Bomb Threat

Good God, how is it that San Francisco is the site of yet another bomb threat? Seriously, this is getting old fast. Luckily, this time it turned out to be nothing, as the suspicious package apparently was harmless. Still one can never know when some far-right or far-left extremist could plant a device that will cause massive distruction and casualities. I just pray that does not happen given what happened near the Powell Station. The 45-minute delay for both Muni and BART would have been the least of everyone's problems, just trying to get to work or appointments, or to go shopping. Had that been a real bomb, I just don't want to think of how many lives could have been taken.

I credit SFPD and BART PD's quick response in securing the area and determining the nature of the package. Additionally, I credit SFPD's decision to have a bomb squad robot look at the package as well.

Toshiba

I have to say, this is the third laptop I've gone through that's from Toshiba. I'm not saying their products are bad-looking, they're not, but they're very fragile and really leave a lot to be desired in terms of operational longevity. I had a Satellite L300, which lasted for 3 years, but the current one, which is a Satellite L855-S5372, well this is the second in 3 months. Now explain to me how a product is supposed to be top notch if the motherboard keeps short-circutting. It's an issue that seems to happen too often.

North Korea

Well this is certainly not a surprising development. Apparently North Korea has decided, once again, to start threatening America and South Korea with nuclear anihilation. One can rest assured, this is a fairly routine threat coming from the Kim regime, as they always make statements with this type of violent rhetoric. However, there's a massive and much more frightening difference in this series than in the past: there's enough credible intelligence to suggest that they may actually take their extremely violent rhetoric and turn it into real violence.

Why the Kim regime insists on picking a fight with the Obama administration goes beyond any logical sense. True, America does have soldiers (28,000 to be exact) stationed in South Korea, which the North views as a major threat to its sovereignty. It's also true that China does not look favorably on this situation as well, but does not go out of its way to make the situation worse by consistently threatening invasion or other military action. What's missing here is that America does not wish to keep those soldiers in that area of the world, but feels it has few options due to the continual violent threats that come from the North.

Well because of the Kim regime's threats of a preemptive nuclear strike on America, the Obama administration has taken the precaution of placing 14 more anti-ballistic missiles in both California and Alaska. In fact, the American Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the announcement that the administration took this action as a deterrent to any North Korean missile launches. One of the ways the Obama administration pulled this off was by all-together scrapping the planned project of placing a missile shield in both Poland and Romania (the cancellation has brought a more cooperative attitude from Russia), which freed up funds to put the additional missiles on the West Coast and possibly to construct one on the East Coast as well.

As for Russia, I think that Pres. Obama and Secs. Kerry and Hagel made the point clear to Pres. Putin and company that America needs its help in dealing with this and the Iranian nuclear issue, as well as to maintain the continuing progress on disarming both the American and Russian nuclear arsenals. However, there's also a message going out to China at the same time.

For China, the message is very simple. America, while not seeking to contain it, wants to get the concept across that China needs to be more proactive about reigning in its small, yet provocative ally, North Korea, if it does not wish to see a larger American military presence in the area. Knowing Chinese aversion to any massive American military build-up in its neighborhood, it's easy to see why China will cooperate with America.

New Vote Suppression

I'm amazed that in the 2010s, we're still living in an America whose social policymakers on the right are still living in the 1950s. When will they realize that era already passed? Seriously, I can't understand why the Supreme Court seems to think it appropriate to rule the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional, and why Just. Scalia had to make the remark that voting for minorities is an, "[E]ntitlement". That kind of statement is exactly the reason I'm glad Barack Obama is my President. If anything, it just proves why his tenure iis so critical to our nation's history.

As for vote suppression, it's nothing new or entirely unique, given many states' histories. However, what is new is the recent attempts to circumvent established federal law to make one party's chances of capturing the White House better than the others.