Back to Word Press

I have decided (after careful deliberation) to go back to WordPress. I don't have the time (nor the inclination) to learn CSS in order to fool around with the design for the site, and I really did like having the blog roll feature built into the blog script.

Our new WP site should be up and running soon. Hopefully I can also load all of our old posts into it as well.

--Pat

Fabulous, Brilliant, and Adorable

For any of our NYC readers, you may have noticed Claudio's mug in, well, every major NYC newspaper yesterday in a CUNY ad.

Karol has some kind words on that subject right here.

Finally, someone thinks we are adorable!

I'm off to Bear Stearns for a CUNY fundraiser. This site is depressing me style-wise, so I may spend a good part of tonight/tomorrow finally finishing the redesign.

Let's not even talk about the Mets.

-Pat

Ha

Sometimes you read something that makes you crack up so much you actually start crying and laughing at the same time. Here's todays for me:

Statists and leftists everywhere in the US should get up in the morning and give thanks for direct payroll deduction -- without it, if every American had to write a single check once a year for the sum total of their annual income taxes, there would have long since been a revolution.

True and funny at the same time. Check out the rest of this great piece on taxes right here. If I had a blogroll running, CoyoteBlog would definitely be added to it immediately.

Spring Break Bloggin'

Hey Everyone,

Like Pat said, 'tis Spring Break and WE ARE FINALLY RESTING! After a really tough and demanding campaign for student government, my Truman Scholarship media blitz, work, six classes at three campuses, and a million and one other things, it is finally time to kick back Down South.

I'm sitting here watching the Mets whoop up on the local favorite Braves down here in Carolina. It is such a lovely thing.

Not, though, nearly as lovely as this. The only thing better than running against the scorned ex-girlfriend you equipped for politics in a student government race? WHOOPING HER BEHIND!

Executive Vice-President

Charles Simpkins AAA 570
Valeria Alcena A1 436
Constance Jordan-Cooley CITY UNITY 381

Revenge is the sweetest thing next to getting...um, elected.

Claudio

Hello again

Alright so I don't even remember writing the previous entry. Give me a break, I had just got home from celebrating, it was late, I was slightly inebriated, etc.

Anyway, we are on SPRING BREAK. Claudio is in North Carolina with his family, and I will be attending some Mets games and lounging around the house. I should try and catch up with some reading for Corporate Finance and Money & Banking but I know thats a longshot.

Maybe I will post something this week, but more the likely TvRWC is going to be pretty silent until May. The past week of campaigning, school, and not-sleeping has made me ready for a week of relaxation, laziness, and sleep. Why my school's spring break is into May I have no idea, but I will gladly take time off from school when it is offered to me.

Schools out...

-Pat

Back in Power

Yeah we kicked some student government ass.

Your bloggers can now be addressed as:

1. Executive Vice President (Claudio)
2. Vice President for Evening Affairs (Pat)

We made our first official act (as the slate with the "most" Republicans on it) tonight to declare war on Hunter College.

Or was it Baruch?

I forget already.

Updates and The Lack Thereof

A couple of tidbits and excuses:

• This week is election week at school (http://www.voteaaa.com). Claudio and I, along with the rest of our slate, are harassing approaching each and every student that crosses our path to campaign to. With a total of approx. 400 votes cast, voter turnout looks OK, but we know it should start to go crazy Thursday before the polls close for good. I wish there was some kind of exit polling in place, but I know we can't spare any more resources away from campaigning
• Mets baby! I'm going to the 4/25 game and the 4/26 game when Pedro is pitching. Amazing.

Well thats pretty much it. I don't know why this entry needed a list, but hey, have CSS will travel.

pat

Freedom to Threat?

Here we go again:

The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

The exhibit, called "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.

None of the artists is tied to the college.

Hmm, picture of President Bush with a gun pointed at his head? Art!

Here's the kicker:

The exhibit's curator, Michael Hernandez de Luna, said the inquiry "frightens" him.

"It starts questioning all rights, not only my rights or the artists' rights in this room, but questioning the rights of any artist who creates ? any writer, any visual artist, any performance artist. It seems like we're being watched," he said.

Guess what kiddo, when you make (what at least appears to the naked eye) a threat against the president of the United States, you are going to be watched. The job of the Secret Service is to protect the president, and that does entail check out all of the nutcases who consider drawing a picture of the president with a gun pointed to his head. If some drew a picture of me like that, I would want them investigated too.

Free speech implications? You make a threat (however veiled) you should take responsibility for your actions. If I made a threat against the president and the Secret Service did NOT show up at my door, I would be angry that there were not doing their job.

Do people really think this nonsense is art or is the "artist" just doing it for the controversy?

James Robbins at Columbia

Last night I attended a lecture given by James Robbins entitled "Are We Winning the War on Terrorism?"

Great lecture, very informative. As far as the "learning" was concerned, the information presented was pretty much mostly public knowledge, but presented in a coherent and connected manner. The turning point of the lecture was definitely the satellite view of the Upper West Side of Manhattan with the zones of destruction and effect of a 10 kilo-ton nuclear blast superimposed.

Scary stuff.

