James Wolcott: Nowhere Men:
"The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, premiering Sunday night on HBO, is as brilliantly done as could be dreamed...But the nagging question remains, was it worth doing?...by the end of two hours, we're no wiser as to the pathology that drove him...this emptiness is never accounted for, nor the sadistic meanness."

I wonder if that is indeed the point: that sometimes you can't "account" for every facet of a person's behavior. Personally, I welcome a film that doesn't pretend to have "figured out" its subject as many a biopic does. With what we now know about how the brain is built and functions, facile explanations based upon upbringing or traumatic events just seem ludicrous. It sounds like this film asks more questions than it answers. That is as it should be.

The Onion | New Social Security Plan Allows Workers To Put Portion Of Earnings On Favorite Team
Sadly, it's funny because it is true.

Polar Express, The (2004)
I haven't seen the film yet, but I am curious why all the critics seem to think that this "technology" of using live actors against blue screens and animating them using a computer is groundbreaking. Ralph Bakshi did that years ago when he made Lord of the Rings. More recently, Richard Linklater did the same thing in Waking Life. They didn't use computers; they animated the actors by hand, frame by frame, coloring over them in each scene and adding background, etc. A more painstaking process but probably a lot cheaper.

STLtoday - Sports - Rams
“We don’t hold hands, get in a stance and sing Kumbaya My Lord. I’m not into that. We have a direction we’re going. You’re on the train or you’re not. If not, get out, period. I know where we’re going. I know where I’m going. You’re either with me or you’re not. Anything else? OK, thanks.”

A refreshing change to see Mike Martz actually mad at a press conference. This is long overdue. Martz is what they call a "player's" coach meaning that he treats his players as adult human beings and not like pieces of meat. Some players respond well to that like Faulk, Holt, Bruce, Bulger, Warner and on and on. Others, like a number of #1 picks on the defensive line, some linebackers, some safeties don't. I think the defensive players have no respect for Larry Marmie and just won't play for him. As for the offensive problems, I blame the play calling which has been atrocious except for the first half of the San Francisco game. The Rams fell into the trap of trying to hit the Patriots where they were hurting, the secondary. The Pats compensated, maybe too much, with a furious pass rush all day long. They needed some more touches for powerful Steven Jackson who was used very sparingly. He could have taken some of the rush out of the Pats' D line with a dozen or so runs right at them. Wear them down a bit. We shall see if the new attitude of the head coach translates into any action on the field this Sunday against Seattle.

From Revolution to Reconstruction: Presidents: Thomas Jefferson: Letters: PATIENCE AND THE REIGN OF WITCHES: "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when & where they would end? Better keep together as we are, hawl off from Europe as soon as we can, & from all attachments to any portions of it. And if we feel their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. Better luck, therefore, to us all; and health, happiness, & friendly salutations to yourself."

Mr. Jefferson comes through again. Some good advice in these "interesting" times.

Those faulty exit polls were sabotage=The Hill.com=: "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."

I think Dick Morris has a point here. (God, did I just write that?) ANd that point is that it is extremely unusual for so many exit polls to be so wrong. I also suspect foul play, but not the kind Mr. Morris suspects. I really wish Kerry would have waited for Ohio to complete it's count. Very interesting that Diebold's president vowed to deliver Ohio and sure enough guess what happened. Say, can we recount those votes taken with the Diebold machines?

Yahoo! News - Bush Says Will Reform Social Security System Now: "'We will start on Social Security now. We will start bringing together those in Congress who agree with my assessment that we need to work together,' he said in his first news conference after the election."

Well that didn't take long did it? Notice how they always say "reform" instead of "dismatle"? It's like the use of "relief" instead of "cuts" when referring to taxes. What is really going on here is the mass transfer of wealth from working people to the wealthiest 1% of the country. It is the default on billions of dollars of treasury bills. Even by their own admission, the "privatization" of social security will be more expensive and more risky and STILL benefits will "have" to be cut. And for what? So the tax cuts which favored the most wealthy of us can be made permanent. We will now see if there is a Democrat with an ounce of integrity in Congress. (I am not holding my breath.)

Yahoo! News - Kerry Calls Bush to Concede Election: "Network projections showed Republicans would hold at least 54 of the 100 Senate seats, three more than they now have, and widen their slim majority of the 435-member House in the new 109th Congress, set to convene on Jan. 3.

That will make it easier for Bush to push his conservative agenda through Congress, potentially making his tax cuts permanent and appointing more federal judges including possibly some U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) justices.

'With a bigger majority, we can do even more exciting things,' said House Majority leader Tom DeLay, a Republican from Texas."

Easier? EASIER? How much easier can it possibly be? Was there a stumbling block somewhere in the last 4 years that we all missed? Man, what a chilling quote from DeLay. It's apparently going to take somebody like Barrack Obama to give the Democratic Party some semblance of a backbone. I hope he does just that in the next 4 years.

It is 10 pm Pacific time and it appears to be all over. To the rest of the world, I apologize for my country's choice. The first time, well anyone can make a mistake. But twice? That is downright willful idiocy. Even if I agreed with President Bush's policies his near completely ineptitude with regard to implementation would force me to want a change. How a president with a job approval rating well below 50% can win reelection is incredible.

Kerry and the Dems are going to have to take a long hard look at what the hell they are about. If you can't beat a sitting duck like that you have some serious problems. JFK was way, WAY too tentative and cautionary for one thing. (I am sure there are plenty more things but I am too sick right now to try and articulate them.)

And now we, and the rest of the world, will be made to suffer for that.

