Swamp Elective

    It sure seems like Hilary Clinton wants to be president because she would get that “leader of the free world” title not because she has much interest in helping the citizens of America. Don’t get me wrong I’m not naive enough to believe that anyone gets to be in a position to run for president let alone win the presidency without doing some pretty fine contortions of beliefs and dare I say ethics. But what the Obama flap this week points out is that she’s a bit too tone deaf to maneuver as well as her husband did. She’s a bit ham-fisted about wielding her power and that is what critics tie the “unlikable’ label to. Meanwhile, Obama has star-power and charisma; are they the ultimate test of a good president? No, but they are more essential than policy wonks will let on.  If John F. Kennedy had not been killed in his first term it would have been interesting to see how long the Camelot thing could have played out. The Civil Rights struggle would have been a different animal had he been at the helm rather than LBJ and if Vietnam had blown up in his face as it was bound to there would be no chance at being the Elvis of Pennsylvania Avenue. Keep in mind that I grew up on Cape Cod and what I'm saying would be considered sacrilegious.

    But what Barrack Obama did at the Democratic National Convention was appeal to people vision of change, whatever that might look like to you, see that it is possible to change your world imagine it better. Rather than get into the nuts and bolts of how to put a man on the moon I’m standing here and telling you “we will do it, are you with me?” That’s powerful stuff and certainly worth the price of admission.

For the first time in my life I have seen all five of the pictures nominated for best picture. I just completed “Letters from Iwo Jima” last night, which is fairly ridiculous since I was a member of the SAG nominating committee this year and have had most of the screeners since Christmas.

         That being said I think that “The Departed” will win because of the debt owed to Martin Scorsese. Though we will never know, I will bet that this years distribution of votes will be more even than it has been in years and that the winning film gets about 50 more votes than the one that comes in second. All five pictures have a decent shot and I think they will cancel each other out there is no run away hit or front runner.

         I really liked “The Departed” but felt like it was a little too long and I thought there were too many plot points hung on cell phone stuff it’s not a big thing but if I were just reading the script I would suggest that you change some of them.

         “Babel” was a good film but I didn’t think a great film. Plus it had the same latticework of coincidence structure, as “Crash” that’s a little too convenient for anything but allegory sake.

         “Little Miss Sunshine” was pretty predictable in the independent quirky film formula. But funny with some really great performances Steve Carell is dry and hysterical, Alan Arkin is awesome, and Toni Collette deserved a best supporting actress nomination.

         “The Queen” could win too, Helen Mirren is one of my favorite people of all time if it’s wrong to have a crush on her than who wants to be right and her performance is brilliant. But I think the subject matter is a bit too distant for most American voters and that will work against it.

         As for the afore mentioned “Letters from Iwo Jima” it will never cease to amaze me the number of brave men willing to kill themselves for a stupid idea. Even for good ideas   human sacrifice seems to be inefficient and pointless. I guess I figured out the theme. Kazunari Ninomiya was really good in this one. 

    The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today that Guantanamo Bay detainees have no standing in U.S. courts. Why does this not upset more people? One of the reasons that dictators like Idi Amin and Joseph Stalin were evil was their ability to disappear people. The United States seems to stand for the proposition that if you can see through the cyclone fence (In a territory you control but is not on U.S. soil) then they are not gone and that five years in prison for being a suspect in a time when Americans are very scared of people who look like you is reasonable. I am sure that some of the men being held have many unpaid parking tickets, overdue books, and even moving violations I’ll bet a fair number of them are even terrorist. But five years without proving your case one way or the other makes a mockery of a nation that respects the rule of law.

Archeologists at the University of Calgary discovered that Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300 years ago. Meaning that current Chimp populations are twice as intelligent as the people who deny evolution.

Scientists using topographical data from a European probe orbiting Mars have made new “hiking” maps of the Red Planet. They warn, however, to keep your hikes short, as the average daily temperature is 470 degrees.

Bush administration negotiators have worked non-stop in 6 nations talks with North Korea to get Pyongyang to agree to Nuclear Arms terms they themselves threw out 5 years ago.

Sen. John McCain and Gov. Mitt Romney are wooing the evangelical Christian vote while they both candidates are anti abortion Romney claims that evolution should not be taught to children and McCain countered that reading was a tool of Islamo-facists.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach sent an open letter to Britney spears warning her that her behavior might permanently scar her children to which Spears replied, “What’s a Rabbi?”

Several prominent reporters took the stand this week in the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial. Robert Novac, the man who first published Valerie Plame’s name was so nervous on the stand that he blinked and his hear rate was nearly twice a minute.

A judge in San Francisco ruled that banning members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement from marching in the Chinese New Years parade did not constitute discrimination. Organizers asked the group not to march when they found out Falun Gong is an ancient Chinese word for Scientology.

