Solipsistic

Was "Munich" as Chomsky-esque as I presented it in my initial reactions?

I still think so. The main character Avner (Eric Bana) is slowly ground down by his mission of vengeance. (Spoilers ahead.) He becomes a man without a country. Many of the members of his team are destroyed by their mission, but the warring states survive to fight another day.

Is it fair to say Speilberg feels this way about all nations engaged in violent conflict? Not in light of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers."

Yet, one might use "Munich" as an object lesson in the exploitation of the populace by warring nations.

(I'm not endorsing this particular idea in these observations.)

About the movie--it's a tad muddled, but outstanding. The violence is horrifying, though, and should probably have earned an NC-17.

Just saw the new Speilberg.

A couple of immediate reactions:

Speilberg presents the soldier and citizen as pawns of those with power. Soldiers and citizens are told what to believe in order for the elite to retain power.

And yet terrorism is a real threat.

We just aren't fighting the war correctly.

Wiretapping story gets bigger:

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation...

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

Apparently, TPM was right about data collection.

I was surprised about the corporate cooperation. Of course, you don't have to be Michael Moore to admit that the Bush administration has acted favorably to corporations. You scratch my back...

Steve Chapman, of the Chicago Sun Times, makes some good points:

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation.

Where do old school conservatives stand on our drift toward a police state.

After Saddam's ouster, according to Reuters, Christians are being persecuted more than before his fall.

Didn't see that coming.

Story via Kos.

"Barron's", hardly a bastion of liberalness, speaks up about wiretapping:

Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. President Bush is stretching the power of commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy by indicating that he can order the military and its agencies, such as the National Security Agency, to do whatever furthers the defense of the country from terrorists, regardless of whether actual force is involved.

Surely the "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary eventually will point out what a stretch this is. The most important presidential responsibility under Article II is that he must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes following the requirements of laws that limit executive power. There's not much fidelity in an executive who debates and lobbies Congress to shape a law to his liking and then goes beyond its writ.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law...

Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror.

And the "i" word enters the mainstream.

Josh Marshall echoes his readers and asks why there are fewer post-November 2004 terror alerts?

Ebert, who has had some dubious reviews in the past, gives "The Ringer" a positive review.

Nation's critics, for the most part, don't agree.

Farellys produced the film. In most of their films they have featured handicapped people in prominent roles and they do volunteer work with the handicapped. So do their movies honor or exploit the handicapped?

"The Ringer" has a main character named Jimmy (Johnny Knoxville), which also happens to be the name of the handicapped "South Park" character who doped to improve his performance in the Special Olympics. (It was also in this same episode that Cartman pretended to be handicapped in order to win the Special Olympics. Which is also the plot of "The Ringer." The movie has been on the shelf forever so one wonders if Parker and Stone got wind of the script and scooped the Farellys. And, due to its shelving, whether there is any possible way it could be good.)

In defense of Ebert, tastes can be very individual. (I was one of a handful of critics ("The Mercer Cluster" 1997-2001) who gave Redford's "Legend of Bagger Vance" a positive review.) Sometimes, if you're in the right mood, a movie just works for you. The best a critic can do is give you enough info to decide whether or not you will also enjoy the movie.

Heading out of town for the Christmas weekend. Light blogging to follow.

While at the movies the other day, I saw a preview of Speilberg's newest movie.

It got me thinking about "War of the Worlds" and where it succeeded and failed. (All those complaints about aliens perfecting space travel, but not developing a cure to the common cold are immaterial and pretty geeky. Did the fact that a big gorilla does not exist and that dinosaurs are extinct make "King Kong" bad?)

Speilberg has been terribly successful at exploiting our fears and sense of wonder. With "War of the Worlds," he used an alien invasion to exploit our post 9-11 fears of terrorism--immediate and sudden destruction to our comfortable way of life. That is why the first 2/3rds of the movie were a great success.

And then the aliens show up at the farm house. The movie runs out of steam. We get retreads of "Jurassic Park" and "The Abyss." It's as if Speilberg ran out of inspiration. (Although when Cruise confronts the Tim Robbins character, the movie temporarily regains its footing.)

The movie uses the fantastical--an alien invasion--to explore the immediate--fears of terrorism. It asks what would you do if your whole way of life was destroyed? How far would you go to protect your family? Would you abandon fellow citizens in need? Would you murder?

The movie was excellent to a point and almost a classic.

Pretty funny.

The court is not amused with Padilla game.

Is war on terror in part an attempt to expand the power of the executive branch permanently?

