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Graduation Luncheon and Other Thoughts

One month from today, I?ll be a law school graduate and to commemorate the event, we had a graduate luncheon today. It was kind of exciting, cuz we had to make seating assignments for graduation, which had a sense of finality to it. But overall, it was a little depressing. Not only was the cake they served tasteless, but there was something about the awards book that they handed out that rubbed me the wrong way. The awards book had everyone?s accomplishments under their name, and seeing everything I?ve done in law school reduced to a few lines was really unfulfilling for some reason.

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I didn?t really get a chance to watch the Democrat debate last night, but I did catch a disturbing quote from Obama. Charlie Gibson pointed out that every time the capital gains tax was lowered, there was greater government revenues. So why would you want to double the capital gains tax?

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness?[He goes on and says it?s not fair for people to make lots of money] That's not fair.

So it doesn?t matter that the government will receive less money by raising the capital gains tax, money that can be used to fund all of his proposed government interventions, because he is more interested in redistributing wealth than actually making the country wealthy or even funding his own policies. This is one of the core values of Marxist thought and so out of line with the main stream and so radical that it is just one more example of why Obama boggles my mind and that anyone would buy that this guy is somehow a unifying figure.

Note that I focus negative comments on Obama instead of Clinton because 1) he is the likely nominee for the Democrat party and she isn't, 2) he is more of a threat to beat McCain than Clinton in my view and 3) he is also more radical than Clinton. But make no mistake, I cannot stand Clinton either.

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I'm so pumped that the Lakers won the Western Conference this year. You have to understand that while my first memories of the Lakers were of the showtime era, my formative years were really defined by the mediocre Laker teams of the mid-1990s. I loved Nick the Quick, Cedric Ceballos, Anthony Pig Miller and the rest, but they were not a great basketball team by any means. And the last time they won the west (1999-2000 season), I was in Japan and didn't watch a single game. It's great to see Kobe finally lead, have teammates that can actually follow him, which has them playing the most consistent basketball I've ever seen a Laker team play (at least the regular season). Regardless of the post season, this has been the best regular season in the NBA of my adult life.

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Just bought tickets to watch the Dodgers play the Giants in San Francisco for Fourth of July. Since I'm studying for the bar and can't really afford to travel anywhere (temporally or financially), catching my team playing the hated ones should be a great way to celebrate the holiday, which I've never celebrated up here. I moved up to San Jose the weekend after the Fourth of July. The summer after my first year was spent in Washington D.C., including the 4th. While last summer was spent in AZ, I did the 4th in the LBC. This will likely be my last 4th of July in the Bay Area.

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I miss Lost.

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I just saw Horton Hears a Who because my wife wanted to see it. I loved it. I also love when the blockbuster season gets an early start. I'm especially pumped for Iron Man and Prince Caspian in a few weeks.

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I've had mixed feelings about the recent polygamist raid in Texas. As a decedent of polygamists on my dad's side (my mom is a convert but great great grandpa Edward Partridge Jr had 13 wives), I have some sympathy for them. They believe that it's God's will and they are just trying to do what they believe is right, despite the fact that the main stream Mormon church believes that God has commanded us over 100 years ago not to practice polygamy. On the other hand, there at least appears to be some sexual abuse of minors (forced marriage of young teenage girls), so, if that's true, that's awful and unacceptable. But on the other hand, the idea that the government can separate parents from children based on one anonymous tip and because their beliefs are peculiar makes me kind of nervous.

Full post as published by SoapBox Law on April 18, 2008 (boomark / email).