough to melt the paint off the dumpster.

Anyway, here are a few pictures. A couple of those are the view from my bedroom window. The rest are outdoor shots. If I have some time tomorrow, I'll throw some captions on them, but I think they're pretty self-explanatory.

Comments: 4 Posted by david on 7 January 2004 at 11:35 PM