An Air Force drill sergeant who posed nude for Playboy magazine has been removed from active duty. After hearing the news over half of the soldiers stationed in Iraq offered to pose nude for Playboy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that the United States was not looking for an excuse to attack Iran though if you have any there is a toll free 24-hour hot line you can call: 1-800-End-Time.

Britney Spears spent less than a day in an exclusive re-hab in Antigua. According to friends she’s still drinking but no longer gay.

Britney Spears had her head shaved when she accidentally passed out after asking a hair stylist she though was a decorator, “make the carpet match the drapes.”  

Scientists are reporting that 2006 was a relatively dull year for shark attacks, citing only 4 lethal encounters in the annual shark attack census Tuesday. Experts believe the "dull year" is attributed to climate changes, breeding patterns, and the fact that Steve Irwin is already dead.

About 1000 cats and dogs had to be euthanized this week at an animal shelter in Las Vegas. The animals were killed after they finished their shifts at Circus-Circus.

At the Westminster Kennel Club dog show Tuesday, English springer spaniel Diamond Jim was named best in show, beating out, among others, a terrier co-owned by Bill Cosby. Cosby’s dog was disqualified for smoking and playing poker. (On velvet)

MTV announced this week that it was firing 250 employees. Parent company Viacom decided on the cuts after discovering that many of MTV's employees had been with the company long enough to turn 30.

    Is it a bad thing that I think Britney Spears shaving her head is almost the coolest thing ever? I don’t think it contradicts my positions on Anna Nicole Smith and Andy Dick I think everyone has to find there own depths of hell and if you have the imagination and cash money to check in and out of an Antigua rehab and then do the head shaving thing with a tattoo chaser, you know for the whole permanent reminder of your vacation in Hades, all in 24 hours! Wow, you’ve got my vote.        

    Plus, I shaved my head the night before I went to rehab ‘cause I figured I had 28 days to grow it out and my hair was like hay anyway so why not?

    I should also note that I think my friend the beautiful and talented Anna David might be controlling the current news cycle for the soul purpose of selling books! I’m not saying she killed Anna Nicole Smith but she does do work for Fox and her book is from Harper Collins (Owned by News Corp. AKA Fox) and I wouldn’t put it past them. Anna’s book “Party Girl” comes out in June and she’s got a 24/7 hook-up as the expert on out of control chicks- talk about turning lemons into lemonade! (note to self get new poster)

  "The Police" have announced that they are going to go on tour and I’m excited to go see them. My enjoyment of live music is usually tempered by my hatred of huge crowds and disinterest in paying large sums for the stinky bathroom with lines, parking/traffic nightmare, over-expectation driven, teen drunken vomit experience.

    The Police are the exception for me, I saw the "Rolling Stones" Steel Wheels tour from close enough to the stage that when the huge metal dragon on stage spit fire it warmed my face. And that was o.k. but not so great that I had any interest in getting tickets for the last few incarnation of Rolling Stonehenge. But, “The Police?”

     I saw "The Police" at the Orpheum in Boston with 1500 other souls in the first month of their "Zenyatta Mondatta" tour with "The Fleshtones" as the opening act.  That was before "Don't Stand So Close To Me" charted in the U.S. and few of my friends had never heard of the band. I had trouble, in fact, finding someone to buy the second ticket from me. Dan Robb ended up going with me and thanking me profusely later.

    I later saw them with "The Go-Go's" opening for them at the Boston Garden (A fine venue for a hockey fight and shite for a concert) and Sullivan (Now Kraft) Stadium with "The Fixx" and "Flock of Seagulls" for the Synchronicity tour. The concert for Synchronicity was pretty awful but I loved the album. My room-mate freshman year, Paul Graf, had a wide selection of Shalimar, Cameo , and various solo versions of the same artist from Shalimar and Cameo but he also had Synchronicity the one album we could all agree on though we always skipped "Mother" as we just weren't that experimental back then.

    But it was that first trip to Boston to see a band nobody had heard of that would within months become a big deal and stay that way for years to come that cemented their place in my mind as "something special." It's not any one thing that can be translated to another band or another circumstance of growing up or listening to music it's all of those things and something else that creates that feeling and I'm probably going to spend too much money and energy tracking down tickets to a show I'll see with too many other people… and I expect to love every minute of it.  

February 18th will mark the Chinese New Year and ushers in the “year of the boar” nearly assuring that the best documentary Oscar will go to Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth.” 

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has filed tax forms that reveal he spent $380 on his last bid for the Democratic presidential nomination or roughly $2 per vote.

More children and teens are being exposed to online pornography, mostly by accidentally viewing sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet looking for pedophiles to entrap.

