On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno:
'"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."'

Green Bay Packers vs. Arizona Cardinals - Box Score - January 10, 2010 - ESPN:
"Green Bay Passing
C/ATT YDS AVG TD INT RATING
A. Rodgers 28/42 422 10.0 4 1 121.3"

Aaron Rodgers gave one of the all-time best performances by a quarterback in a football game, let alone a post-season playoff game. Such a performance, particularly the 10 yards per passing attempt, will win most of the time. The exception being...when Kurt Warner is the opposing qb. I don't think ANY quarterback has ever had the game Warner had in a playoff game or ANY game at any level. And I can't understand the deafening media silence about it. It seems they really do not like him AT ALL. And I understand he can be irritating even to his most ardent admirers. But damn the man can play this game! More touchdown passes than incompletions! One for the ages.

2009 In Review: Movies

**** a serious man
**** fantastic mr. fox
**** public enemies
*** coraline
*** the informant!
*** up
*** up in the air
*** where the wild things are
** cloudy with a chance of meatballs
** julie and julia
** men who stare at goats
** monsters vs. aliens
** star trek
* angels and demons

2009 In Review: Music

**** ac newman - get guilty
**** bruce springsteen - working on a dream
**** cheap trick - the latest
**** new york dolls - cause i sez so
**** pet shop boys - yes
**** raveonettes - in and out of control
**** soundtrack of our lives - communion
*** brendan benson - my old familiar friend
*** camera obscura - my maudlin career
*** mew - no more stories...
*** son volt - american central dust
*** the bats - the guilty office
*** the invisible cities - houses shine like teeth
*** the orange peels - 2020
*** tinted windows - tinted windows
*** yo la tengo - popular songs
** burning hearts - aboa sleeping
** god help the girl - god help the girl
** lily allen - it's not me it's you
** neko case - middle cyclone
** nous non plus - menagerie
** pete yorn & scarlett johansson - break up
** robyn hitchcock - goodnight oslo
** sting - if on a winter's night
** tegan & sara - sainthood
** tori amos - midwinter graces
** trashcan sinatras - in the music
** u2 - no line on the horizon
** wilco - the album
** young galaxy - invisible republic
* carbon-silicon - the carbon bubble
* chris isaak - mr. lucky
* the clientele - bonfires on the heath
* the postmarks - memoirs at the end of the world

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground:
"Arctic sea ice loss appears to have created a new atmospheric circulation pattern that brings more warm air in the Arctic, creating a positive feedback loop that causes even more sea ice loss. This feedback loop increases the likelihood that an ice-free Arctic in the summer will indeed come by 2030, as many Arctic experts are predicting. It's worth noting that such an atmospheric circulation shift was not predicted by the climate models. Indeed, the loss of Arctic sea ice over the past three years exceeds what any of our models were predicting (Figure 4). While we can rightly criticize these models for their inaccuracy, we should realize that they are just as capable of making errors not in our favor as they are of making errors in our favor."

But this is a major point that "climate deniers", as anyone who questions Al Gore are being so called, point out: a lot of the dire predictions of disaster are based upon models that by definition are incomplete. The arguments to "go green" should be based upon the obvious reasons: oil is finite, conservation saves and makes money. Companies are coming to that conclusion so stop with all the predictions of disaster.

Edge: TOXO — A Conversation With Robert Sapolsky
"In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host."

Every thought you have is a physical process.

An email from Noam Chomsky

It's about priorities not economics.

Pats' Belichick defends decision to go for it - Yahoo! News:
"Bill Belichick defended his decision to go for it on fourth down as criticism mounted Monday of the call that led to the New England Patriots stunning loss. The coach hailed as one of the NFL's best was a target of columnists, talk radio callers and two of his former players. Why, they all wondered, did he gamble with a six-point lead and just over two minutes to go against the Indianapolis Colts? The gamble failed and the Patriots lost 35-34 after leading by 17 points in the fourth quarter Sunday night."

Nice to have some other successful coach second guessed by 'experts' instead of Mike Martz for a change. There are so many things wrong with this. First of all, the whole premise that the entire game came down to this one play is ludicrous. What about the Patriots' fumble in the end zone? Why wasn't THAT the one play of the game? And statistically speaking, the odds were in his favor to go for it on 4th and 2 and not punt, particularly with an elite QB on the other team.

No, I did not question the decision to go for it, but I sure questioned the play calls the entire last series. Why keep going to Welker for minimal yardage when you have one of the best deep threats in all of football, Randy Moss? And if you ARE going to Welker repeatedly, why not send him a few yards BEYOND the barest minimum you need? Or even throw in a run if you insist on getting only the 2 yards necessary. At least the clock would have kept running.

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong - Hardcover - Random House
"We have become used to thinking that religion should provide us with information. Is there a God? How did the world come into being? But this is a modern preoccupation. Religion was never supposed to provide answers to questions that lay within the reach of human reason. That was the role of logos. Religion's task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there were no easy explanations and problems that we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life."

Throughout most of the book, Ms. Armstrong gives a wonderful summation of human history with an emphasis on human religious understanding. Full of insights, connections, perspectives, it is a tour de force and well done. But her point, that to deride religion is to misunderstand it, fails to convince. For sure, the "real" religion Ms. Armstrong describes is indeed a wonderful thing. The only problem is that for 99% of religious practitioners in the world today, their religious understanding bears only a fleeting resemblance to that. And their priests and rabbis and imams like it that way. THAT is the problem.

Director Polanski feels depressed in jail: lawyer - Yahoo! News:
"Director Roman Polanski is feeling depressed two weeks after his arrest in Switzerland to face U.S. extradition for a 1977 case involving the rape of a 13-year-old girl, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday.

'I found him to be tired and depressed,' Herve Temime told the Sonntag newspaper, one of two newspapers he talked to after visiting the Oscar-winning director in a Zurich prison.

'Roman Polanski, who is 76, seemed very dejected when I visited him,' Temime told another newspaper, NZZ am Sonntag.

'Polanski was in an unsettled state of mind.'"

For the love of God won't someone DO SOMETHING so this poor man's mind can be settled again? He is such a very important member of our species I am not sure how we are going to survive without him in a happy state.

Is cropping a photo lying?:
"This is hardly photo fakery. Crops aren't lies. Full-frame photos aren't the truth. Kennerley himself could have easily taken that exact picture in the moment."

But he didn't take the picture Newsweek wanted. And THAT is why it is wrong to crop the picture. Newsweek wanted to portray Cheney in a particular light and the photo submitted did not do that. Why didn't Newsweek just commission an artist to create a comic of Cheney butchering meat? Because they wanted to lie to people using a "real" photo of him doing just that.

Secondly, Jason, you can't say the original photo is a lie in order to defend the crop as NOT a lie. If the source is a lie, how can the crop be the truth?

NFL - Indianapolis Colts/Miami Dolphins Box Score Monday September 21, 2009 - Yahoo! Sports:
This game completely demolishes all the old school adages about how to win a football game. Somewhere, Mike Martz has a big smile on his face when reading this box score. Miami had overwhelming advantages in number of plays, first downs, time of possession, rushing yards, only punted once, had no lost fumbles. They had a "balanced" offense in that they rushed 49 times and threw 33 times. They had over 400 yards in total offense.

And still lost.

The difference was the Colts scored and scored quickly when they had the ball. Why? They threw it and threw DEEP. 12.3 yards per pass ATTEMPT. Miami did everything "right". But so what? Final score is all that matters. Yes, against a mediocre offensive team, Miami's approach will usually succeed. But against a wide-open offense, forget it.

Behind the NFL’s Touchdown Binge - WSJ.com:
"This drive to efficiency may also apply to the people who make the rules. If it's human nature to promote speed whenever the action appears to be slowing down, it's no surprise the NFL decided, in 2004, to tell officials to crack down on the amount of contact defensive backs can have with wide receivers. In scientific terms, the NFL wanted to make the system flow more efficiently. (The fact that touchdowns make for good television might have played a role here, too.)"

