Bosom Buddies?
Hilary Clinton. Tom Delay. The embodiment of ying and yang in Washington. But, apparently, they both have a personal commitment to correcting the horrors of the foster care system in this country. Here's a joint interview they gave about their upcoming initiatives after they hosted a screening of Antwone Fisher.

Side note: things like this serve to remind those of us on the progressive left that, quite often, our ideological opponents have their hearts, if not their minds, in the right place.

God's Country
Here is a great editorial from Time magazine that says people support the idea of war in Iraq because it's been couched in these dualistic, good vs. evil terms. After all, who doesn't want to "fight evil"? But, somehow, the concept of war is comforting to a population that feels like it's under seige, and I don't just mean from terrorism either.

Favorite quote:"The identification of cross and flag after Sept. 11 needs to be called what it is: idolatry."

Memo From The Boss
Recent Grammy nominee Bruce Springsteen pontificates here in Entertainment Weekly about a bunch of stuff. I was looking for his comments on his latest album, 'The Rising', and it's 9/11 reflections, but I was most intruigued by his thoughts about the creative process, and how it changes and evolves over decades of being an active artist. Very kewl.

Clothes Make The Man
Here's a follow-up to an earlier Macroscope post, following the Army's drive, in conjunction with MIT, to use nanotechnology in the implementation of smart uniforms for the new millenium soldier. In theory, these uniforms will do everything from deflecting bullets, dressing wounds, defending against bio weapons, and boost physical prowess.

Nuke: The Next Generation
Since, apparently, ICBMs are just so yesterday, President Bush has authorized the military to find new, more exciting ways to kill people with nuclear fission, which would, of course, be a violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. See what the BBC has to say about this, and ponder just how many more treaties are their left in the world for Bush & Co. to break..

Movie/Music Collision Quote of the Day

"You can even tell that muthaf---in' Jesse Jackson/ Pay your child support/ Keep your payments up/ Put a rubber on"


- Ice Cube, on the new Westside Connection album, responding to Rev. Jackson's criticism of Barbershop. Somewhere along the way, Cube also manages to take shot at Samuel L. Jackson, too, for complaining about rappers-turned-actors.

I miss this Ice Cube. Now if only he had something to say about Iraq....

Manipulative Restatement of the Day

"If only I wasn't Black. Then people would stop sweating me for contributing to the cultural erosion of the Black community, the further objectification of Black women, and increased demonization of young Black men while I'm lining my pockets. It's SO unfair!"

- my shamelessly manipulative paraphrasing of a lament from BET founder Robert Johnson over the difficulties he faces in his career, from an article found in today's L.A. Times.

"Why isn't anybody saying anything?!?!?"
Here's a speech from Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVa), castigating the Bush administration for recklessly pushing the entire world community to the edge of collapse, both militarily & financially, and the Senate for saying absolutely nothing about it.

Truly Patriotic Quote of the Day

"The president is not a king."

- John Bonifaz, the lawyer representing a group of American soldiers, parents of soldiers, as well as Congressmen John Conyers, D-Mich, Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.; Jim McDermott, D-Wash.; Jose Serrano, D-N.Y.; and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas who've filled a Federal lawsuit against President Bush and Sec. Rumsfeld. The suit states that the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq is unconstitutional and that the deployment of American soldiers without a congressional declaration of war is illegal.

I find myself reminded of Cassius's plea to Brutus, both members of the Roman senate, as Caesar is contemplating making himself king and replacing the Republic, from Shakespeare:

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

It's about time somebody tried to do something about this.

The State of the World
I haven't fully digested exactly WHAT the World Economic Forum is, but anytime you put Bill Clinton, John Ashcroft, Bill Gates, the heads of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Sony International & Goldman Sachs, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury in the same room, it's probably in your best interests to know what they're talking about. Here's the POV from a proverbial fly on the wall, and the view ain't pretty.

Escape from L.A.
C.I.A. director George Tenet just confirmed that the North Koreans have the ability, as of right now, to drop a nuke on the West Coast of the United States.

And I can say, right here, right now, in this moment, I became afraid.

I mean, afraid that there is a very real nuclear crisis blowing up in our faces that the President is just hoping will go away so he can go kill a dictator for Daddy. I'm afraid that they're stubborn arrogance to deal with the North Koreans could result in a disaster of unspeakable proportions, and not just because yours truly would get vaporized in the first salvo. After all, if the North Koreans start going nuclear, and we respond in kind, don't you think those itchy trigger fingers in Pakistan & India are going to start scratching?

You'll have to excuse me while I start making my peace with my maker.

Hollywood Shuffle Quote of the Day

"Hey, Shaun, get those eyes bugging. That's the money shot."

- John Bowman, executive producer of "Cedric the Entertainer Presents", said to one of the show's performers.

Yes, this bothers me alot. But, on the other hand, that "The White Man's Holding Me Down" skit is hi-la-ri-ous.

Meteorology
Micah Wright is a former Army Ranger who now makes his living writing, among other things, the comic Stormwatch: Team Achilles, which details the exploits of an elite group of very-human military operatives who are funded by the UN to beat the snot out of any and all super-humans (heroes, villains, mascots, whatever) who make life difficult for the rest of the population. Fun stuff.

However, in his spare time, Micah is a VERY vocal opponent of the Bush Administration's foreign policy towards Iraq, as evidenced by the series of faux-propaganda posters he's created and selling on the web to highlight the lunacy of the impending war. Here's an excerpt from his Delphi web forum where he lays out in broad detail what he thinks is and is not an appropriate application of the most awesome military force in the history of mankind.