Not surprisingly, some Republicans are beginning to turn against the president.

I don't know how any big government phobic Conservatives cannot be disgusted by the eavesdropping. I don't know how Libertarians did not abandon him sooner.

A sampling of the reaction:

Chuck Hagel

A doctor with a website

Conservatives bewildered by other conservatives

Can Mel Gibson grab audiences with an epic film where the only dialogue is subtitled Yucatec?

Touchstone is planning on making it a summer tent pole release.

Predictions?

Amazing and a great escape.

Did anyone else find the beginning a little too long, though, and the CGI a bit distracting at times?

Charles Burns "Black Hole" is one of the most haunting and disturbing books I've read in a long time. This graphic novel, recently profiled on NPR's Diane Rehm show, is unsettling, weird, and very compelling.

Burns, who is the permmanent illustrator of "Believer" magazine, works in just black and white and the effect is transfixing. The book uses the story of body-altering communicable disease as a cipher for teenage alienation.

Unforgettable, but not for the squeamish.

Or as some of you American readers may know it, "Melinda and Melinda."

Just saw the above Woody Allen pic on video last night. Very happy to see Wallace Shawn settling into his "My Dinner with Andre" role again--that of the impassioned conversationalist. Unfortunately, he is only on screen for about five minutes.

He tells the comic tale of a young woman named Melinda. His friend takes up the task of telling the story of Melinda, with many of the same plot points, but as a tragedy.

The movie is more of an exercise than a compelling narrative.

Will Ferrell is bleah as the Woody Allen stand-in.

Interesting. Forgettable.

Josh Marshall hypothesizes about technology being used in president's warrantless searches.

Clinton and Carter did not authorize warrantless searaches of American citizens.

Try again.

Bush has implied that Congress advised and consented in allowing eavesdropping.

What actually happened?

A few congressmen knew about it, but had to keep their mouths shut.

From MSNBC:

As a member of the so-called “gang of four” which includes the top Republican and Democrat of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Rockefeller was one of four members of Congress who received those briefings. The group can be summoned to the White House on short notice to be advised on the most sensitive intelligence information or plans for covert operations. It is safe to assume that if the United States is, in fact, operating secret prisons overseas, these four know plenty about them.

But membership also has its burdens. The "gang" — Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Democrats Rockefeller and Rep. Jane Harman of California — is virtually gagged from discussing anything from meetings with anyone outside the group — not even other senators, staffers or lawyers with security clearance on the intelligence committees. “You can't discuss it with anybody as long as you live,” Rockefeller said Monday.

And for Rockefeller and Harmon, the senior Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, respectively, membership can be even more problematic. If they want to object to anything the administration is doing, they're forbidden from doing so publicly.

That was the case with Rockefeller until Monday. He'd informed the administration he had concerns and was suspicious of the NSA program, but he had no recourse to stop it from going forward and he couldn't go public. “I wasn't going to say anything until the president starting talking about it so openly,” he said.

In laying out his case for the NSA's domestic wire tapping on Saturday, Bush told the nation, “Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.” Questioned about whether executive power had run amok at Monday’s presidential news conference, an irritated Bush replied, “We're talking to Congress all the time, and on this program, to suggest there's unchecked power is not listening to what I'm telling you. I'm telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times.”

Rockefeller was annoyed. “They're just saying we're all briefed and informed and they implied implicit consent and all the rest of that and it's totally untrue,” he recounted outside the Senate chamber after Bush's news conference. He said the impression the administration was leaving was “totally phony.”

Via a heads up from Daily Kos.

Apparently whatever is done in the name of fighting Al Qaeda is OK.

Be afraid.

From a Gonzales press conference today, via Atrios:

QUESTION: Attorney General Gonzales, if the Senate does not reauthorize this provision for the Patriot Act, does the president have the authority under Article 2 and the authorization of use of force to give the go-ahead for these procedures on his own?

GONZALES: What I will say is we continue to have hope that these provisions will be reauthorized.

To the extent that they're not reauthorized, we will look at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies throughout the government to see what authorities do exist. And we will do what we can do under existing authorities to continue to protect America.

Remember the playsets heavily advertised at Christmastime.

The following story recalls those toys:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.

Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."

This Duke team is looking pretty good. Redick scores 30 and Paulus has a Duke freshman record 15 rebounds.

Who will be their major challengers as the season progesses?