A pretty good example of trying to make the facts fit the theory. The league has been tweaking the rules for years in an effort to generate more offense. And why is an NFL offense the only part of the game that is supposedly "more efficient" or "faster"? It's a game of offense AND defense and both have been "evolving". Modern defenses are very fast and VERY big. QB's need to be 6' 5" just to see over the linemen! And this theory kind of distorts evolution. Things evolve to fit their circumstances, their environment, NOT to achieve some ideal. There is no "progress" in evolution, no design, no intelligence. To think otherwise is to miss the point entirely.

Insta-Cake | MetaFilter
"Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix dry ingredients in a nonstick 8 x 8 pan or a loaf pan:
* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (no fancy cake flour needed)
* 3/4 cup sugar (sweet but not cloying)
* 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* Additional spices to taste: try 1/2 teaspoon each of ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to start

Add wet ingredients: stir into dry ingredients in the following order with a fork until combined, but do not overmix
* 3 tablespoons oil (the original used 4 T, and I've seen as high as 6 T, but 3 works just fine)
* 1 tablespoon white vinegar
* 1 cup cold water with 1 teaspoon vanilla added (you might also add 1 teaspoon of peppermint or almond extract)

Put into oven for 30 minutes for an 8 x 8 pan, or 40 minutes for a loaf pan. Cake is done when it pulls slightly away from the sides and/or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean."

I've seen a few other "Wacky Cake" recipes, but this one has the least sugar and I can assure you it will produce one of the best tasting chocolate cakes you have ever tried. Icing is superfluous it is THAT good. And when I made it, I did not have a non-stick pan so I spread some oil in a glass pan and mixed the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then poured the wet ingredients into the same bowl in the proscribed order, mixed together with a fork until combined, then poured into the glass pan. Baked for exactly 30 minutes. Great recipe.

Singletary set the tone, which was tough and disciplined:
"Other coaches will do the same thing, typically in a panic. When Singletary gathered the defense around him, TV cameras showed a calm, determined face, without a hint of anxiety. At one point, he pointed backward toward the sideline with his thumb, like a hitchhiker in reverse. 'I really don't remember what I was saying,' he said later. 'Maybe: 'Let's get out of here.' ' The 49ers' defense, as recommended, held Arizona to a field goal, and the moribund offense suddenly revived itself and scored what would turn out to be the winning touchdown in a 2o-16 season opener. That timeout wasn't wasted. The 49ers finished the game with one remaining."

I told myself I would stop linking to sports writers' idiocy, but this one struck me because it emphasizes how these writers skew their writing depending upon their personal opinions of the coach. When Mike Martz was OC, he was derided for "wasting" timeouts, ie using them in unconventional situations. He was also declared "egomaniacal" in nearly every piece written about him, primarily because he wanted things done his way. Now, Singletary is praised for using unconventional timeouts and there is no question at all that he not just wants things his way but DEMANDS things are done his way. The team even uses his egomaniacal pronouncements as advertising! I point this out to re-emphasize my point: sports writers today are among the least talented and certainly the least journalistic writers around. They get paid for having an opinion (usually wrong) and for cracking jokes (usually bad).

Truthdig - America the Great ... Police State
"For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a “stupid” local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the verb?) by armed police who have been instructed that they are indeed, once armed, the law and may not be criticized verbally or in any other way and are certainly not subject to any restrictions as to whom they arrest or otherwise torment. "

Glad to see that Gore Vidal is still around and still writing essays. Someone should tell him about the new tasers which are capable of 3 firings before having to be recharged. They taser grandfathers, pregnant women, naked people. They used to say "If you're innocent you have nothing to fear" but that is decidedly NOT the case any more.

A Death Foretold:

He became disinterested in fiction ever since that day. And he began to cringe whenever he heard the phrase "no regrets" for he had many. Nothing but, practically. And he began to see his life as a series of failed exercises, mistakes, blunders, well-intentioned but monumentally wrong decisions for all concerned. Outwardly he appeared at the very least, contented. Some might even say happy. But inwardly, he began to die from that day on. A slow process of letting go of everything that he had been clinging to for nearly all his life. It started out to be a difficult process. But as each thing began to fall away, it became easier. He was surprised at times by how easily he was able to do this.

Had he arrived, finally, at that place of peace? Had the letting go finally become enough? No, there was still more. Nine and a half years and still more to go. But it would happen. One way or the other, everything would become free again. And he felt it would happen soon. Very soon.

The Moody Blues Live at Ironstone, July 24, 2009 ****
Thoughtful, emotional, elegiac, yet always with a sense of humor and warmth which resonates through nearly every song in their repertoire, the 3 remaining members of the original band, augmented by 4 exceptional musicians including the star-in-waiting Norda Mullen filling in for departed member Ray Thomas put on a remarkable show tonight. Nothing new to promote except a DVD of a 1970 concert on the Isle of Wight, and no new material to try out, but their catalog is more than adequate to sustain a riveting 2 hour performance that ran the gamut from the near schmaltzy "The Day We Meet Again" to the iconic "Question". Maybe it's the fact that I have reached "a certain age" that I find the Moodies more and more compelling given their penchant for musing on the passage of time and the losses contained therein, but hearing them tear into their songs also is somehow reaffirming and uplifting. The lads may be paunchy and jowly, but they still love their music and their fans and life itself and seem intent on sharing that as long as they can.

Public Enemies (2009)****
Breaks new ground in the use of hi-definition digital video which brings a searing immediacy to the already exhilarating Dillinger story. Some beautiful camera work and design, well put together by Michael Mann. Leaves you with the question who was the bigger public enemy? Dillinger and his contemporaries, or the power-craving "G" men and their wire-taps and "enhanced" interrogation techniques?

Palin resigning as Alaska governor in surprise move - Yahoo!:
"In a rambling statement to the media, in which she took no questions, Palin, 45, indicated she wanted to extend her influence in U.S. politics and some analysts said she appeared to be laying the ground for a run at the presidency in 2012.

'We are not retreating, we are advancing in a different direction,' Palin said, employing the imprecise circumlocutions that characterize her public pronouncements. 'We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time.'"

She "indicated she wanted to extend her influence in U.S. politics"? Um I think you have to HAVE influence before you try to extend it. At any rate she stayed true to form, taking no questions, which to her means picking on her. But I'm surprised that everyone seems to be at a loss to figure this out. Let me break it to you: she will have a talk show a la Limbaugh or Ingraham on Fox News or CNBC before the year is out.

The Rapture (1991)****
With this film, writer/director Michael Tolkin basically says "Okay, let's take the re-borns at their word and assume that this whole end-of-the-world-rapture business is true, literally, and see what happens." And he proceeds to do that in an austere, intelligent, minimally manipulative way and takes the story right to the end and lets us make our own judgments about it. Mimi Rogers is exceptional in a unique and powerful film.

Bug resurrected after 120,000 years: Scientific American:
"The tiny purple microbe, dubbed Herminiimonas glaciei, lay trapped beneath nearly two miles of ice in Greenland. It took 11 months to revive it by gently warming it in an incubator. Finally the bug sprang back to life and began producing fresh colonies of purple brown bacteria."

You just KNOW some idiot is going to leave a petri dish uncovered some night and BAM it's out the door! This could be the Mastodon Flu bug or God know's what else.

Can a machine change your mind? | open Democracy News Analysis:
"...what it feels like to be conscious of something, or to be in a particular state of pain or serenity, surely goes beyond those brain properties. A scientific description of what happens in the brain when someone has a certain thought or experience seems inevitably to leave out what the thought is about or the experience is like. Once again, there’s something left over, something which, if the person were observing their own brain states, they would be having in addition to seeing neurons fire and synapses wiggling."

ALL thoughts you have in your "mind" have a physical, material basis. To me, that is undeniable. Right now, our ability to explain and identify that physical basis is incomplete. We are getting there and I believe shall get there eventually, inevitably. No, I don't think consciousness is simply synapses wiggling. I think your entire body participates in consciousness. But it is a physical, material phenomenon nonetheless.

The Origin of Life: American Scientist
"If this notion turns out to be true, it will have important implications for a deep philosophical question: whether we should understand the history of life in terms of the working out of predictable physical principles or of the agency of chance. We are, in fact, arguing that life will appear on any planet that reproduces the environmental and geological conditions that appeared on the early Earth, and that it will appear in order to solve precisely the sort of "stranded electron" problem discussed above. The currently popular view that complex life was something of a frozen accident was set forth in Jacques Monod's classic book Chance and Necessity (1970). We, of course, are arguing the opposite, if only for a significant part of basic chemical architecture....It has not escaped our notice that the mechanism we are postulating immediately suggests that life is widespread in the universe, and can be expected to develop on any planet whose chemistry resembles that of the early Earth."

