Deals With The Devil
According to the Asian Times, as the anti-American guerilla war has escalated in Afghanistan, coalition forces have quietly begun a dialogue with The Taliban-

Excuse me. Let me say that again.

The United States of of America
is negotiating
with
The Taliban.

-to give them a hand in maintaining and restoring order. And, not surprisingly, Mullah Omar and the boys are playing hard to get.

See, this is what happens when you're willing to do anything to achieve your ends: You end up in bed with anybody.

Revisionist History
Remember former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney? The official story is that she accused President Bush on the floor of the House of Representatives of having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and doing nothing to stop them so he could enrich his corporate masters. Rep. McKinney was lambasted in the press for being a conspiracy nut and she was promptly defeated for re-election in 2002.

The problem with this story, according to Greg Palast, is that there is no evidence of any such statement by Rep. McKinney in the Congressional Record. Anywhere.

What she DID ask, however, was why had the White House discouraged the FBI from investigating links between the Saudi royal family and an Islamic youth group that was suspected of being a front for Al Qaeda in the months BEFORE September 11, 2001? Rep. McKinney had also been poking around into the particulars of race-based election fraud during the 2000 Presidential Race. She'd also been asking questions regarding George H.W. Bush's business dealings.

Check the article. It just gets better and better.

Fading Light
So, The American Film Institute is my most recent alma mater ("Old Nassau" and the Gilman School notwithstanding). And, as much affection that I have and as much gratitude as I feel towards that institution, I must agree with this commentary from Patrick Goldstein in the L.A. Times that AFI does seem to have lost it's way in recent years. By losing it's tether to the National Endowment for the Arts, AFI seems really to be in danger of losing itself in the blinding light of celebrity worship instead of fulfilling its stated mission of promoting and celebrating the art of moviemaking in America.

Storytelling matters.

Not just who tells those stories, but HOW those stories are told, and WHY they are told. This is why we need places like AFI. Someone needs to make a point of remembering "how" and "why" for civilization to move forward. Otherwise, we simply undergo the same lessons over and over and over again.

The Hate That Hate Made
Hamas is a terrorist organization.

And, regardless of what you may think of the policies of the Israeli government, it doesn't change the fact that Hamas is directly responsible for the murder of hundreds if innocent Israeli civilians and has done more than their share to propagate a culture of death in the Middle East by recruiting, arming, supporting, and celebrating suicide bombers.

However, comparisons between Hamas and Al Qaeda are extremely limited. for one thing, Al Qaeda doesn't run any schools. They don't feed the hungry or give shelter to the homeless. In many ways, Hamas is a twisted, nightmare version of what the Black Panther Party could have become if things had gone down only slightly differently here in the United States. Which makes them a particularly nasty obstacle to peace in the region. After all they've done for the people, they probably have more legitimacy than Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in many circles. And Hamas has stated repeatedly that their mission isn't complete until they've pushed the Israelis completely off their land and into the Mediterranean, if necessary.

Originally, I was for the idea of sending in US troops or UN peacekeepers or somebody with a little more muscle than the Palestinian Authority to deal with Hamas, but, in retrospect, that could turn into the Tet Offensive overnight. Now, I'm not sure. Which, I suppose, puts me in good company.

Here's something from the International Herald Tribune that expounds upon the schizoid history of Hamas.

Next In Line?
Grant did it. Ike did it. Can Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO & Rhodes Scholar, follow in their footsteps to the White House? Frankly, if this guy runs, he's instantly a threat to the President because NO ONE can trump his foreign policy credentials. He's someone who can speak with authority about what Bush is not doing to keep this country safe.

So, for those of you keeping score, the candidates to watch, IMHO, are Dean, Edwards, and, if he gets into it, Clark.

And these people keep talking about the junior senator from New York. They need to let it go. If you think Bush/Gore was divisive, Clinton/Bush II would be a bloodbath. It would literally rip the country in half. She's not that stupid. There are better ways for her to undermine the Bush agenda.