According to Byron York at National Review Online:

People familiar with the process say the problem is not so much with the court itself as with the process required to bring a case before the court. "It takes days, sometimes weeks, to get the application for FISA together," says one source. "It's not so much that the court doesn't grant them quickly, it's that it takes a long time to get to the court. Even after the Patriot Act, it's still a very cumbersome process. It is not built for speed, it is not built to be efficient. It is built with an eye to keeping [investigators] in check." And even though the attorney general has the authority in some cases to undertake surveillance immediately, and then seek an emergency warrant, that process is just as cumbersome as the normal way of doing things.

If this is true, why not build a better court?

Bush continued to claim this morning that it was necessary to eavesdrop on foreign communications at will due to expediency. We know that this claim does not make much sense though.

Could Bush need to bypass FISA because they are not accomodating? Apparenty, not.

So what is going on?

I don't buy into this claim yet, but wanted to share it to let folks know what is being considered by part of the blogosphere.

Weird, huh?

Decision was probably made due to the great box office of "Super Size Me."

Great book--got me off fast food for a few months--, but wonder how they will translate Schlosser's expose to the big screen.

Here's more.

Watched the above David Lynch movie this week. Man was it creepy. Robert Blake makes for a truly evil villain. (Given Blake's legal trouble, Lynch proved prescient in his casting.) Good companion piece to "Mulholland Drive."

Unfortunately, the movie also plays like a Showtime after dark staple and this makes some of it pretty silly.

As with most Lynch, if you view it as a nightmare rather than as a coherent narrative, it will be much more interesting viewing.

Josh Marshall asks a very important question about the Bush NSA story:

If FISA already existed, why did Bush need to supersede courts for expediency's sake?

This story will probably prove to be much more complicated in the weeks to come.

James Skillen, director of the Center for Public Justice, offers up this piece about the Iraqi War:

Ask yourself just one question. During all the argument over the past three weeks about whether U.S. forces should leave Iraq quickly or stay the course, why was there so little reference to the upcoming Iraqi elections on December 15?

President Bush says American troops will stand down when Iraqi forces are ready to stand up. But what is the relation between military forces (whether theirs or ours) and the future Iraqi government? Can Iraqi forces be made ready to take over even if a stable Iraqi government doesn't materialize after December 15? On the other hand, if Iraqis do elect a government on December 15, will it really be governing Iraq if American forces, under U.S. command, are still required for many more years?

At the beginning, the American military intervention in Iraq aimed to overcome Saddam Hussein's imminent threat to the security of the United States and Iraq's neighbors. Then it became a war to liberate the Iraqi people from an oppressive dictator. And then it became a war to bring democracy to Iraq and the wider region. Yet on those terms, once Hussein was gone and a new constitution and transition government were in place, what enemy was left for the American military to fight?

The enemy that still exists, we hear, is the Sunni terrorist insurgency within Iraq itself, along with some anti-American jihadists coming in from outside Iraq. However, as even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and American commanders now state publicly, that enemy cannot be defeated by American military forces. But then the question again: what "war" is the American military now fighting?

This is where the remaining words and phrases we have grown so accustomed to using over the past three years become more and more slippery. The so-called "Iraqi forces" in the now "liberated" Iraq, which is about to certify its "democracy" with elections on December 15, may be a mirage. The military and police forces that the American military is trying to train in Iraq come from, and are primarily dedicated to, Shiite, Kurdish, and Sunni communities. Many, in fact, are tied to, if not directly representative of, militias in those regions. In that respect, there is not an independent "Iraqi force," like our American military, under the firm control of a national government and independent of all local governments.

Furthermore, those diverse forces in Iraq closely align with the new constitutional order of the country, an order that, above all, solidifies the independence and autonomy of Shiite and Kurdish regions. The Iraqi constitution is far weaker than the American Articles of Confederation that failed our culturally homogeneous colonies after 1776.

This is why the "war" in Iraq is so disconnected from the upcoming elections and vice versa. If the elections are successful, in the same way that the passage of the constitution was successful, the not-yet-unified country of Iraq will be dominated by a Shiite majority. That majority will respect and largely ignore the Kurds, who will govern themselves. And it will either succeed in putting the Sunni minority in its place or will have to fight that minority if enough Sunni factions continue their terrorist insurgency. If the elections are unsuccessful, it will simply mean that the civil war has already begun.

This is why the main planning now being done in Washington is for the exit of American forces rather than for an expanded program of nation building. Within the framework of American policy our military no longer faces an enemy it can defeat, and nation building was never part of our plan. I just hope that the sad moment will never come when Americans are willing to accept the post-exit explanation that after our forces "liberated" and brought "democracy" to Iraq, the "Iraqi people" apparently did not want to keep it.

