In the spirit of his refusal to concede the 2000 presidential election, President Bush has decided that the country will not hold a 2004 election. White House spokesperson Scott McClellan read a statement Friday: “We all know who would have won anyway. Why have a divisive, partisan election when we can focus on other things, like 9-11 and America’s recovering economy? We realized that if we took all the money that the richest Americans would have donated to the Bush/Cheney campaign and allowed them to donate that money to themselves, that would fuel the economic expansion that we’ve been seeing recently. Economic expansion created by tax cuts for the wealthy. And accountability. And 9-11. Thank you.” In anticipation of complaints from liberal activists, McClelland reported that the Supreme Court has promised it will roll over for Republicans again and approve the arguably illegal suspension of the presidential election. The ACLU released a somewhat pessimistic statement, saying, “All we can hope for now is that, when the troops come home before insuring Iraq’s safe passage into sovereignty, Bush gets confused and declares war on himself for being a dictator. See, then he wouldn’t have to lie about weapons of mass destruction to make the case for war. Because the United States really does have them, and they really are a danger to the American people.”
Well, I’ve deliberated about this for a long time. I’m probably going to regret it, but I’ve decided to post one of my student’s papers here on my website for everyone to see. I know it’s probably pretty hard to believe, but I really don’t mean to be doing this in a spirit of mocking the student. This student has a lot of talent and creativity and I would feel selfish not letting anyone see his work. Besides, the work is so interesting that reading it is almost like a psychological study. I think I can be reasonably confident that word of this will not get back to any university authorities. This means I have to trust everyone who reads this not to rat me out. Let me say this: when you see the work, I guarantee you will be as fascinated by it as I am. You must realize that you would never have had the chance to see it if it weren’t for this minor transgression of teaching ethics. The same will be true for everyone else who sees it. Think about the good of the many, as we Utilitarians say. Because the presentation is a part of the work as much as the content, I’ve scanned the whole two-page paper and posted it as an image.
Housewares mogul Martha Stewart was convicted of many, but not all, of the charges against her Friday. Here’s a list of the verdicts:
I know some people who are looking for someone, you know, and I’ve been wondering if there are any online dating services. Because I’m not really that familiar with the Internet and I don’t know what’s out there. But I use Hotmail and I read the Onion and stuff. If I saw an ad or a link or something once in a while for a dating service, maybe I would be able to find out more. But I guess online dating just hasn’t caught on yet, and if there are any companies that offer it, they don’t have the money to advertise.