Ghosts of Impeachments Past
A guy who's no stranger to Presidential malfeasance, former Nixon staffer John Dean suggests that, if Clinton can get impeached for lying about some illicit fellatio, and Tricky Dick can nearly get impeached for lying about election tampering, then maybe, just maybe, lying to justify invading and conquering a sovereign nation might be worth a look.

The problem with this, of course, is that none of Bush's statements were made under oath. And lying to the American people, while bad, probably isn't illegal, strictly speaking. If, on the other hand, someone could demonstrate that there was some sort of illicit link between the corporations that got free contracts in Iraq and Bush's drive to war, then we might be on to something.

Like Father, Like Son
In what has to be a first in modern American history, President Bush has managed to steer the economy into the highest rate of unemployment since his father was in office, pretty much erasing all the jobs that Bill Clinton helped to create during the intervening decade.

Way to go, W.

"Bastards!!!"
Hans Blix curses the Pentagon for sullying his good name in the march to war. You tell 'em, Sweden!

Unloaded
The national censorship board in Egypt has banned The Matrix Reloaded for fear that it's quasi-religious explorations into the nature of creation, existance, and free will may, in their words, "cause a crisis" in the public. They apparently don't seem to realize that the people who may have their fragile grip on reality shattered by the Wachowski's flick will only see this act of censorship as control put in place by malevolent sentient programs designed to keep the populace docile while leaching off their bioelectric energy. Some people.

Picking Up The Pieces
So, imagine for a moment, that Todd Beamer & Co. had failed in their bid to crash United Airlines Flight 93 into a deserted field on the morning of September 11, 2001. Reports differ on whether the intended target was the White House or The Capitol Building.

Well, my well-known bias against the current Chief Executive aside, crashing into the Capitol would be far, far more damaging to this country. Consider this: Assuming the President & Vice President were cooling their heels, kicking back a few pretzels in the Oval Office mere seconds before being vaporized by a divebombing jumbo jet, the Constitution is designed so that a new Commander-in-Chief can be quickly sworn in and put in charge ("welcome to the White House, President Hastert."). Quick and easy.

If, however, fire from the sky reduced the Senate & the House of Representatives to a pile of ashes, who replaces them? The Senate seats can be filled by an appointment from the governors of their respective states, but there is no such provision for the House. Special elections will take months to establish, and the Constitution, while vague on what actually constitutes a quorum, requires that one exist before the House can act. Did I mention that Congress is the only Federal body that can declare war, let alone appropriate money and pass laws?

Chaos, my friends. And heaven forbid somebody nukes an inauguration, decapitating the entire Federal government.

Here's an essay from The Atlantic Monthly on some folks who are trying to cover our collective rear ends in the event of a Congressional slaughter.

Apollo Creed. Clubber Lang. Ivan Drago. Tommy Gunn. Suge Knight?!?!?!?!?
People forget that Sylvester Stallone has an Oscar. I was a little surprised myself to learn that he wrote the original "Rocky" and took home the little gold man for that achievement. I guess amnesia from the moviegoing public is to be expected after "Rocky V", huh?

But, I am EXTREMELY impressed to hear that he's now getting back into the director's chair to make a film that explores the myriad of stories to be told behind the murders of 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. Stallone will play real-life L.A.P.D. Detective Russell Poole and use his character in much the same manner that Oliver Stone used New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison to tell multiple perspectives of the Kennedy assassination in JFK.

Rumor has it that Sly is even talking to Suge Knight about playing himself in the movie.

What stones. I hope it actually sees the light of day.