A few really strong bits last night. Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell's Narnia and cupcake rap right up there with Taco Town as year's best segments.

First skit about Sbarro was pretty horrible. Maybe GE bought the pizzeria and was giving it some exposure.

Also dug Neil Young's barely comprehensible line reading as druggie Appalachian.

The Center for Public Justice puts out a regular column called Capital Commentary on their website. The Center "seeks to do justice from a Christian-democratic perspective by recognizing different religions and points of view and keeping the public square open to people of all or no faiths."

Their work is consistently outstanding and today I'm sharing two of their columns.

First, from Steven E. Meyer, professor at the National Defense University, concerning pre-war intelligence:

There has been a lot of controversy about the role of intelligence in the Bush administration's decision to attack Iraq. How can we fairly assess how the administration used intelligence?

A few ground rules. First, there is no one-to-one relationship between intelligence and policy formation. Policymakers do what they want with intelligence. In formulating policy they can—and do—accept, ignore, or change it. That is their legal right.

Second, intelligence is routinely "politicized." In other words, it is quite common for policymakers to influence intelligence while it is being collected and usually before it is converted into finished intelligence. This is done almost always to shape intelligence to support a predetermined policy position.

Third, the intelligence community is highly fractured. The United States has 15 separate intelligence organizations and often, but not always, they do not coordinate with each other. In part, this is due to the fact that intelligence organizations focus on different types of intelligence. Consequently, policymakers often can find intelligence to "support" almost any policy they favor. Reforms, focused on the creation of a Director of National Intelligence, are intended to heal these schisms, but so far they are not proving to be very successful.

Fourth, in a democracy it is extremely difficult to keep secrets. It is not uncommon for an administration to leak classified information in order to affect a situation. Classified intelligence is also often released by the media as part of the citizens' "right to know." It is illegal for government officials to release classified information, but it is not illegal for the media to do so.

Finally, an administration is free to set up any intelligence unit it wants in order to handle, interpret, or even create intelligence. For example, the Bush administration established the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to make sure there was sufficient "intelligence" to support a decision to go to war.

So, what role did intelligence play in the decision of the Bush administration to invade Iraq? First and foremost, many officials in the Bush administration believed for many years that Saddam Hussein had to be removed. Once they attained power, these officials—now in a position to act—were determined to change the face of the Middle East, starting with Iraq. From the very beginning, intelligence was intended to support the basic conviction that Saddam Hussein had to go. The near hysteria caused by the attacks of September 11, 2001 significantly bolstered the position of these officials.

We know now that much of the intelligence that was gathered was misleading and downright wrong. But, there was enough intelligence being produced by the intelligence community that could be used to support the administration's position. Does this constitute an intelligence failure? Yes, in part, because much of the intelligence community itself bought into the faulty intelligence and was all too ready to pass it to an administration that was eager to jump on any information that could be used to justify its policy.

However, there were several parts of the intelligence community that dissented from the prevailing view to create more than reasonable doubt. For example, the State and Energy departments and some sections of CIA and Britain's M16 dissented from the prevailing views. The administration—as well as much of Congress—knew about these dissents, but those who were determined to go to war ignored, dismissed, or denied them.

In the final analysis, a "perfect storm" of misleading intelligence and policy preemption by the Bush administration made war almost inevitable.

Hilarious.

Not according to a report commissioned by Dianne Feinstein from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. Bush and Co. in addition to the entire right-wing talk radio machine have insisted that Congress had access to all the same intelligence he did leading up to Iraq War.

From the report:

Congressional Access to Intelligence Information Not Routinely Provided in Four Areas

The executive branch generally does not routinely share with Congress four general types of intelligence information:

the identities of intelligence sources;

the "methods" employed by the Intelligence Community in collecting and analyzing intelligence;

"raw" intelligence, which can be unevaluated or "lightly" evaluated intelligence, (18) which in the case of human intelligence (19) sometimes is provided by a single source, but which also could consist of intelligence derived from multiple sources when signals (20) and imagery (21) collection methods are employed; and,

certain written intelligence products tailored to the specific needs of the President and other high-level executive branch policymakers. Included in the last category is the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a written intelligence product which is briefed daily to the President, and which consists of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics. (22) The PDB emphasizes current intelligence (23) and is viewed as highly sensitive, in part, because it can contain intelligence source and operational information. Its dissemination is thus limited to the President and a small number of presidentially-designated senior administration policymakers. (24)

We should be all about encouraging due diligence on the part of the White House when it comes to stopping terrorism. And yet, we as citizens must be diligent in protecting our civil liberties. Congress should be a means by which this is accomplished. The Bush administration, though, found this to be inconvenient when it authorized the NSA to eavesdrop without a warrant on Americans suspected of terrorism.