Yahoo! News - Chicago Bears Will Not Sign Tim Couch
Holy mackerel! If you can't crack the Chicago Bears QB roster, you ain't a quarterback my friend! Talk about being punched in the gut.

MSNBC - Dangerous Loose Ends
If you have the stomach for it, Christopher Dickey appears to be one of the finest journalists we have in the mainstream press. Intelligent, well-informed, a sense of history, a sense of morality, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Very good prose too.

Why Hitch Drank The Neocon Kool-Aid
If you can get past the subservient fawning of Johann Hari, this is an interesting interview with Christopher Hitchens about why he seemingly changed course radically after 9/11/2001. Now I don't claim to be up on the intellectual "elite", but in the battle of the think tanks, I would like to see some mutually assured destruction taking place. If you give these guys any sort of power, as we have seen the past 4 years, disaster usually results.

At any rate, a couple of points of disagreement for the sake of brevity: I really don't think any sane person can be found in the US who wanted to "do nothing" after 9/11/2001. Maybe "the Left" whatever that is, but I am talking about regular people. The question was HOW to go about it. And I find it hard to believe that WHOEVER was president at the time would have tried to arrange talks with Bin Laden in lieu of invading Afghanistan to take him out. The problem with the Bush administration is that it didn't want to finish the job in Afghanistan because it had other things on its plate. And invading Iraq was one of them.

Which brings me to my second point of dispute: invading Iraq was a part of the neocon plan of action from before Bush was elected. This is not in dispute. The problem was, they used "the war on terror" to justify that plan. Saddam Hussein was a threat to his people and human dignity, but he was no threat to anybody else thanks to 12 years of sanctions. The neocons believed that it would be a cakewalk to take over Iraq, turn it into a Jeffersonian Democracy overnight and use it as a base for military operations in the Middle East and as an example of what's in store if the rest of the neighborhood did not play nice with us. That's the kind of "think tank" idea that gets the eyes rolling at places like The Pentagon.

The dangerous thing about these people is that they love to play war with other people's lives. To them, war is not a last resort, a means of defense when all else fails. It is a tool to affect global change to the way they think the world should be. They are out of touch with reality. To wit: "So we have to take the risk of uncorking it and hoping the more progressive side wins." And WHO takes the risk?

To see/read a person of Hitchens supposed intellectual heft defend these people because he actually met a few and found them to be great chaps even knowing the jaw dropping failures and mistakes in the Iraq invasion/aftermath...well to use his words "has lost all moral bearings."

Forbes.com: Is Sex Necessary?
See honey? I TOLD you so!

Yahoo! News - Singer Cat Stevens Denied U.S. Entry, Flight Diverted
Whew! I don't know about you, but I feel a HELLUVA lot safer now.

The Delivery Man
Run. Don't walk. Get it.

Bush's Blind Spots (washingtonpost.com): "The shocking waste of America's health system reflects the fact that, most of the time, doctors and patients decide what medical services are necessary, but the bills are paid by insurers and the government....But there are plenty of ways to get Social Security privatization wrong. Any reform would have to involve benefit cuts, and these take political courage. "

If Mr. Mallaby believes that America's soaring health care costs are due to the fact that patients are not good shoppers, then why do all other industrialized nations whose governments provide health care coverage pay far less for that coverage and have longer life spans and lower infant mortality rates among other indicators? The "waste" comes from U.S. government supported monopolies on drugs and physicians. And as far as Social Security, it is still shocking and depressing to me that the idea that it is in some dire financial trouble has become the accepted truth. Yes, a small tax increase may be needed to fund the program in 30 years, similar to those increases the program has had in each of the past 3 decades. The reason this idea has taken hold is because it is unseemly to talk about defaulting on treasury bonds. Instead, we talk about the SS program being in such dire straits that benefits will HAVE to be cut. And of course we blame this on the Baby Boomers even though we supposedly took care of that problem in 1983 when SS rates were raised slightly, and most Boomers will be dead in 2030 when this supposed crisis hits.

The Cheapest Calories Make You the Fattest: "The first generation of GMO products offered the consumer nothing. The food was not cheaper, and it was still grown with pesticides--and in some cases required even more pesticides. In the late 1990s, the companies told me about this second generation of products that was going to provide superior nutrition. Where are they?

We still have the same crops that were rolled out in 1996. It suggests that either the capital to do research and development is drying up, or they've found it's harder than they thought to make these more complex products work. Either way, the industry is on the ropes. I don't think in ten years we'll be talking about GMOs. I can easily see the industry withering away."

Good news from a "food-chain journalist".

STLtoday - News - Maplewood mall will cover toxic ground: "Past rules were too strict, he said. For example, a hardware store owner couldn't buy a vacant lot next door because he couldn't afford to clean up the groundwater to drinking-water standards. 'It doesn't make sense,' he said. 'No one will ever use it for drinking water.' "

Oh that's nice. I'm not going to drink the groundwater NOW, so let's just pave over it and forget there was ever any problem here.

Yahoo! News - Late Cooking Diva Julia Child Loved Red Meat, Gin
Please pardon the cliche, but she seemed to have truly lived "a full life". Jacques Pepin said "She was a true person. There was nothing fake about her." From what I could see on the screen I would have to agree that was a large part of her appeal to myself and millions of "foodies" around the country if not the world. I may have to invest in the dvd of her last series with Pepin. It was just a pleasure watching those two banter and argue about the best way to cook whatever it was they were cooking. I will miss her.

Bush eyes Thomas as chief justice, book says:
"Whether he is elevated to chief justice 'all depends on [President] Bush being re-elected,' Foskett said."

I think we all know what needs to be done here.