Wankstas
This great article from the Village Voice talks about the relationship between gangster rap and the realities of disenfranchised Black men. Here, the author points out that, at least during the heyday of NWA and Co., there was a legitimate crack epidemic and commensurate warfare between rival dealers who saw drug dealing as their only means of achieving the materialist American Dream. But, 10 years later, true crackheads are few & far between, and most disenfranchised brothers are more likely to be dodging child support then bullets. But deadbeat dads are harder to sell to rich white teens who dream of being Black & Cool then the drug dealing cowboy descendents of Nino Brown. Hence, 50 Cent's emergence as the vanguard of the Neo-Gangstas, shrink-wrapped and presold to the MTV audience as the "real thing", while probably outnumbering their real-world counterparts.

On a side note, this also reminds me how much these terms have lost their meaning over the years. "Thug" and "Gangster" used to be a way of indicating that someone had made certain choices in their lives in terms of criminal activities, ruthlessness, social rejection. Today, when bubbble-gum rappers like Ja Rule and Fabulous can call themselves thugs with a straight face, these terms have now devolved into ghetto pronouns, the santized moral equivalent of "nigga" and "ho".

And, ignoring cultural hegemony for just a second, as a writer, I desperately miss the King's English. Maybe one day it will all come full-circle.

A picture's worth a thousand words.

I just don't know what this one is saying.

The Opposite of Bush
Did I mention that my enthusiasm for Howard Dean as a Democratic Presidential candidate grows on a daily basis? Here's another article, this time from New York magazine, that gives some insight into the fomer Vermont Governor's home life. Note the oddly parallel, yet divergent path his life has followed relative to George W. Bush.
Good patrician vs. bad patrician.

Governor Dean (or, "Dr. Dean", if you prefer) will formally announce his candidacy and outline his vision for the country on June 23rd.

For his sake, I hope he talks alot about foreign policy. These days, the majority of the country doesn't seem to really care about anything else.

"Here's ANOTHER fine mess you've gotten me into!!!"
Step One: Assign Blame.

Now that it's becoming more and more apparent that President Bush & Co. manipulated and exaggerated intelligence reports to justify conquering Iraq, the neo-cons have turned to their favorite whipping boy, William Jefferson Clinton, to get them out of this fix. In this article from the L.A. Times, Pentagon officials are now saying that they were simply following the intelligence laid out by Slick Willy's administration.

OK, beyond the fact that this is inching dangerously close to the Nuremberg defense, riddle me this, Batman: Why would anyone start a war over intelligence briefings that are at least two years old from a different President? Is that just bureaucratic laziness?

"It's The Oil, Stupid!"
You know what I love about The Right? They're usually so arrogant that, even when they try to hide the whack things that they've done, they just can't help but brag about it in public.

In the latest case of "Bond Villain Syndrome" from the Bush Administration, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz basically admits that US invaded Iraq and not North Korea because Iraq is "swimming in oil". In a press conference, no less.

Kill The Messenger
In the beginning of the year, when Colin Powell went to the UN to present the case for invading Iraq, I remember thinking several things. The first, how can government officials from various Security Council member nations look at identical intelligence briefings and come up with wildly different conclusions? The fact that this intelligence seems so open to interpretation in and of itself calls it's usefulness as a justification for war into question. Then, I thought, if the US has better info that they're letting on, what possible reason could they have for sitting on it? And lastly, as a tuned in briefly to what Powell was actually saying, I thought "God, isn't he using evidence that was gathered from Iraq ten years ago, before the first batch of UN inspectors went in?"

Well, now it sounds like the Pentagon (i.e. Don Rumsfeld) pushed him to use even shakier intelligence to support the case for war. The fact that Powell merely laments this after the fact brings me back to that whole Harry Belafonte debate from last fall. If you believe in certain things, how can you be a willing participant in the propagation of lies that will cost American and Iraqi lives? Personally, the fact that Powell is Secretary of State matters less to me as time goes on and he demonstrates the content of his character through his association with Bush.

"Role model"? Don't make me laugh.