From the NY Times today:

President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.


Good to know what civil liberties stay and go is being decided by a handful of men in private. Good on 'ya White House!

After seeing the recent movie adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice," I had a desire to finally read the book that has inspired so many films.

I was not disappointed.

There is a bit of a hesitance for a sports-loving, action movie-watching male such as myself to even tackle Austen. One can easily pigeonhole her works as chick-lit and never attempt to engage Austen's female-centric comedies.

Forget your predjudices. If you love literature--particularly of the 19th century--then there is no reason not to try "Pride and Predjudice." The book did take me longer to read than I expected due to some of Austen's phrasing being foreign to my modern ear.

It was funny and at times cruel to its characters. (One could see Austen as an indirect influence on director Todd Solondz, although Austen redeems some of her cast). It is even exciting and a page turner as we await the fate of the headstrong hero Elizabeth Bennet.

Highly reccommended. Which, given its classic status, is a redundant praise. I'll offer it anyway.

Johnson's Shut-Ins, a popular Missouri state park--a favorite of my wife and me--was flooded yesterday when a nearby reservoir broke. The park supervisor's family was caught up in the flood and his children are in the hospital.

The one upside to the story is that the accident occurred in the winter when there were few visitors.

Delay prosecutor investigating our governor?

Arrested Development lives?

A hilarious reminder, from August J. Pollak, of Bill O'Reilly's awful--and quite graphic--prose from his novel "Those Who Trespass."

From the AP:

The AP analysis of government pollution, health and census data found that blacks are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial air pollution is suspected of causing the most health problems.

Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution health risk also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.

As a Saint Louis city resident who daily breathes questionable air, I'm not too shocked.

What do you call yellow journalism for the red states?

Orange journalism. This about sums up the Fox News continual war on Christmas alerts.

Former Fox news producer explains ins and outs of Fox News creation, particularly in the ongiong war against Christmas.

Christmas cancelled.

And a new Jackie Harvey.

Capt. Kirk to be resurrected?

Read on...

Just finished listening to George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant." Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, says that the reason conservatives often win the national debate is because they have learned how to successfully frame the discussion.

Tax cuts and service cuts become "tax relief."

The estate tax becomes the "death tax."

And this framing works. The way to combat this is to create our own frames not to argue against theirs. Instead of using the phrase "tax relief" when debating against it, try talking about paying taxes as "paying your way." (That was my own ham-fisted attempt, but you get the idea.)

Very informative and will be putting framing to work for myself.

See Lakoff's work at Rockridge Institute.

The movie has been getting insane reviews.

Can't wait.

After today, I have four days left at my job. Soon I will begin the life of a full time student.

More blogging to follow.

Cutting taxes is not about relieving poor Americans of tax burdens. It is about "starving the beast." It is about "service cuts" as Thomas Friedman has pointed out.

Cutting services should not be framed as tax relief. This a fundamentally dishonest tactic being pursued by the party of values. If they want to argue about the government as a social service provider then let's do it out in the open. Quit trying to trojan horse the American people.

Thank goodness many Americans saw through the attempts to "save" Social Security.

Saw "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" this weekend.

A very enjoyable movie. Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy, practically steals the movie as the wide-eyed true believer and youngest of the Pevensie clan.

Interesting to note how much foreshadowing is made to "The Last Battle," the final, and most difficult, Narnia installment.

Bush once again this week pushed his fly-paper theory for the war in Iraq--get 'em over there before they can get us here.

This argument, as dissected by countless others, is ridiculous for several reasons:

A)It assumes there are X number of terrorists all who have the ultimate goal of striking the US.

B)Therefore, there is a finite number of terrorists who we are distracting and destroying in Iraq.

C)By distracting them, they cannot get around to their real target.

D)It also assumes that our actions in Iraq are not creating new terrorists. (Are our actions inherently wrong because they are creating new terrorists? No.) But if we are creating more terrorists, then the fly-paper theory won't cut it unless we want perpetual war in Iraq.

E)Fly-paper theory also seems to assume that Iraqi insurgents=World Trade Center bombers.

This argument just strikes me as silly and a bone to toss the last true believers.

If you need reminding why liberals detest the president, here's an oldie, but goodie.