Interesting explanation for how life emerged from inorganic matter. I think every "how" is explainable. It's the "why" that is so perplexing.

The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia:
"Accordingly, what's surprising is to see the reactions to the release of those Justice Department memos, even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: Paul Krugman, for example, writing that we used to be 'a nation of moral ideals' and never before Bush 'have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for.' To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of American history."

That darned Noam Chomsky! Always remembering things. Why can't he move on, put the past behind him and work towards a better future? Now is not the time for looking back in anger or retribution.

God help us.

Steeler Harrison's pit bull attacks young son:
"Parise said Harrison has not had trouble with the animal in the past.

'I've been with that dog personally, he's a wonderful animal,' Parise said.

Parise said he doesn't know why the boy's mother let the dog out of the pen, other than to say he believes it was for a routine reason such as feeding or to care for the animal. The boy's mother does not live at the house, Parise said.

'There's no reason to believe that this is anything other than something that sometimes happens to children,' Parise said. 'The child should be fine.'"

I love it. Stupid is as stupid does. I used to be optimistic about the future prospects for society, human beings. But day after day after day you keep getting reminded just how obscenely stupid people truly are. We are a doomed species.

Angels & Demons (2009)*
Momma said "If you can't say something nice..." so here goes: There are some nice pictures of Rome and Ayelet Zurer is very attractive.

AND HE SHALL BE JUDGED: GQ Features on men.style.com:
"This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”"

I'm not sure what to even think about this. It's abhorrent, for sure. Diabolical, certainly. And makes George W. Bush look like even more the fool than I could have possibly imagined. Remember the old SNL routine with Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan, pretending to be folksy, a bit daft, when "on camera" but then switching to master manipulator when off? Well that could NEVER happen with W as we can now know for certain. W was truly an idiot.

Bob Dylan | Together Through Life (2009)*
I think it is high time Mr. Dylan drops the singer part of singer/songwriter and just sticks to song writing. Maybe he could write Brian Ferry's next album or bring back Manfred Mann or The Byrds. Because he can write excellent songs. And this latest album just may be full of them. But his voice is just so very bad right now, and frankly has been for the past several years, it is incredibly distracting from the songs themselves. Plus, he's never been the best interpreter of his own material let's face it. Very disappointing.

Emanuel Rejects Trial for Memos' authors - washingtonpost.com:
"'It's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back' out of 'any sense of anger and retribution,' Emanuel said on ABC's 'This Week.' His remarks reflect the White House's effort to claim a middle ground after the release of the memos, which had been top secret, angered backers of the Bush administration's interrogation policy."

Well then how about using some of your precious time and energy to prevent or at least discourage future violations of law out of a sense of...oh what's that word again...oh yes, JUSTICE? DECENCY? MORALITY? ETHICS? This administration is about nothing else than getting re-elected. It's almost an exact rehash of the Clinton years: the idea is simply to BE president. Not to govern. Not to uphold The Constitution. Not to try and make the world a better place. None of that. Just make sure you get re-elected and you win.

The Raw Story | Economist: US collapse driven by 'fraud'; Geithner covering up bank insolvency:
"In an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called 'liars loans' could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive 'fraud' at the epicenter of US finance. But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens."

Why is this considered "explosive"? Has the author of this piece talked to average Americans? If so, he would find that EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS because it is self evident. We know what a Ponzi scheme is. We know what fraud is. I think the real problem is journalists are JUST NOW coming around to understanding what was done. It takes a while because all they really know is how to be a journalist. (Whatever that entails.) Hopefully they will be able to raise enough moral outrage before the whole thing is over and maybe we can manage to save a few bucks here and there. Personally, I think it is all over but the shouting and Mr. Obama has been a total and complete bust. His handling of the financial situation (it's not a crisis) has been an abomination, his plans for healthcare are disastrous, he supplicates himself (and hence ourselves) to Saudi kings, kisses Israel's ass as it continues its genocide against Palestinians and pledges to "win" in Afghanistan while the real source of trouble, Pakistan, goes off the rails. So I guess we try, try again in 4 years, huh?

NFL to make AFC West road format more reasonable - ESPN:
"East Coast and West Coast teams have complained about their cross-country trips. Under the proposed changed -- which does not require a committee vote -- the NFL will alter its AFC West scheduling formula so that no team would have to play at Oakland and at San Diego in the same season.

To modify the issue, the schedule will be adjusted so if a team is scheduled to play at Oakland, it would play at either Denver or Kansas City, two teams that are geographically closer to the east and midwest, and not at San Diego. If a team has to play at the Chargers, its schedule would include visiting either Denver or Kansas City and not the Raiders."

This is ridiculous. Are you telling me that an extra hour or so of sitting on an airplane is that big a deal to professional athletes? Unbelievable.

Obama: AIG can't justify 'outrage' of exec bonuses:
"In a letter to Geithner dated Saturday, Liddy said outside lawyers had informed the company that AIG had contractual obligations to make the bonus payments and could face lawsuits if it did not do so."

Yeah, and...? So what? I'm sure AIG faces dozens of lawsuits each and every day so why would these new lawsuits be so special? And each one of those new lawsuits would LOSE. But the fact of the matter is, the way this was done, and Paulson started it all, was just to hand over a blank check to these firms. Why Obama hired Summers and Geithner is the single biggest mistake of his presidency. A VERY stupid mistake.

The Curious Case of Neko:
I LOVE Neko Case. Of that there is no doubt. As lead chanteuse of The New Pornographers, she is without peer. Her voice is such a force that she elevates nearly everything she touches with it. My life is better off having listened to Neko Case.

I want to make that clear.

It's just that when I listen to her solo stuff, I am underwhelmed. I mean, there is obvious intelligence, thought, effort, art going on in her songs, I understand that. And she has some hooks, some strong melodies, some vibrant chord structures. And as for her lyrics, I like animals too, and nature and even indecipherability (is that a word?). But for some reason or another that perpetually escapes me, her songs just do not resonate with me. By that I mean, make me NEED to hear them over and over again. I listened to Middle Cyclone and while I like several tunes on it and adore her voice, I could never hear that album again and be quite content. And I LIKED it! But it does not compel me.

I am so sorry, Neko. I want to NEED you badly because I know how good you are. But it's just not happening.

Coraline (2009)***
Fantastic animation, art direction, voice work, technical expertise, all to the service of a story that fails to engage and resonate.

SFGate: Politics Blog : Schwarzenegger "compares legislature to dogs":
"Kicking off his major special-election reform campaign in San Francisco Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered some of the toughest medicine yet to those in his own party, saying critics who insisted he could close the state's $42 billion deficit through spending cuts alone 'are guilty of political cynicism at its worst.' Speaking at to a full house at the Commonwealth Club of California event at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, the governor said of the legislators: 'These are not serious people.'"

I was embarrassed when The Governator was elected. I was concerned that Arnold would be one of those "not serious" people. But I was wrong. I have not agreed with everything or even MOST things he has done or supported or tried to do, but I have to admit, he does take this seriously not as a politician seriously trying to advance his career, but as a person who truly thinks he has something to offer society as a public servant. Now I don't mean he is some sort of secular saint, far from it. But, like Nelson Rockefeller, the Kennedy's, et al, he really does seem to want to give something back to the society in which he has decided to make his home. If more of our elected representatives thought that way, approached their jobs that way, we would all be a lot better off. But instead we get career politicians who by necessity become beholden to moneyed interests because the costs of campaigning are so great. I think we could have done a LOT worse than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Beat the Press | The Media Continue to Ignore Welfare for Citi Shareholders:
"The article even includes a bizarre statement to discourage those who oppose welfare for the super-rich: 'Nationalizing Citigroup outright would be a huge challenge, given the company’s size and international sweep. In countries like Mexico, for instance, a state-controlled bank might run afoul of local ownership regulations.'

This could almost be a line in a comedy routine -- Mexico is going to keep the United States from putting a bankrupt bank in receivership. It's too bad that the NYT didn't identify anyone who made such a statement, we all could ridicule this person until they faded from public life."