Fuzzy Math
So, here's a little economics lesson:
What happens when you take in less money while simultaneously spending more money? You go into debt. When the Federal Government runs a debt, they borrow money from the same place you and I do: banks and private citizens (remember those savings bonds you bought?). Except, when the government borrows money, they borrow it in the billions. So, what happens when billions of dollars suddenly disappear from the public space? There's less money that you can borrow for your car, or house, or whatever. And, when there's less of a commodity, the price of it increases. The price of money is interest. So, when the government runs a debt, interest rates go up, and everything else in the world gets more expensive. People have less money to buy things. The economy slumps. People lose their jobs. People, now hungry, proceed to knock other people in the head for money for food. Crime increases.

See how it's all interconnected?

Well, the President would have you believe that, by letting corporations and rich people have tax breaks (thereby shifting the burden of paying for things like blowing up Iraq to the middle and lower class), they'll have more money to spend. Corporations with more money will, presumably, hire more people. Rich people with more money will, presumably, buy things, increasing demand, inspiring business to make more things that rich people want, so they hire more people to help meet the demand.

But let's think about this for a minute: Corporations are required by law to maximize profit for their investors. By incentivizing companies to pay dividends, aren't you increasing the likelihood that these companies will simply turn their extra cash into profit, instead of investing in new employees? Moreover, what do rich people typically do with their money? They invest it in their personal fortunes, i.e. buy things that will make them more money like stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. After all, that's what distinguishes them from poor people. So, they, too, give more cash to corporations to give back to their investors, namely themselves. I suppose the rich go on vacation alot, so that helps tourism. But they don't really eat much more or wear more clothes than they were before. After all, food, clothing, and the like are miniscule expenses compared to the kind of money these folks get back in tax breaks. I also guess the rich by lots of property, possibly for investment, but largely for luxury purposes. My point is that the lion share of that money is never going to make it into the job creating sectors of the economy. It will just ping-pong back and forth between investors and investees, increasing in virtual value simply through the activity of the transaction and making the rich, richer.

So, will this tax cut help the economy? Unlikely. Will it hurt? Well, the federal deficits are already increasing. You do the math.

In the meantime, here's what Michael Kingsley has to say about this mess in Time magazine. Even taken at face value, this dog won't hunt.

Primary Colors
So, for those of you who haven't noticed yet, I'm a nerd.
And one of the things all nerds have in common is a love for public television. Now, I'm not just talking about liking Sesame Street & Mr. Rogers. As wonderful as those shows are, even the most slack-jawed of yokels will have a special place in their hearts for Big Bird. Nerds, on the other hand, get misty-eyed about shows like "The Electric Company" or "3-2-1 Contact". Of course, one of the old nerd standbys on PBS is Levar Burton's "Reading Rainbow", now entering it's 20th year on the air.

Unfortunately, 20 may be the limit for this wonderful literacy stalwart. A tough economy and the changing face of children's television may present a hurdle too high for one of my favorites. See what CNN has to say about it.

Turning On The Gas
Am I surprised that this isn't being reported on any major American news sources? Not at all.

Basically, the military wants to add a Death Row to Camp X-Ray. And, remember, the people being held there get no trial or appeal. How many legitimate American citizens are locked up down there on suspicion alone? No one knows because the Administration won't even release the names of those in custody in the interests of National Security.

Are the allusions to 1939 getting a little clearer now, folks?

"I am NOT a doe-eyed naif!!!!"
Let the propaganda commence. A Canadian movie in pre-production dramatizes the events of September 11, 2001 from the P.O.V. of our fearless leader, which reads more like the script for Air Force One II: The President Strikes Back. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the producer is a former Bush staffer who works on behalf of Karl Rove to counter the pop culture image of G.W.

Classic line from the script: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!"

I suddenly find myself reminded of that routine Eddie Murphy did in Raw, where he & Deney Terrio punch some crazy Italian guy in a club and the dude just laughs - "Come On! That's the way I like it!!!!"

