A lot of people went to mass this Sunday...

at a church that condones child molestation. Of course, those people don't ask others to walk out of their church. But God forbid a black man get "uppity", even if his anger, while righteous, is misdirected and confused.

Not to mention that the church is run by an ex-Nazi.

Nora: The Sequel - Better than the original!

Too cute to resist posting...

Hillary's own reverend problem

The wonderful Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, explains why Hillary has been oddly silent about Reverend Wright.

Opening up the old scabs

It seems that this Reverend Wright brou-ha-ha has brought out a lot of the anger and racial tensions that underlie America like the blood just below the surface of our skin. As I listen to the Reverend's sermons, I find myself sympathizing if not agreeing. I hear white people getting their panties in a bind over this, shocked-SHOCKED!- that a black man could be so angry in today's America. After all hasn't white America eliminated racism? These uppity negroes have a lot of gall daring to criticize a country that has done so much for them!

The idea that America has done so much for blacks is laughable on the face of it. And yet we have progressed as a nation; this is undeniable. And we are closer, though importantly we are not there, to being a nation where its minorities play an equal role in shaping its path, and are able to share more in the fruits of its labor. The thing about Reverend Wright is that much of his anger is righteous, but yet is also misdirected and destructive. You can appreciate his long experience with the injustices of this country and reasons for his anger while at the same time condemn the words and the wilder eyed manifestations of it.

It is important to remember we are deciding whether to vote for Obama, not his preacher. And the uproar over this speaks volumes about America. McCain has a minister with a HUGE following, who has condemned Catholicism as "the great whore", come out and endorse him (with the two sharing the same stage), and barely a peep. Another of McCain's minister supporters has said that America was created with the intent of destroying Islam; again crickets. But now, sweet Jesus, a friend of Obama's has criticized America, so Obama must be anti-American, never mind Obama has come out and repudiated him. How absurd indeed, and infantile. Bill Hicks once said that this country was on about an eighth grade level. Now I think that is too generous, more like Fourth Grade.

Andrew Sullivan today had a fantastic post on his blog about the internal conflicts of identity and how they relate to Obama; I highly recommend reading it.

A tough road in Pennsylvania

I am volunteering for Obama here in Pennsylvania. Alas, it doesn't look good for him here. He should win in Philadelphia and surrounding areas. The rest of the state doesn't look good however. And even in Philadelphia, he's going against Nutter and Rendell, which won't kill him but will probably keep his support lower than it could and should be in this area.

This explains it well.

Busted on GMA, Hillary Clinton on Walmart

This is a candidate who is supposedly supporting blue collar workers and women's rights? Who is running to lead the nation and yet claims didn't know what was going on under her nose while on the Wal-Mart Board? If this is the "experience" she is running on, I don't want to "experience" it.

Torture as "art"

This guy should be condemned by any kind of reasonable and moral being. Torturing an animal for art's sake? The type of thing that makes you hope there is a hell.

Camille Paglia on the election

I've heard her called an "anti-feminist feminist". She takes on the feminist knee jerk whining about Hillary...

Complicated Life

New Orleans before the storm. I do know what it means to miss New Orleans. Very clever video, by Ray Davies of The Kinks, no less.

Gizmo Boxing Cat

Couldn't resist posting this

Never say never...

Maybe the theme song of Democrats? The Clinton people and the Obama people might like each other better if...?

From Dick Polman's blog, American Debate:

"Geraldine Ferraro, the '84 Democratic veep candidate and '08 Hillary surrogate, quoted in a California newspaper last Friday: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

Baseball pitcher Bob Feller, speaking in 1946 about Jackie Robinson: "If he were a white man, I doubt they would even consider him as big league material."

And now Ferraro says that the only reason people are making a big deal out of this is because she's white. And Hillary won't ask her to resign, because this keeps the race in the mud, where Hillary feels most comfortable.

So America, if you want to keep America in the mud, vote Hillary.

This is experience?

Sinbad vs. The Monster

Hillary knows Karl...

James Moore, author of Bush's Brain, thinks Hillary has Karl Rove's tactics down pat.