God bless Dean Baker! Righteous indignation when it is called for. Why isn't HE running the Treasury?

Senators to be grounded until tax bill OKd:
"The budget agreement contains nearly $16 billion in cuts, $11 billion in borrowing and more than $14 billion worth of temporary tax increases that all but a few Republican lawmakers have criticized as the deal killer. But as the budget impasse hit day 103 on Monday, state finance officials said they would have to pull the plug on the public works projects that have been allowed to continue thus far. In December, state finance officials said the state's fiscal crisis was so dire that they needed to halt financing for 5,600 construction projects across the state. Then last month, they agreed to exempt 276 projects that were either too far along in construction or would cost the state too much to halt and restart later. Now, those projects would have to be halted as well, Genest said."

Okay, enough. California needs to amend the 2/3 majority rule for budget passage, and to eliminate propositions from impacting the budget directly. I don't like taxes either, but they are a necessary evil if you want an orderly, functioning society. And believe me, try making money in a chaotic, dysfunctional society and see what good it does you to have your precious low tax rate.

Martz: 'People are determined to keep me out' - NFL- nbcsports.msnbc.com:
"“Maybe at some point in time he had a reputation of being arrogant or whatever but when we had him here, I worked with him, we had a lot of conversations and I felt very comfortable with him,” says Singletary. “We spent many hours together. You hear about Mike: ‘The guy’s arrogant. He’s tough to work with. He wants to throw ball all the time ... bottom line for me is he really tried to do what I asked him to do. My approach with him was I didn’t come at him as ‘I’m head coach around here.’ When you come at Mike Martz, you have to do it in a respectful way. Mike can be a very nice guy. But if you ask 10 people, you may get 10 different answers.”"

Lazy journalists love labels. It's shorthand for a story. And the laziest sports journalists work in television. Every time Mike Martz's name is mentioned on a football chat show, or during a game, the word "arrogant" is used. Never, NEVER have I heard an explanation or a basis ever explained. Even in print, they often just repeat the phrase without any backup whatsoever. To get to be a head coach in the NFL, you need to believe in yourself. This, in Martz's case, is called "having a big ego". Believing in your abilities and philosophy is called "arrogance". Now I ask you, why isn't Mike Singletary called arrogant when he demands that the offense by run-oriented? Why isn't that called run-happy?

Mike Martz is smart, knows how to be a head coach, players really like him. The current vogue in the NFL is for unproven head coaches. Hopefully Mike will be back soon.

Playing God in the Garden - New York Times:
"A few days later, once the slips of potato stem have put down roots, they're moved to the potato greenhouse up on the roof. Here, Glenda DeBrecht, a horticulturist, invited me to don latex gloves and help her transplant pinky-size plantlets from their petri dish to small pots. The whole operation is performed thousands of times, largely because there is so much uncertainty about the outcome. There's no way of telling where in the genome the new DNA will land, and if it winds up in the wrong place, the new gene won't be expressed (or it will be poorly expressed) or the plant may be a freak. I was struck by how the technology could at once be astoundingly sophisticated and yet also a shot in the genetic dark.

''There's still a lot we don't understand about gene expression,'' Stark acknowledged. A great many factors influence whether, or to what extent, a new gene will do what it's supposed to, including the environment. In one early German experiment, scientists succeeded in splicing the gene for redness into petunias. All went as planned until the weather turned hot and an entire field of red petunias suddenly and inexplicably lost their pigment. The process didn't seem nearly as simple as Monsanto's cherished software metaphor would suggest.

When I got home from St. Louis, I phoned Richard Lewontin, the Harvard geneticist, to ask him what he thought of the software metaphor. ''From an intellectual-property standpoint, it's exactly right,'' he said. ''But it's a bad one in terms of biology. It implies you feed a program into a machine and get predictable results. But the genome is very noisy. If my computer made as many mistakes as an organism does'' -- in interpreting its DNA, he meant -- ''I'd throw it out.''

You really have to read the entire article, and then try to figure out a way to deal with your overwhelming rage. Monsanto is so completely unconcerned about anything other than making money it's almost a parody. Unfortunately, it is an all too real beast in the world and a very effective one at that. It is to the biotech industry what Enron was to the energy industry. Yeah it's that bad.

Daschle withdraws as nominee for HHS secretary:
"'It really sets us back a step,' said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. 'Because he was such a talent. I mean he understood Congress, serving in the House and Senate; he certainly had the confidence of the president.' Said White House spokesman Gibbs: 'We're looking for a new nominee, but the problem has existed for quite some time and the work toward a solution to make health care more affordable won't stop or won't pause while we look for that nominee.'"

The only talent Daschle has is for sleazy schmoozing. He is on the payroll of the health insurance industry! How Obama could seriously think (and all indications are he still does) that this man was the solution to health care issues is beyond me. Look, this is not that difficult. The TRUE solution is ridiculous simple. The complications come in when you are beholden to private industry that has fed off the miseries of millions of Americans for so long they see it as their right to continue their craven, cruel ways. As I've said before, the best answer is Medicare for all. Single payer health insurance coverage is the only way to go. We already pay more than enough to cover it, and it is dead simple and THE most efficient way by any measure you care to use.

Obama budget official withdraws for tax reasons - Yahoo! News
"'I recognize that your agenda and the duties facing your Chief Performance Officer are urgent,' Killefer wrote in the letter to the president, asking for her nomination to be withdrawn. 'I have also come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. Unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid.'"

WTF? Is it that difficult to find competent individuals that HAVE paid their taxes like most people? And it doesn't appear these are minor issues like a missing receipt for charitable contributions but serious violations regarding payroll taxes, etc. Things that a lot of people would go to jail for. This is a serious problem.

Saboteur (1942)**
The script is not up to the challenge of sustaining a 2 hour chase film. Hitchcock tries his best to liven things up with imaginative scenarios like a circus trailer, and the climactic sequence in the Statue of Liberty is still thrilling, but it takes a long time to get there and the implausibility of it all is hard to dismiss.

Family Plot (1976) **
Hitchcock's last film and not a particularly good one. It seems as if he was not really interested and aside from his silhouetted cameo, you wouldn't know he directed it. No sense of style to it, the script is dull at best, the look of the film is shoddy. It resembles TV movies of the time. Mildly pleasant, but forgettable.

U.S. peanut plant shipped salmonella-tainted products: FDA - Yahoo! News:
"More than 500 people in 43 states and Canada have been sickened in the outbreak, which also may be linked with eight deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of those made ill are children. 'The team identified approximately 12 instances in 2007 and 2008 where the firm identified some type of salmonella ... and released the products,' the FDA's Michael Rogers told reporters in a telephone briefing. Records at the plant showed that after the company tested the peanut products and found salmonella, it sent at least some to an outside lab that showed no contamination. The products were then illegally shipped for sale, Rogers said. 'There (were) no steps taken (by) the firm as far as cleaning or to minimize cross-contamination,' Rogers said."

What this country needs to do is help the businessman who has to deal with tons and tons of paperwork. It costs so much money just to file all the paperwork. Get off the backs of businesses and the economy can work again! Yep. Government regulation is the problem.

Scharffen Berger, Schmidt plants to be closed:
"Hershey released fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday that were above analyst expectations and projected growth of up to 3 percent for 2009. The company said it earned $82.2 million, or 36 cents a share, in the quarter ending in December, compared with $54.3 million, or 24 cents a share, it earned for the same period last year."

One of the more cut-throat, greedy, stock-driven corporations around. Earnings ABOVE expectations, and they still want more. Let them eat chocolates?

Foreign Correspondent (1940)***
I find it interesting that the acting in most of Hitchcock's earlier films is in such a natural style especially as compared to other films of the era. It's very refreshing and gives his films a modern feel. This one is no exception. A complex plot about spies and thrilling sequences including an extremely well done plane crash in the Atlantic add to the fun.