Someone, ANYONE, please shut him up!!!!
At first, I just hung my head in shame when I heard about the whole Jayson Blair/New York Times affair. After all, I knew it was only a matter of time before this pathological liar was used as an excuse to discredit the achievements of all manner of people of color. And, having seen the piece that 60 Minutes did on Stephen Glass, an even bigger pathological liar in the employ of The New Republic who now had a book deal, I felt a touch of sadness that this Black guy was probably going to fall into obscurity and poverty while his White counterpart was going to make a chunk of change for committing identical sins.

Well, any sympathy I may have had for my fellow Marylander, Mr. Blair, I am IMMEDIATELY recinding.

At least Stephen Glass owned up to the fact that he was a liar and had deep rooted emotional problems and that he was responsible for his own downfall, no one else.

Jayson Blair, on the other hand, has the nerve to say that the New York Times was oppressing him, so he choose to get back at them by falsifying news reports because there was no other way to strike back.

Excuse me? The same New York Times that gave him, a college dropout, a full-time staff position with arguably the top newspaper in the country? The same New York Times that, despite his rediculous correction rate, continued to show faith in him through promotions and increasingly high profile assignments?

Moreover, Blair tries to draw allusions between himself and DC sniper Lee Malvo as examples of Black Men who cracked under pressure from "The Man". Pardon me, but Lee Malvo was an impressionable 17 year old kid separated from his family and taken under the wing of a deranged, wife-beating, ex-Army sharpshooter. Jayson Blair is a grown-ass man who was constantly handed opportunities he simply had not earned and squandered them all.

Shall we even get into the fact that Blair claims his downward spiral began when he lost a ficticious cousin in the World Trade Center on September 11th?

Yes, he has emotional problems. Yes, he's a drug addict. But PLEASE, take some responsiblity for yourself and then SHUT THE HELL UP before you do any more damage to the community of Black journalists.

God. As if we didn't have enough problems.

"Gee, maybe they can't find any WMDs in Iraq because THERE AREN'T ANY!"
Hans Blix is slowly coming to a conclusion I figured out after the U.S. Army waltzed through Bagdad without catching a single Scud. "Imminent Threat", huh, George?

The President's New Clothes
Who knew Robert Byrd would be such a convincing Cassandra?

The veracity and power of his speeches and the casualness with which they are dismissed are almost becoming laughable, in a Titus Andronicus "I have no more tears to weep" kind-of-way. Here, Byrd illustrates how virtually everything President Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, & Co. have said to justify invading Iraq has proven to be a lie used to manipulate the public. Even more disturbing to me is the complicity of the national news organizations in the charade. "Discoveries" of possible WMDs are front page news, but when these same items are proven to be harmless & inconclusive, it gets relegated to a tiny byline on the last page of the paper. And I'm not just talking about Fox News. I mean the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, CBS, NBC, etc., etc., etc.

Moreover, the people who are SUPPOSED to be keeping the President honest have just rolled over like a modern day Maginot Line. Or, maybe the more appropriate term is "appeasement".

Tumbling Down The Rabbit Hole
According to this article from The Washington Post, some people in our real world so completely fell for "The Matrix" that they were willing to kill to escape.

Scary.

"I'll get you next time, Gadget. Next time."

Let's observe a moment of silence for the end of the Lake Show.

For now.

Biblical Interpretation Quote of the Day
"I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I have you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it OK to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?"


- fictional President of the United States Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) of "The West Wing", trying to explain to a group of reactionary religious conservatives exactly why we do not and should not live in a theocracy defined by a strict interpretation of the Bible.

Aaron Sorkin's last month on the show reminded me why I used to love it. I mean, who can beat John Goodman as Newt Gingrich?

Loose Lips
Here's the ACLU's report on all the various & sundry ways your President and his supporters have tried to squash dissent for their policies.

Artwork, BTW, is courtesy of Micah Wright's "Propaganda Remix" collection.