John McCain said on Sunday that those that oppose the troop escalation don’t have an alternative plan. The Democrats responded by saying, “Actually we have 37 of them… maybe 38 when the transgender Union steel workers finish theirs.”

Computer maker Apple Inc. has come to a trademark agreement with the Beatles over the Apple name. With the legal wrangling finished the Beatles song catalogue will soon become available for downloads on itunes “provided Yoko Ono stops hanging around the Apple offices for no apparent reason.”

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced his presidential candidacy in his brief speech he mention 9/11 just 3 times he now has to utter the phrase 23,476 times to catch up to record holder George W. Bush.

After 10 years and $1.7 billion the Marine Corps unveiled their newest piece of equipment an amphibious “Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle” the craft breaks down and average of once every 4.5 hours and sometimes veers off course but most shocking; no beer holders.

The Fatah movement, formerly headed by Yassir Arafat, and the recently elected Hamas party have made an historic agreement on a power sharing government in Palestine. The Saudi brokered agreement comes; as such a shock American politicians aren’t quite sure who we hate. 

A new study finds that 1 in every 150 children has autism- much higher than previous reports. Making it a 50-50 chance that your child will be an autistic, obese, gang member.

Sen. John Kerry says he finds it "freeing" to not be a presidential candidate. These days most of the ineffectual things he says go completely unnoticed.

Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria broke the NASA spacewalking record on Thursday as he and another astronaut did maintenance work outside the international space station. Though it should be noted that the previous record holder did it with a chimp while molesting a young boy. HEE-Hee (Cue Billy Jean sting)

    This Scooter Libby trial sure is getting good. My latest favorite part is the testimony of David Addington who is the chief legal advisor to Dick Cheney who is, of course, the Vice President and lord of evil darkness. According to Addington while the White House Press Secretary was proclaiming loudly (they get angry when they have to repeat a lie too many times 'cause the press folks didn’t write it down accurately the first time) that neither Libby nor Karl Rove was involved with exposing Valerie Plame’s identity

            Why are you making these statements?" Addington asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett . "Your boss is the one who wanted" them, Bartlett replied, referring to Cheney. With that, "I shut up," Addington recalled recently for jurors in Libby's CIA leak trial. So this guy is corroborating the whole idea that Dick Cheney set out to intentionally damage an undercover CIA operative who by the way’s area of expertise was (wait for it) Iranian weapons development! It just too bad she’s not a gay linguist with Arabic as a second language then the whole package would be complete.

            What makes the Addington testimony all that much better is that this is the guy who got on "60 Minutes" and defended extraordinary rendition! To paraphrase he said If nice white Americans are scared by strangers it’s ok to take them to random locations and torture them provided they are far enough away that you can pretend it’s not happening. Or won’t get blood on your shoes. And even this guy rolled over on Cheney! Ooops!

    Just in case you have been exploring the polar ice caps and got back late and haven't been exposed to any type of media in the last 48 hours Anna Nicole Smith passed away on Wednesday. And everyone seems to have an opinion and since I'm an everyone too and an everyone with a blog no less. Here’s mine.
    I have to say I feel sorry for Anna Nicole even though most of her woes seemed to be self imposed she wasn’t a mean-spirited person and she seemed honestly perplexed at the way the world worked. The fact that she attracted her share of low-lifes seems to be the by-product of naiveté more than downright stupidity. Though I have to say that on her reality show she demonstrated a coldness and greed that could melt paint and a sense of entitlement to rival any Hollywood starlet. In the end I think she was like a big pretty horse that didn’t have enough common sense to stop leaning against the electric fence. I think I feel most sorry for her 5 month-old daughter who is probably going to grow up in the public spotlight with $150 million which sounds like a recipe for more of the same. Maybe Donald Trump will adopt her?
    The clip that gets shown frequently of her looking really bloated and drunken and unhappy was taken at Spago when I worked there. She was wearing a light blue velour dress and I think some of the footage shows her rolling her ex-husband’s wheelchair. It seems that they have taken a little pity on her and they are showing mostly the Supreme Court stuff. I hope Lindsay Lohan is watching.

    Joe Lieberman is a rancid turd. He has brought delusional weaselism to a new and unprecedented height. His latest idea is a “War on Terror Tax ” Because asking rich people to pay any tax at all is mean and so very unpatriotic and just taking poor people’s children and killing them in foreign countries doesn’t seem to be quite enough, lets charge money for our stupidity. Not only does he not listen to the American public he doesn’t even listen to the other members of the Republican Party. (He’s as independent as my left testicle and almost a wrinkled)  Even John McCain isn’t as pro-Bush as Joe Lieberman No one in the Republican party supports the war more than Uncle Joe I’m beginning to think Karl Rove has some pictures of him with some farm animals and a “slip n’ slide”