New Yorker: How Should Obama Reform Health Care?:
"The results have been remarkable. After a year, 97.4 per cent of Massachusetts residents had coverage, and the remaining gap continues to close. Despite the requirement that individuals buy insurance and that employers either provide coverage or pay a tax, the program has remained extremely popular. Repeated surveys have found that at least two-thirds of the state’s residents support the reform. The Massachusetts plan didn’t do anything about medical costs, however, and, with layoffs accelerating, more people require subsidized care than the state predicted. Insurance premiums continue to rise here, just as they do elsewhere in the country. Many residents also complain that eight per cent of their income is too much to pay for health insurance, even though, on average, premiums amount to twice that much. The experience has shown national policymakers that they will have to be serious about reducing costs."

The writer takes a looong way to get there and uses inaccurate language to do so. We do not need to "reform health care", or "nationalize health care". We need to reform/nationalize health care INSURANCE! Once we do that, and remove the ability for private companies to gin the system for exorbitant profit, health care costs WILL come down. It has happened time and time again in country after country. Nobody pays as much as we do already and for lesser overall quality care. The only thing standing in our way is the insurance lobby. And I just don't think Obama is gutsy enough to actually take them on.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)****
Saw this too late for my 2008 review post, but clearly the best picture of the year. So dense, so layered, so emotional, it stays with you long after you leave the theater. Charlie Kaufman seemingly threw every idea he had into the film and, for me anyway, it worked beautifully. My only quibble would be the casting of Philip Seymour Hoffman in the lead. Yes you need a strong actor because he is on screen nearly every second and must carry the film, but I just did not find him appealing in the least and that hurt the overall impact a bit. Heck, Tom Noonan, who plays a character who is hired to play Hoffman's character in the film, would have been fine.

Torn Curtain (1966)***
Much better than Topaz, Hitchcock's other Cold War thriller. Julie Andrews seems very out of place though and yes I think Eva Marie Saint would have been a better choice. Some truly memorable sequences, beautifully structured shots, interesting camerawork...all Hitchcock hallmarks are available here. What holds the picture back though is a distractingly bad script and a few too many explanatory scenes which despite Paul Newman's best efforts are not in the least bit believable.

New Scientist: Did Our Cosmos Exist Before the Big Bang?:

"ABHAY ASHTEKAR remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening? Ashtekar wanted to be sure of what he was seeing, so he asked his colleagues to sit on the result for six months before publishing it in 2006. And no wonder. The theory that the recycled universe was based on, called loop quantum cosmology (LQC), had managed to illuminate the very birth of the universe - something even Einstein's general theory of relativity fails to do. LQC has been tantalizing physicists since 2003 with the idea that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous universe. Now the theory is poised to make predictions we can actually test. If they are verified, the big bang will give way to a big bounce and we will finally know the quantum structure of space-time. Instead of a universe that emerged from a point of infinite density, we will have one that recycles, possibly through an eternal series of expansions and contractions, with no beginning and no end."

This is the kind of stuff that scares the hell out of me. Pondering The End is bad enough, but trying to imagine NO end is even worse.

James Wolcott's Blog: vanityfair.com:
"To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall - as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 - there is nowhere to hide."

It's like poking a chained, starving, angry pit bull in the face with a stick then beating it senseless with a lead pipe when it barks at you. "If only it wouldn't keep barking at me we could have peace! It barks at me and I have to live in fear!" I simply cannot understand why Obama says nothing. All that hope I had is just about all gone.

2008 In Review: Movies

**** Speed Racer
**** Vicky Cristina Barcelona
*** Burn After Reading
*** I Have Loved You So Long
*** Wall-E
** Dark Knight
* Iron Man
* Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D
* Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
* Quantum of Solace

Loud Family - Ask Scott:
"Not to say this would be true of you, but for some reason it's generally a mild shock to people that songs aren't autobiographical, when something like a film or a novel, which goes into much greater detail, is just assumed to be a complete invention."

My first thought upon reading this was that perhaps we think songs are more autobiographical because they become that way for us, the listeners. Parts of our own lives fill in the gaps in the song, the song fills in some of the gaps in our own lives. I would also say that the best novels fill the same function and are thought to be autobiographical too to a certain extent. I think films tend to be less so because there are fewer gaps that need filling so they don't become so personal. But a song, like "Inverness" which is about a feeling, a feeling we all have known at one time or another, becomes such a part of our lives when we experience it that we assume it began as a part of the composer's life too.

Just a thought.

12/22/2008 - Bruce's return only illustrates decline of Rams - STLtoday.com:
"Before Sunday's game, Rams general manager Jay Zygmunt hobnobbed with 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Martz, the Rams' head coach from 2000-2005. The former enemies shook hands, smiled and chatted. I can't curse in the newspaper, so let me say this: The Martz-Zygmunt blood feud was a significant factor in the premature destruction of the Greatest Show Era. And so now they're shaking hands and being buddies? A little late, wouldn't you say? I wouldn't expect Isaac Bruce to understand the depth of that anger, which is shared by many here."

Another fine example of why I don't read most sportswriters often. Some actually stick to the facts, some actually have some expertise. Then there are others like Bernie Miklasz. "The depth of that anger"??? Perspective please! This is a sporting event! And the so-called "blood feud" between Martz and Zygmunt is conjecture or disgruntled 3rd party opinion. Maybe Zygmunt was talking to Martz about his heart condition (which both men share) and the fact that he was going to resign the next day (today). And this idiot gets all huffy because two possibly former enemies/rivals have made up, treated each other as they should with human dignity and respect? Shouldn't that be celebrated? Isn't that what sport is all about?

What sportswriters need to do is educate their readership on a fact of life: shit happens! Randomness rules! The Rams had some great seasons, now they are having some bad ones. The 49ers had some great seasons. Now they are struggling. You can do this with EVERY TEAM IN THE NFL! Nobody wins forever, all the time. Bill Belicheck was horseshit when he coached in Cleveland. He moves to New England and now he's a god. People have got to stop thinking that winning equates to worthwhile. There is a lot of entertaining stuff going on in any NFL game if you enjoy the sport. Don't get me wrong, I root for my team as much as anyone and am disappointed when they lose or play poorly. But to have a "depth of anger" inexpressible in polite company, and to carry grudges for years and years is just obscene. Even the best sometimes lose and lose often. This is why players get pissed off at the fans who boo. They know what it is like to give your best and have the ball bounce another way. Some things, MOST things, are just out of your control.

Glenn Greenwald: Senate report links Bush to detainee homicides; media yawns (reg. required):

"There are countless other episodes like this of human beings in American custody dying because of the mistreatment -- authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and others -- to which we subjected them. These are murders and war crimes in every sense of the word. That the highest level Bush officials and the President himself are responsible for the policies that spawned these crimes against humanity have been long known to anyone paying minimal attention, but now we have a bipartisan Senate Report -- signed by the presidential nominee of Bush's own political party -- that directly assigns culpability for these war crimes to the President and his policies. It's nothing less than a formal declaration from the Senate that the President and his top aides are war criminals.

"This Report was issued on Thursday. Not a single mention was made of it on any of the Sunday news talk shows, with the sole exception being when John McCain told George Stephanopoulos that it was "not his job" to opine on whether criminal prosecutions were warranted for the Bush officials whose policies led to these crimes. What really matters, explained McCain, was not that we get caught up in the past, but instead, that we ensure this never happens again -- yet, like everyone else who makes this argument, he offered no explanation as to how we could possibly ensure that "it never happens again" if we simultaneously announce that our political leaders will be immunized, not prosecuted, when they commit war crimes. Doesn't that mindset, rather obviously, substantially increase the likelihood -- if not render inevitable -- that such behavior will occur again? Other than that brief exchange, this Senate Report was a non-entity on the Sunday shows."

Why are war crimes a bad thing everywhere in the world except in the good ol' U.S. of A? Where is the precious "change" if we do not prosecute these animals? Maybe Nixon was right that if the president does it that means it is not illegal?