On the subject of a nuclear or other "big" terrorist attack, Robbins believes that terrorists are more likely use smaller attacks to create panic and essentially receive the same amount of media coverage they would if a large scale attack was used. If a nuclear bomb was detonated in New York City he said it would (with some dark sarcasm) "be a bad day" but the country would be beheaded and terrorists still wouldn't win. He also explained that the bigger the attack plan, the more chances for things to go wrong, people to be captured, conspirators to run their mouths, etc - basically he believes that there is a larger change of al Qaeda starting a random bombing campaign of Wal Marts in a busy shopping season then detonating a nuclear device in midtown Manhattan.

If there was one point, I believe, that was hammered home, was the fact that the threat of terrorism still exists. Although we are winning the war, the war is not won just on the fact that there hasn't been an attack on our soil in almost 4 years, but will be won (at least according to our National Strategy) when we dismantle the international, wide-reaching organizations of terror and leave them powerless.

Sin City Review Take II

Yesterday, my girlfriend Debbie and I caught Sin City at the ginormous AMC theatres at Times Square.

We loved it. Go see it.

But she and I had lots of question in the end (mainly her), including:

1. What was with the constant castration?
2. Also, what was with the constant rhetorical treatment of impotence ("Look at you old man, you can't even lift that cannon you're holding")?
3. What commentary did the movie seek to add to the feasibility of self-sustained all-female communities (Old Town)? Was it a critique (note Gail's dependence on the male-figure)?
4. Why are Asian women always depicted as femme-fatale types in film noir?
5. Who will come along first: a successful white female emcee, or a successful Asian female emcee?
6. Will the first line to make it big from a Asian female emcee be: "Looks lovely, I'm yellow and I spit pretty/Straight fire, I open my legs, Hello Kitty!"? (Asian female readers, do not kill me!)
7. What significance, if any, is given to the use of color?
8. Which scenes did Tarantino direct?
9. Is it always necessary to make the Catholic Church the root of all evil?
10. If Jessica Alba can fall in love with Bruce Willis, does that mean I have a chance?

Any thoughts?

Claudio

I'M EVERYWHERE!

Hey Everyone,

So finally my summer is set: I will be spending three months in lovely Budapest, Hungary working on public diplomacy towards the Eastern European area.

I'm hype! My girlfriend will be studying across the continent at Cambridge University, one good friend of mine will be studying French in France (of all places), and another close friend will be visiting family in Budapest while I am there. All in all, this is looking to be a wonderful experience - I've never beyond the Atlantic and I'll have plenty of good friends (kinda) close by to help me cope.

Hopefully, I'll still be able to blog - New Europe is fairly developed so Internet access should be pretty easy to find. I'll eat plenty of cake, catch the opera, and try to learn some Hungarian while I'm out there. I'll also be trying to keep a journal (if I can't blog) on European politics and Euro-American relations. Should be challenging, but it promises to keep me busy.

Until then, I'm going to be kind of busy the next couple of weeks. The student government elections continue into next week. Following that, I'll be in North Carolina visiting family. Then, the final crunch comes at school (I'll be writing on subjects as varied as political rhetoric, psychoanalysis and narcotics, Habermas, black conservatism as a political ideology, and British conservatism as it compares to its counterpart over here, JOY!).

Then I'm off to Missouri for the Truman orientation, and back just in time to catch a flight to Budapest. Oh, Claudio, aged traveller.

Claudio

Winning the War

Is anyone else (besides me) going to this?

Come to a discussion on "Why the United States is Winning the War on Terrorism." James Robbins, Professor of International Relations at the National Defense University in Washington D.C., Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and a contributing editor of the National Review Online will be giving a lecture followed by a question and answer session. Tuesday April 12 at 7PM in 503 Hamilton Hall. Sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Netzach Yisrael, Columbia College Republicans, and Students United for America. Contact djr2012@columbia.edu for more information.

Sounds good to me.

Sin City

Karol beat me to the punch on this one...

I was going to write up a review of Sin City, which I saw last weekend, but school got in the way.

Here's some tidbits:

- The black and white is amazing, so much so that you will want to see every movie shot in that style from now on
- The splotches of color were perfect. Perfect.
- Who doesn't like a good revenge story? Or three?
- Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, et. al. Hot girls with guns? Just icing on the cake.

Go see it.

Greatest Movie Ever

I just watched my favorite movie ever, and felt that it was time to do a movie list. Since I'm not nearly pretentious enough to make my list the "Greatest Movies of All Time," I'll just speak to the "Greatest Movies (I've) Ever (Seen)."

With that said, lets get to listing!

10. Waking Life
9. Malcolm X
8. Fight Club
7. Hotel Rwanda
6. The Usual Suspects
5. Shawshank Redemption
4. Lost In Translation
3. The Passion of the Christ
2. The Matrix

Objects of Desire

HELP ME!!! I have a spending problem, and I have two current objects of desire: The PSP and the 20 Gig iPod. I used to have an iPod; I had a first-gen iPod that broke, and my mother currently has the most recent generation but won't share it with me. The iPod is the most practical purchase of the two - for me at least...but oh, the PSP...

But the iPod makes sense - I already have over ten gigs of music (2534 songs) and I am tired of carrying around a CD player with a case full of these plastic discs I'd rather play frisbee with than listen to.

Oh, iPod...

You're all entirely wise and all-knowing: WHAT CAN I DO?!?!?!?!

Help,
Claudio