Best Quote of the Campaign Season

Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle," - Kos commenter, Jsn.

How do you spell hypocrisy?

Seems the Clintons are quite the crusaders when it comes to other people's tax returns.

I spell hypocrisy C-L-I-N-T-O-N

The Clintons and Rezko

Seems the Clintons aren't as clean as they would have you believe

Never say never

For some reason I can't get the You Tube video to upload to the website, so you'll just have to go to the link. Probably what Hillary and Obama say to each other in private. They need some tension release...

A shot from the grave...

The late, great Molly Ivins still has something to say about this election, though she is sadly not with us anymore..

All eyes are on Pennsylvania

Dick Polman discusses the upcoming primary. Bottom line is that Obama has to get better at his message. I think he's got no choice but to go negative. And there is a LOT of dirt to be got on the Clintons.

It's going to get really ugly, much to the delight of McCain. If the Democrats lose an election they should so easily win, I will never forgive the Clintons.

Why I hate Ohio...

Seriously. They were a major reason for Bush in 2000, were probably the reason in 2004, and now the majority votes for Hillary in Tuesdays' primary. When their perhaps number one issue going to the polls is NAFTA and the resultant loss of jobs, they vote for the candidate whose husband did the most to give it to us. And fail to vote for the candidate who has pledged to do more to change it than she has.

Add to that all the shenanigans with voting and the voting machines (Diebold is based there, no less), and idiots like Ken Blackwell, and you have a state that I am really starting to dislike more and more.

How to lose an election (again!)

Well, it seems the Democrats are trying their damnedest to lose an election that was practically gift wrapped for them to win. Hillary has decided that she would rather take the party down and their chances of winning in November rather than admit defeat. Mathematically she almost cannot win; she has to win with Super Delegates (remember the Wile E. Coyote Super Genius skit? When I say "Super Delegate", I want to say it the same way). To do so is to in effect spit at the large number of young voters and African-American voters who have become highly motivated and are turning out in great numbers for Obama. They will reject such a move, and likely will stay home in November as a result. This would guarantee a McCain victory. She is the one thing that will motivate the right wing to come out in droves as well. Right now they don't get as worked up about Obama. But mention Hillary, and your average, low IQ Rush listening Frightwinger starts foaming at the mouth. If she is the nominee, she will lose in November, count on it. She can't even beat a relative novice like Obama for her own party's nomination and yet she is the one who can beat McCain come November? What kind of tortured logic is that? And what is this experience she touts so much? When she has been "tested", she has failed, as evidenced by her votes on Iraq and Iran.


P.S. Oh and one more thing about Hillary. She claims her victory in Ohio is proof that she can carry the Red States the Democrats need to win in November. Last I checked, Obama had won nearly all the red states' primaries so far.

Hello, it's me...

To any and all who might have visited in the past month, my apologies for not posting in a while. Combination of a lot of things, mainly time and in a bit of a funk. I won't go into them here, but let's just say getting ready for fatherhood has been time consuming and leave it at that...

Where is Richard Dawson when you need him?

The feud that is the Democratic Party just became more pronounced. It seems to me that Ted Kennedy looked at how divided the party had become thanks to the Clinton campaign strategy and a national media all too eager for a mano a mano storyline, and decided to back probably the only candidate who unite more than he can divide. With the exception of the Clinton camp of course. The interesting thing to watch will be once a candidate is decided, will the losing camp support them? I don't see Obama's supporters flocking to Hillary's and vice-versa, and the result I think could be another Republican president. This in a year when the only way the Democratic Party couldn't win would be to shoot itself in the proverbial foot. Of course, much depends on the Republican nominee. McCain has broad appeal. Romney though I think would be loser, simply because he represents a continuation of our current blaise political experience.

I haven't listed the rest of the Republican nominees because I think it is coming to be more of a 2 person race in each Party. Huckabee is still a factor, Edwards less so.