2008 In Review: Music

**** Aimee Mann - @#%&! Smilers
**** Army Navy - Army Navy
**** Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
**** Delays, The - Everything's The Rush
**** Elvis Costello - Momofuku
**** Ladytron - Velocifero
**** Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
**** Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us
**** REM - Accelerate
**** Sloan - Parallel Play
**** Submarines - Honeysuckle Weeks
**** Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
*** Blitzen Trapper - Furr
*** Broken West, The - Now or Heaven
*** Duke Spirit - Neptune
*** I Love Math - Getting To The Point Is Beside It
*** Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
*** Keane - Perfect Symmetry
*** Lake - Oh, the Places We'll Go
*** Long Blondes - Couples
*** Pretenders - Break Up the Concrete
*** Ray Davies - Working Man's Cafe
*** She and Him - Volume One
*** Sheryl Crow - Detours
*** Thee Make-Out Party!!! - Play Pretend
*** We Are Scientists - Brain Thrust Mastery
** Breeders - Mountain Battles
** British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music
** Dido - Safe Trip Home
** Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark
** Future Clouds and Radar - Peoria
** Jules Shear - More
** Juliana Hatfield - How to Walk Away
** Killers, The - Day and Age
** Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
** M83 - Saturdays = Youth
** Matthew Sweet - Sunshine Lies
** Old 97s - Blame It On Gravity
** Ringo Starr - Liverpool 8
** Sam Phillips - Don't Do Anything
** Santogold - Santogold
** Sixpence None the Richer - The Dawn of Grace
** Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns
** Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
* Basia Bulat - Oh My Darling
* Bob Mould - District Line
* Chris Difford - Last Temptation of Chris
* Destroyer - Trouble In Dreams
* Enya - And Winter Came
* Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
* Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
* Kathleen Edwards - Asking For Flowers
* Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster
* Raconteurs, The - Consolers of the Lonely
* Was (Not Was) - Boo!

The Lady Vanishes (1938)***
While watching this film, an entertaining blend of comedy and suspense, I finally "got" Hitchcock's last film Family Plot. When I first saw it, I was disappointed because I had grown up with Psycho, The Birds, Torn Curtain, Frenzy, not nearly as light as Family Plot and it struck me as a sort of letdown from The Master. But really, it was a return to an earlier style for Hitch, as exemplified by The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps among others. I think I'll take another look at Family Plot soon.

Business Spectator - A tsunami of hope or terror?:
"It is now getting very interesting. The three Icelandic banks have defaulted, as has Countrywide, Lehman and Bear Stearns. AIG has been taken over by the US Government, which is counted as a part-default, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are in “conservatorship”, which is also a part default – a 'part default' does not count as a 'full default' in calculating the nine that would trigger the CDS liabilities. Ambac, MBIA, PMI, General Motors, Ford and a lot of US home builders are teetering. If the list of defaults – full and partial – gets to nine, then a mass transfer of money will take place from unsuspecting investors around the world into the banking system. How much? Nobody knows, but it’s many trillions."

Another twist to the collapse of the financial world and an intriguing possible answer as to why these bailouts are so very important to the big boys.

via Robot Wisdom

Consensus emerging on universal healthcare - Los Angeles Times:
"After decades of failed efforts to reshape the nation's healthcare system, a consensus appears to be emerging in Washington about how to achieve the elusive goal of providing medical insurance to all Americans.

The answer, say leading groups of businesses, hospitals, doctors, labor unions and insurance companies -- as well as senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the new Obama administration -- is unprecedented government intervention to create a system of universal protection.

At the same time, those groups, which span the ideological and political spectrum, largely have agreed to preserve the employer-based system through which most Americans get their health insurance.

The idea of a federal, single-payer system patterned on those in Europe and Canada, long a dream of the political left, is now virtually off the table."

Now we shall see what Obama is made of. Most of this "consensus" is from the power elite, NOT folks who know what they are talking about. There is no dispute that the simplest, cheapest, most effective solution is expanding Medicare coverage for all Americans. And there is tremendous support for this idea not only among the American electorate, but among most businesses that struggle to provide health care for their workers including automakers. So if Obama truly wants the best solution to a problem and not just what lobbyists are willing to settle for, the single payer solution needs to be on that table.

Congress takes first step on automaker bailout - Yahoo! News:
"U.S. automakers say they are urgently trying to overhaul their businesses to meet a global demand for fuel efficient products, like better performing gasoline engines, electric cars and more hybrids. But industry executives say they may never get there unless the bailout is approved. They add that the shock of any collapse will shake the economy. If the auto industry comes under severe pressure, GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said in a television interview on Sunday, 'the impact on the whole U.S. economy will be devastating.' All three companies have rejected reorganizing under bankruptcy protection."

Must be nice to just reject going bankrupt. Wish I could do that. Run a business into the ground and just expect the taxpayer to bail you out. ENOUGH! GM fucked up! This state of affairs is not out of the blue. It has been predicted for YEARS. And they invested more and more into SUVs, Hummers, Cadillacs while ignoring their workers. Fail, fail, fail. Set up transition funds for the workers and that is IT!

Clinton to accept offer of secretary of state job | World news | The Guardian:
"Clinton would be well placed to become the country's dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops."

Well that didn't take long. So much for "change". Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers (potentially), Hillary Clinton (potentially), Joe Lieberman is still around for some unknown reason...WTF? Why is everyone letting Obama off the hook here? We did NOT vote for this! I think it was pretty clear that we wanted a CHANGE, not just a re-shuffling of the same players.

This is not good.

Portfolio.com: The End by Michael Lewis:
'That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?”'

Essential exposé of the financial meltdown. It is way worse than you think.

via kottke

Obama captures historic White House win - Yahoo! News:
"Obama led a Democratic electoral landslide that also expanded the party's majorities in both chambers of Congress and firmly repudiated eight years of Bush's leadership. The win by Obama, son of a black father from Kenya and white mother from Kansas, marked a milestone in U.S. history. It came 45 years after the height of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King. The announcement of Obama's win on U.S. television networks set off celebrations by supporters around the country, from Times Square in New York to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King's home church.
'This is a great night. This is an unbelievable night,' said U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who was brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, during a voting rights march in the 1960s."

One of the encouraging aspects of Obama's historic victory is that even though it is obviously historic because of his race, the reason he won had nothing to do with it. But I think as time goes by, his race will become very significant and a very, very positive thing for America. And it helps that he seems to be a serious, thoughtful, INTELLIGENT person! Now the task will be to hold his feet to the fire and push him to make the changes he seemed to run away from in his campaign. I am still very leery of the advisors he had throughout the campaign and the rumors of possible cabinet and staff members, most of whom I do not like.

So while I am pleased in his victory, and hopeful for positive things to come for us and our country, I am very cautious and guarded. This is a good first step to rectifying the past 8 years. But it is one step of a long and arduous journey ahead of us.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)**
There is an extended scene early in the film where Dr. Pretorious is trying to convince Dr. Frankenstein to work with him to create a woman monster, and he brings out these jars filled with miniature human beings and the whole sequence is just way WAY out of place in the film. Really brings everything to a screeching halt and ruins the tone of the entire picture for me. Boris Karloff has more to do here and he is, again, very good, and the images and camera work are exceptional, but the film as a whole is not up to the original.

Transcript of second McCain, Obama debate - CNN.com:
"Brokaw: There are lots of issues that we are going to be dealing with here tonight. And we have a question from Langdon (ph) in Ballston Spa, New York, and that's about huge unfunded obligations for Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs that will soon eat up all of the revenue that's in place and then go into a deficit position. Since the rules are pretty loose here, I'm going to add my own to this one. Instead of having a discussion, let me ask you as a coda to that. Would you give Congress a date certain to reform Social Security and Medicare within two years after you take office? Because in a bipartisan way, everyone agrees, that's a big ticking time bomb that will eat us up maybe even more than the mortgage crisis."

I think it is about time we lose this idea of having "journalists" and TV anchorpersons moderate these "debates". Brokaw is an idiot. And a dangerous one at that because for some reason, people think he knows what he is talking about and look upon him as some sort of elder statesman. First of all he links Social Security and Medicare as if they are the same thing. No. They are fundamentally different and not at all alike. Secondly, Social Security is completely solvent and not projected to draw down on its assets until 2041. Got that? There has never been a time in its history when it was in as strong a financial position as it is now. What has everyone worried is the huge deficits we keep racking up year after year. And yet, we are able to pull $750B for Wall Street without too much trouble, $800B for the Iraq War ON TOP OF the regular appropriations for "defense" to the tune of $400B+ per year. "Entitlements" are not the problem. The problem is we lack the political will to spend our money wisely and appropriately. And McCain has no clue about it and Obama is willfully obtuse about it.