Getting Out of Dodge
Proof, once again, that, where there's a will, there's a way. When the Republican majority in the Texas State legislature, allegedly under marching orders from U.S. Congressman Tom Delay, decided to redraw the state's congressional districts to the GOP's advantage, in an off-year, without the benefit of a Federal Census to justify it, Texas Democrats walked out.

Of course, you need a quorum to actually hold the vote, and, while there are enough Republicans to pass the bill, there aren't enough of them for a quorum. And, assuming that the Democrats stay across the state line in Oklahoma, outside the reach of Texas State Police, the time to pass the bill will expire and the measure will die.

Checkmate.

Amazing what you can do when your back is against the wall.

"Hold The Line!"
For once, Senate Democrats have managed not to completely cave in to Right Wing demands by preventing a GOP bid to make the All Seeing Eye Powers given to the Justice Department permanent.

The Dean Effect
Howard Fineman of Newsweek tends to be one of the more thoughtful, less partisan, and less shrill of the political pundits that make the cable circuit. In many ways, I think this is why he's dead on with his analysis of Gov. Howard Dean's position in the Democratic primary.

Having said that, I also think that Bill Schneider of CNN made a contrary, yet still excellent point about the 2004 presidential election on the Charlie Rose show this week and it is this: Each election ultimately comes down to a job interview with the American public, where a given candidate has to make a case as to why they should not just hire him but, when running against an incumbent, why they should fire his opponent. Reagan was the Un-Carter. Clinton was the Un-Bush. 2000 doesn't count, in my opinion, because Bush Jr. won on a technicality. But it's not enough to be the opposite of your opponent. You have to offer something he's lacking that the public desperately wants. Reagan was gonna get those Commie bastards because Carter was too soft. Clinton was going to take care of us because Bush didn't care. The question remains: what does the country desperately want from George W. Bush that it's not getting?

One last thing: is it me, of does Howard Dean's candidate profile bear more than a passing resemblence to President Bartlett on The West Wing?

Tower of Babel
And now, a long overdue nerd moment.
Here, on Space.com, scientists debate whether mathematics could possibly be a universal language that we could use to communicate with extraterrestrial beings.

I tend to agree with Sundar Sarukkai - statistically speaking, it seems highly unlikely. Our system of mathematics is an extremely complex universe based on thousands of postulates and assumptions that we cannot guarantee others with different biological, environmental, and sociological backgrounds will share. I'm much more intrigued by the idea of what an alternate, yet equally viable math system would look like.

Evolutionary Path
This is a rather surprising article from The New Republic about the social implications to be found in comparing the movie X2 to the current versions of the X-Men comic books (New X-Men by Grant Morrison & Ultimate X-Men by Mark Millar, among my own personal favorites). In it, the author notes that "X-Men" has always been an allegory for the relationship of minority communities with the majority culture, where Xavier represents integration and Magneto represents violent separatism. But the author laments that, unlike the film, the current comics paint Magneto's POV in a much more fashionable light.

Point taken, but I think the comic writers are less interested in espousing a militant agenda and much more concerned with injecting some emotional realism to these stories. Yes, Xavier is a proponent of integration, but, after literally thousands of stories where various regular humans have tried to commit mutant genocide, some of which include several glimpses into possible future timelines where mutants are enslaved by the majority population, I think any sane man would begin to doubt the viability of peace. The problem, ultimately, with Magneto's view is that it's much easier to maintain in the face of adversity than the view of peace. Just look at the Middle East.

"Take off that uniform!"

"But on this point I differ with the President: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech."

- Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVa) expressing his outrage over the President's "Independence Day" photo-op last week.

Tune in next week as I continue my ongoing examination of the death of shame....

Untouchable
OK. Now I'm satisfied.

Since there clearly aren't stockpiles of anthrax-tipped Scud missiles aimed at the "Children of America"(tm) like Bush said justified razing Iraq to it's foundation, and since the Shiite majority seems to have a difference of opinion on this whole "Democratic American puppet" thing, some people in the Administration are finally coming clean as to the point of this war.