Movie Review: There Will Be Blood

I just saw the movie There Will Be Blood. Many commentators have pointed out the obvious parallels in the movie's depiction of the unholy relationship between religion and oil and to that same relationship today. It is a movie that should not be contemplated hurriedly once the lights come on at its ending, but should be savored for a time afterwards, so that it can be fully turned over in one's head and appreciated more richly. There are many powerful scenes that will linger for a long time. One in particular is early on, as Daniel Day-Lewis' character, Daniel Plainview, sits silently with his infant son on a train, leaning his head in for the child to play with his face. Not a word is spoken, but the early impression we have of this hard scrabble man having a soft spot on the inside is gone at movie's end, nearly 30 years later. Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of a man who nearly literally digs his way to madness is remarkable. Nearly all the reviews are universal in their praise of his performance, and I do not differ. With a voice borrowed from John Huston, we see a portrayal of the toxic effects of obsession and greed on a man's soul, symbolized otherwise by the oil rigs and toxic oil pits which more and more scar and disfigure the landscape. Eventually people are just an obstacle, in the way of his ambition, as he relates in a memorable conversation with his half-brother; and when he says "these people", referring to humanity in a sneering, detached way, you can feel a chill go up your spine. His antagonist is played well by Paul Dano, a young actor with a promising future (many of you will remember him from Little Miss Sunshine). He plays twin brothers Ron and Eli Sunday. Eli is the local preacher who locks horns with Plainview. We eventually however come to see the two as being 2 sides of the same coin. Both promise wonders for the town of Little Boston, but both are really snake oil salesmen, interested only in promoting themselves at the town's expense.

Yet it is not a perfect movie. For all its power, incredible acting and cinematography, and a gripping score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, the film somehow feels to be less than the sum of its parts. The film seems to end suddenly and maybe unsure of itself, ending perhaps because it didn't know where else to go. We are then left wondering about the meaning of all we have just seen, with powerful images to fill our head that do not necessarily form a complete whole. We marvel at what we have seen but are not sure of what to make of it.

Despite that, the movie has enough to warrant viewing from an aesthetic viewpoint alone. And the issues that surround our addiction to oil to this day give the movie an added resonance. On a scale of 5 stars, I give it 3 1/2.

My not too distant future

April 30th is coming up fast... The thought of fatherhood brings a wider range of emotions than I would ever have suspected, ranging from a giddy and joyful anticipation to an absolute feeling of dread and anxiety. I suppose most new fathers are like this, though I don't know if my waiting till my 40's and hence the wisdom of age helps me deal with this better or being an old fogey set in my ways makes me more ill prepared. I think of John Leguizamo's stage performance Sexaholic, where he tells his newborn son he is going to fuck him up in all the ways his father did with him. And my father was only 27 years old when I was born, I will be 41 when my child arrives, a lot more grumpy old man to impart.

Happiness is overrated

Very interesting...

This brings up the question: Are we really that happy or just that delusional?

Can the Democrats blow it (again)?

Sad to say, but I think we are seeing from the Clintons what I have always accused them of: putting their short term political fortunes above the long term interests of the Democratic Party. While I thought Bill Clinton was a step up from the wrong headed Reagan/Bush years, one of my biggest gripes was their moving the Democratic Party towards the right. In essence, their response to the demonization of the left and liberalism from the right wing was to say "We're not liberals anymore" and sell the American public on that. They essentially forced the Republican Party, and by extension the country, further to the right. They played a big part in why the word "liberal" these days is considered an epithet by many, despite the long proud history of liberalism. The failure of this strategy though showed up in the takeover of Congress by the Republicans shortly after Clinton's election and the subsequent failures in years after for the Democrats to regain power or to make any real meaningful change to the country (something which Obama pointed out and which earned the special wrath of Bill). Now we see the Clintons essentially dividing the party and potentially alienating black voters (whom the Democratic Party will need at the voting booths come November if they are to win) in a scorched earth drive to become the Party's nominee. Despite my loathing for Ronald Reagan, his famous truism of "Thou shall speak ill of no Republican" remains sound political advice for a political party hoping to make long term gains. The Clintons, if they are serious about putting this country in a better state, should speak ill of no Democrat. But for them it is about power, not the good of the country. And if the Democrats fail at this unique and crucial moment in our history, it will be unforgiveable. And the terrible disrepair of the last 7 years will go unchecked and unchanged.