The Wolf Man (1941)**
Doesn't hold up and not just because many of the scenes have become cliché. Lon Chaney Jr. just cannot act and he is very distracting. There's a pervasive feeling to the film that it's existence was just an attempt to create another Universal monster franchise and it shows.

Frankenstein (1931)****
The film has achieved iconic/archetypal status of course, but it's not unearned. Whale's compositions, his use of dolly shots, some masterful cinematography and a career-defining performance by Boris Karloff make re-viewing always interesting and enjoyable.

How Credit Default Swaps Became a Timebomb | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com:
"By the mid-'90s, JPMorgan's books were loaded with tens of billions of dollars in loans to corporations and foreign governments, and by federal law it had to keep huge amounts of capital in reserve in case any of them went bad. But what if JPMorgan could create a device that would protect it if those loans defaulted, and free up that capital? What the bankers hit on was a sort of insurance policy: a third party would assume the risk of the debt going sour, and in exchange would receive regular payments from the bank, similar to insurance premiums. JPMorgan would then get to remove the risk from its books and free up the reserves. The scheme was called a 'credit default swap'..."

And it should have been (and possibly may have been) illegal. It is also called a Ponzi scheme. And the sheer gall of these persons now running to the taxpayer to cover their risk is beyond comprehension. In a fair world, they would be facing criminal charges for fraud at the very least. But we all know this world is many things but fair is not even in the ballpark.

Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1 - Army Times:
"In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it. They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

...or they may be called upon to do whatever the President tells them to do in accordance with his position as commander in chief! This is the first time since the Civil War that the US military has been deployed in the USA not in response to any disaster. Incredible. And who's to say the Wall Street meltdown won't provide a convenient excuse to suspend the election indefinitely? With a brigade at his disposal, Bush could remain in office for quite a while.

Study links oil prices to investor speculation - Yahoo! News:
"'We have clear evidence the fund flow pushed prices up and the fund flow pushed prices down,' said Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, calling the amount of money moving into oil futures markets by large institutional investors in the early part of the year 'way off the scale.' Masters said its analysis shows investors 'began a massive stampede for the exits' on July 15 and that this caused the price decline. 'These large financial players have become the primary source of the dramatic and damaging volatility seen in oil prices,' concluded the report."

So the rush to open up ANWR and offshore drilling will serve just one purpose: enrich the oil companies even further. And at the same time though, it will WEAKEN our reserve of oil for the future and increase our national security risk.

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
"Propaganda thrives -- predominates -- in our democracy for many reasons, the principal reason being that we don't have the sort of journalist class devoted to exposing it. Anyone who wants to contest that should examine the empirical data above, or more convincingly, just look at what the Bush administration has easily gotten away with over the last eight years -- the systematic deceit, the radicalism, the corruption, the crimes."

I hope to God I am wrong, but I'm afraid this election is over. In 2000 I thought there was no way a smart, thoughtful, kind of annoying person like Al Gore could lose to an obviously unqualified, barely coherent George W. Bush. In 2004 after 4 years of complete and abject disaster, I thought there was no way a smart, intelligent, war veteran like John Kerry could lose to the architect of the disaster. Now comes 2008.

Until McCain announced the choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, I thought there was no way a smart, intelligent, thoughtful black man like Barack Obama could lose to an unhinged, disaster-in-waiting, sell-out like John McCain. But what I witnessed last Wednesday night and throughout the past few days has me nearly convinced that the Republicans have hit upon the magic formula once again. Do anything and everything to win at all costs. Why? Because it WORKS! They have absolutely NOTHING to run on. So just mock the other side. Say the vacuous magic words ("small town values", "POW", "God Bless America", "faith") over and over again, repeat lie after lie about the other guy endlessly. Sarah Palin is their mystery celebrity with the made to order dysfunctional family that "everyone can relate to". Remember how W was "the guy you'd like to have a beer with" because he wasn't smarter than you? Palin is the gal you'd like to hang out with because she's cute and knows how to hunt wolves from a helicopter. Just like us!

Don't laugh. This stuff works like a charm. Get ready for President McCain.

Alaska Lawmakers to Seek Subpoenas in Palin Inquiry - NYTimes.com:
"“I’m happy to comply, to cooperate,” Ms. Palin told the Anchorage television station KTUU in late July. “I have absolutely nothing to hide, no problem with an independent investigation.”

"In early August she said, “We are very, very open to answering any questions anybody has of me or my administrators.”

"But on Aug. 29, the day that Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, named Ms. Palin to his ticket, her lawyer, Mr. Van Flein, sent a letter to the state-appointed investigator asserting that, though he would cooperate with the Legislature’s inquiry, the accusations should be investigated by the state personnel board.

"According to the letter, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Van Flein argued that state law made the personnel board “properly vested with primary jurisdiction.”

"Ms. Palin took the extraordinary step Tuesday of filing an ethics complaint against herself, making the matter fall within the bailiwick of the personnel board. Mr. Van Flein then asked the Legislature to drop its inquiry.

"The three members of the personnel board are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The proceedings of the board are conducted in secret, in contrast with the public deliberations of the Legislature."

It appears that there is something that the McCain/Palin campaign is trying desperately to hide. This may or may not be it, but the extreme reaction to even the most basic of questions regarding almost any information about Ms. Palin's background is quite surprising to say the least.

In another article about Ms. Palin's religious background: "Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said."

Oh really? Why is that? Why is Sarah Palin's religion off limits and Barack Obama's isn't? And why is Ms. Palin being shuttled off to Alaska for a while away from national media scrutiny? There's something very strange going on and I am hopeful that journalists are now sufficiently outraged by the horrific police state of the RNC, the sophomoric and mocking tone of the speeches and the constant blaming of "the media" for every fault, to actually find out what is behind it.

Ending Tyranny - John Lewis Gaddis - The American Interest Magazine:
"Suddenly, it seemed, there might be an opportunity to speed up history: The Taliban had collapsed, after all, with only a slight push. So Bush and his advisers began planning to fight a war against terrorism by democratizing the Middle East, the one part of the world where that system had not yet taken root. Toppling a few more tyrants might be all that it would take to get this process going."

Despite being factually inaccurate (the Taliban did not collapse and Bush and his advisers began planning to invade Iraq in early 2001), these statements are so wholly clueless and wholly arrogant and incredibly and cruelly naive as to defy belief. Yes, let's just topple a few more tyrants and get this whole "process" started shall we? It's such a grand game isn't it? My we are such wonderful people!

Bush Lets War Widow Punch His Arm Once | The Onion:
"In an unprecedented gesture of apology, President Bush allowed widow Mary Holt, 32, to punch him once on the left arm Monday as retribution for the death of her husband, Marine Pfc. David Holt, who was killed in a 2007 roadside bomb explosion outside Fallujah."

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)****
On the surface, a breezy, colorful, sexy romp around northeastern Spain by gorgeous, wealthy people. It's also a perceptive character study and rumination on some of the mysteries of the human condition: our need for meaning and how love cannot be that meaning.

Sam Phillips - Don't Do Anything (2008)**
A disappointing trend is afoot. In a vein way too similar to Aimee Mann, Ms. Phillips latest effort sounds WAY to much like her last 3 albums and each song sounds incredibly similar to each other. Now granted, these songs are intelligent, thoughtful, well-written, emotionally powerful but I defy you to listen to them in one sitting! I may bump the rating up a bit once I make it through them all but right now, she's lucky to have 2 stars.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | Rice warns Moscow about its bomber runs off Alaska:
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday ruled out accelerating Georgia's admission to NATO in response to the Russian invasion. But she warned Moscow that it is playing 'a very dangerous game' by resuming Cold War-era strategic bomber patrols close to the Alaskan coast. 'Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power,' Rice told reporters en route to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers set for Tuesday. 'That's not the way to deal in the 21st century.'"

I can't really believe she said that. That has to be a misquote, huh? Does she have the memory of a goldfish?

"Since the flights resumed in August 2007, U.S. and Canadian fighters have intercepted the Russian bombers and escorted them away from the U.S. coast. U.S. officials have previously attached little real significance to the flights by the turboprop-powered Cold War relics, and defense officials said Monday recent flights did not provoke concerns within the Pentagon."

So who is really trying to make a mountain out of a molehile here? And just to be clear, Georgia invaded South Ossetia. Russia did not seek to "send a message" but was responding to a request for help from the Ossetians. Recall when the US forces repelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991? They didn't stop at the Iraqi border. What's the difference here?