It's "Shock & Awe", but not the way you think. It's entire purpose was to let potential terrorists know that America operates by the Chicago Way, - "you pull a knife, we pull a gun. You send one of ours to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue".

Hey, it worked for Nixon in Vietnam and Reagan with the Soviets, right?

Dixiecrats
A Country radio DJ in Colorado got suspended and was threatened with being fired for playing the Dixie Chicks against station programming orders last week.

What strikes me as the most interesting is that, according to the article, the majority of the fans actually want them to get airplay, but it's management/business that is keeping them off the air.

Could this whole thing just be an organized smear campaign from uber-Nationalist radio bohemoth ClearChannel? After all, they were the money behind a bunch of pre-war rallies across the country back in March.

Thieves In The Temple
Turns out ancient Mesopotamian artifacts weren't the only things that grew legs and walked out of Iraq last month. In this report from the Global Security Newswire, a team from the U.S. defense department found an Iraqi nuclear facility had been looted two weeks before they'd arrived on site.

Cutting The Gordian Knot
I was amused and somewhat saddened when Michael Bloomberg became the mayor of New York City. Talk about buying an election, right?
Well, I'm recanting every negative thing I have to say about Mayor Bloomberg, because he's demonstrated that he's all about handling the business of the city.

Case in point: Bloomberg has publicly stated that the people of New York should judge his entire career on his ability to overhaul the city's failing public school system by applying business techniques and cutting out the red tape. For starters, Bloomberg has eliminated ALL of the regional school boards, making all the school principals directly accountable to him and his new School Chancellor. He's replaced the 40 different math curricula and 30 different reading curricula across the city's 1200 schools with one of each, which allows them to standardize the programs and buy textbooks for the entire city at bulk rates. And he's fired over a thousand people.

What stones.

I'm impressed. I just hope it works.

As a side note, I can't help but notice some similarities in tactics between Bloomberg and President Bush. I suppose I'd be willing to cut Bush some more slack if he applied said tactics for policies I agreed with. But I digress.

"Step One - Assign Blame"
Proving once again that the GOP can't even win gracefully, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that if Colin Powell & the State Department hadn't screwed up so bad diplomatically, we wouldn't even needed to go to war in the first place.

Gingrich, who's been sitting behind the curtain as part of a Pentagon advisory board, has clearly never heard that you can't blame the messengers. State can only do so much when the White House tells them to sell lemons.

"Which way did he go? Which way did he go?"
Not only has the American coalition not found any substantive storage of WMDs in Iraq, flying in the face of that whole "imminent danger" thing Bush talked about, BUT, as this Washington Post article suggests, even if there were any, the way we mishandled security in Baghdad may have actually helped put them into the hands of terrorists. The words "strategic looting" should concern alot of people.

Go See "Better Luck Tomorrow", now in limited release
The two guys in the picture above are cousins. Best friends. High school honors students, bound for the Ivy League School of their choice. Model examples of the "Model Minority".
They also happen to be members of the most feared group of cheats, thieves, drug dealers, and all around thugs in the most lilly-white Orange County suburb you can possibly imagine. Proving the motto that, if you get good grades, you can literally get away with murder.

This is the set up for "Better Luck Tomorrow", a small indie film directed by relative newcomer Justin Line that is, simply, the best film I've seen so far this year. What's even more surprising is that this is a co-production of MTV Films, which may have finally graduated from the sugarcoated simplicity of "Save The Last Dance" and "Varsity Blues" to finally show the first, true teen drama I've seen in a very long time. It's in limited release, so check the website and see if it's in your town. Catch it before it flies away. It gets my strongest possible recommendation.

Ex-Presidential Quote of the Day

"You cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."

- Fomer President Clinton, giving his feelings on the current administration's foreign policy.

I guess Bubba's stood all he can stand. See what else is on his mind.