Long lost footage proves Hitler was a Cowboys fan...

FOX ATTACKS! Obama Staffer

Anybody who still takes FOX news seriously is suffering from serious Republican Dementia.

Off the cuff

As I was watching the presentation of the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest American Movies, I found myself oddly troubled by something Steven Spielberg said. When discussing Schindler's List, a great film which made the Top 10, he stated that the Holocaust was the greatest crime in recorded history.

To begin with, let me state flat out that I am not one of those whacky Holocaust deniers. The kind that go to pretzel like bending of the facts to deny it ever happened, and then vote for Pat Buchanan for president. Those that deny the Holocaust are not only denying recorded history (the Germans were meticulous in their documentation, so the truth is plain for all to see), but they are denying the unspeakable grief and angst experienced by millions of survivors and relatives. My issue is simply as follows. I don't think it right or desirable to compare historical atrocities, at least from a barbarity standard. If you want to argue that the Nazis systematically killed more human beings just for the sake of their ethnic or cultural identity than anybody else in human history, fine. But I think when you compare one atrocity to another in terms of the barbarity, then in my view you start down a road of "My suffering was worse than yours because mine was part of the greatest atrocity ever" etc. In effect you create a "gold standard" of suffering. And then you begin to lessen the suffering of those who were victims of a "lesser" atrocity. Does it help an Armenian or a Cambodian that somehow their suffering was part of something "less"? Did they somehow suffer less because their numbers were less? Did they lose less in the process? If you were a Gypsy in a Nazi camp, you had a greater chance of being killed statistically than if you were Jewish; does the fact that less Gypsies died (because they had a smaller population to begin with) make their pain any less significant? The genocide in Rwanda was done with gruesome barbarity; a majority were hacked to death with machetes; many women were raped. In terms of butchery, it might not have the same number of dead as the Holocaust, but the savagery is possibly worse, if physical mutilation is your criterion.

Also, please do not take this as some sort of anti-Semitic rant. I do not mean it that way at all, and certainly do not want to imply the converse, that somehow victims of the Holocaust somehow suffered less. The unfortunate effect of all this seems to me to be like a child looking for the biggest roller coaster at the amusement park; only the biggest is worth his or her attention. Unfortunately we are not talking about children's amusement here, but sobering facets of our history as a species that should give pause to any idea of innate human goodness. These are ugly aspects to our shared humanity which we must come to grips with if we are to evolve into something better as a species. It doesn't help when we indirectly tell someone that their suffering doesn't hold the same validity as someone else's, because somehow it wasn't up to the gold standard of suffering.

New Hampshire

Unlike the pundits who are expressing their usual "Gee willakers!" wonder over the results in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, I have a much darker view. Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has been tirelessly leading the cause concerning voting machines much of this decade, and prior to the New Hampshire primary she expressed concern about the voting machines in New Hampshire. Looking at the anomalies between polling and actual numbers, Edwards and Obama are about what you expect, while Hillary's disparity is ridiculous, even though the writer seems to think it makes sense due to undecided voters (all the undecideds voted for Hillary? That seems to be what the majority of pundits and pollsters are saying. How likely is that really?). Where electronic vote tallying was used, they went for Hillary; where hand ballots used, Obama. All this talk about women moved by Hillary's tears and the Bradley effect aren't enough to explain this. If my hunch is right and the vote was rigged, who is behind it? On the surface, one would expect the Clintons. There is speculation though that the Republicans would prefer Hillary over Obama though. And we've seen these shenanigans before, usually on the Republican side.

I do admit the possibility that I'm wrong, and I really hope I am. Is it too much though to ask our media to maintain the sort of skepticism one would think is necessary to do their jobs? Instead we get the reaction of naive wonder one would expect from a 6 year old watching a firework display.

The Conspiracy nuts are at it again...

This has them in a tizzy. They seem to think this is proof of the big governmental cover-up, and Bhutto was murdered to protect that cover-up. These people really need a life.

Barack Obama Iowa Caucus Victory Speech