The Dark Knight (2008)**
Not an enjoyable experience. I admired the cinematography, the stunts, the special effects up to a point. It does get repetitive especially in a 2.5 hour comic book movie. I just think the film takes itself way too seriously and is so unrelentingly dark and grim that the humongous gaping plot holes and ridiculousness gets to be too much to ignore. Plus the moral of the sordid tale is that absolute power must be given to certain individuals in order to protect us, but if they have it too long they will become the villain. And in such a twisted and heavily one-sided tale it makes all kinds of sense. In the real world though, it's poppycock.

Heath Ledger does turn in an interesting and mesmerizing performance, fully deserving of all the accolades. The role is big and juicy of course but he nails it. I am hopeful that Christopher Nolan is over his comic book phase and can get back to his "Memento" roots. I'm afraid with the success of this film though, he may be compelled to make another and complete the trilogy. Ugh.

YouTube - Hearing on Limits of Executive Power: Vincent Bugliosi
It's about time, but watch the whole thing. It appears this hearing is just a going-through-the-motions sort of affair. Nothing will be done about it by this Congress, but they want to be able to say they DID do something. Shameful. Mr. Bugliosi, thanks for trying.

Tom Friedman doesn't understand why America is unpopular in the world - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
Mr. Greenwald hits another nail on it's fat head. Well done.

Christopher Lee on Middle Earth
Fascinating 4+ minutes with the great Christopher Lee regarding future plans for The Hobbit film and his potential participation. Lee is one of those actors who I feel should have received much more recognition for the great work he has done in dozens of films. The trouble is he was in so many "B" type movies so even if you are outstanding, because the film is second rate you get dismissed. I would think that if the producers of these films wanted to they could find a way, a la Speed Racer, to "green screen" Mr. Lee and include him in the film from London and not require him to make the arduous journey to New Zealand. (Although since everyone was on the same focus level in Speed Racer it was a much easier thing to splice actors from different sets and designs in to the same frame.)

The Delays - Everything's the Rush (2008)****
Tremendous power pop album with the ballad of the year in "Silence". If you like jangly chords, heavy hooks, throbbing bass, smart lyrics and lots of uptempo, this is a must have.

Aimee Mann @#%&*! Smilers (2008)***
Much like Elvis Costello's 1984 release "Goodbye Cruel World", this is Aimee's worst album of individually good (and some great) material. There are 3 songs I would put up against anything she's ever done: "It's Over", "Freeway", "Thirty One Today". And the rest are well-made, intelligent pop songs. The problem is listening to the album is relentlessly depressing and morose. This was a trend for Aimee ever since 2002's "Lost In Space". She is in a deep rut musically and lyrically. But why do I feel this way? I just said 3 of these songs are tremendous and the rest are merely good. Give it a listen and you tell me.

Obama plan would expand faith-based program - IHT:
"Obama is proposing $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the "moral center" of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
...
The plan was met with praise from officials who crafted the Bush administration's proposal, including John DiIulio, who in 2001 served as the director of Bush's office on faith based initiatives. 'Senator Barack Obama has offered a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations,' DiIulio said in a statement. 'He has focused admirably on those groups that supply vital social services to people and communities in need. His plan reminds me of much that was best in both then-Vice President Al Gore's and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush's respective first speeches on the subject in 1999.'"

And so it continues. Obama's march to the center of NOTHING, his betrayal of his most ardent supporters, this mad rush to prove he is not different at all is continuing proof that he really does have what it takes to be president: he will do and say anything at all to get elected.

I am officially off this bandwagon.

IMAX - Wikipedia
I saw Speed Racer today at an IMAX theatre. My last experience at what I thought was an IMAX theatre turned out to be an OMNIMAX theatre which is very different than current standard IMAX. So I was disappointed to say the least. Not in the film itself, which not only holds up upon repeat viewings, but becomes even better. (John Goodman's performance is very good by the way.) If you have access to a digitally projected film theatre, there is no difference in clarity between that and IMAX. Not to my eyes. Yes, the IMAX screen is taller, but that is not relevant to a conventionally shot movie which is typically wider than it is tall. OMNIMAX is the greatest film experience but for some reason still deemed too expensive to film and there are not nearly enough screens to support such a film if it was to be made. I am hopeful that digital cameras could be cheaply made to support the OMNIMAX format and that digital projection of such "films" would be far cheaper and encourage the building of OMNIMAX screens.

WALL-E (2008)***
I liked the opening of the film and for the first 30 minutes we get a glimpse of what "life" is like for WALL-E the robot, left all alone to take all the mountains of trash in what appears to be NYC and stack it into neat and orderly cubes as tall as skyscrapers. But then EVE comes into the picture and things start to go downhill into ordinary Pixar-land. It's not nearly as profound as it wants to be, but the animation is so perfect and seamless, it never ceases to be interesting...except when it is on the spaceship. If they could have done the whole picture without any humans in it at all it would have possibly been a major work of art. As it is, it's an enjoyable piece of family entertainment.

A real pain in the gas - Folsom:
"“Then, apparently to make sure the way was opened really wide to potential market oil price manipulation, in January 2006, the George W Bush administration’s CFTC permitted the Intercontinental Exchange, the leading operator of electronic energy exchanges, to use its trading terminals in the United States for the trading of U.S. crude oil futures on the exchange in London - called “ICE Futures.”

The editorial takes the position that “how today’s oil prices are really determined is done by a process so opaque only a handful of major oil trading banks, such as Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, have any idea who is buying and who is selling oil futures or derivative contracts that set physical oil prices in this strange new world of ‘paper oil.’”

Ties exist between Phil Gramm and investors, including Goldman Sachs, who helped move regulation of WTI offshore, with the ICE Futures Europe purchase."

Phil Gramm is John McCain's economic "advisor".

Dana Milbank - It's a Mitzvah - washingtonpost.com:
"A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday -- and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.

He promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force has 'rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.' He used terms such as 'false prophets of extremism' and 'corrupt' while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that 'Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.'

Vowing to stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, the newly minted nominee apparent added: 'I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally, Israel. Do not be confused.'

I think I'm going to be sick. My only hope is that this is just for the election. Isn't that sad? That you HOPE your candidate is just a cynical anything-to-win pandering asshole? How can he not see that the entire fucking world is resting their hopes on his presidency and to turn around and pull this? This deal with Israel is just like Cuba. It's a small, powerful, moneyed group that influences, almost controls, our government's actions. I think most of us thought Obama would change stuff like that. I guess we were wrong. So friends, it's not going to be this guy but maybe the next one. We have another lesser-of-two-evils election coming up.

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
"“Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” Rockefeller said. “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11. Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."

Um, I'm just a poor ignorant caveman, but doesn't this mean that Bush et al are guilty of war crimes? At the very least, shouldn't there be a trial? Isn't this significant enough evidence to have a fucking trial? How many more investigations, memos, testimonies, tell-all books is it going to take to get this man and his murderous cohorts in jail? You know, this isn't about lying about getting a blow job, lying about a civil lawsuit that was without merit to begin with, this is about lying in order to kill people. Human beings. Doesn't that matter to anyone? Isn't that significant? This needs to be on the front page of every newspaper, the lead story on every newscast, from now until the man is brought to justice. It boggles my mind why this is not the case.

Clinton wins, but Obama closer to nomination - Yahoo! News:
"Clinton's win in Puerto Rico, a territory where residents are not allowed to vote in the November election, gave her more fuel for her argument that she has won more popular votes in the five-month nominating fight and is the best Democrat to face Republican John McCain. But the results pushed Obama closer to the magic number of 2,118 delegates needed to become the nominee, and the Illinois senator already has turned his attention to a general election fight with McCain."

Will someone please tell me just what Ms. Clinton wants? She used to seem to be at least a rational person and at least fairly intelligent. But her behavior the past couple of months borders on idiocy. Each day she stays in this race she hurts her future chances of doing ANYTHING. The ability to understand when further action is HARMFUL not only to you but your allies, friends, compatriots is ESSENTIAL to a president. She has proven over and over again that she does not possess the ability to discern that. What a total moron.

UPDATE: James Fallows suggests an answer here.