A Ghoulish Open Thread

If any of you are interested in horror films, there's the petrifying tale on Democracy gone horribly wrong called Recount on HBO tonight and tomorrow at 9pm and other various times on other HBOs. Ebert's review is here.

One of the stars of Recount, Kevin Spacey, spoke with the mad prophet of the airways, Keith Olbermann, about the film.


Spacey also talked about Recount with Charlie Rose and his panel.



TAGS: Movies, The Horror, Recount, Kevin Spacey

Off With Their Pants

Because The Revolution Gene is Dormant

I have been reacting to one outrageous news story after another for so long that I can't really remember the last time I was able to take a step back and coherently contextualize the forest and the trees. In 2004, before the last election, I guess I was able to step back then, because that's what presidential elections make us do. The people have to compare one guy to the other guy.

About half of them shrugged and said, "I'm stumped," and forgot all about it.

The other half voted and no one is quite sure what happened there. It's hard to steal an election convincingly. These guys didn't pull it off. It wasn't convincing at all. A little probing and it's perfectly clear what happened, but with an assist from the media and the lack of curiosity of the masses--half didn't even vote, so why would they look into whether or not it was stolen?

So, enough people went to a ballot box, after four years of Bush, and said, "Gimme some more," that tipping it came down to only ballot-jacking Ohio.

Three more years have past and now, there's no way that Bush could beat Kerry, who in turn couldn't beat anyone else in the Democratic primaries. Three more years of this administration has brought down a resounding judgment. Bush couldn't steal Ohio or any other battleground state if this thing were re-done today.

Still, though, thirty percent of Americans remain loyal Bushies.

So I ask, are the Americans walking this continent today the same as the ones that took it from the Brits in the eighteenth century?

Is there a John Adams in the house? Thomas Paine? Anyone?

Where did our courage go?

In a speech Al Gore gave two months after the 2004 election, he pointed out that the threats our leaders faced as a country during the revolution were great. If they had been caught or if the war went badly, they all would have been hung.

Yet, these were the ones who came up with the foundation for the very rights that the Bush Administration are stripping away based on a threat that falls far short of the British Army burning down the White House in The War of 1812 or the Soviet nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

Clearly, the actions of the Bush administration have no legitimacy and reek of authoritarianism. But we do not revolt. Why?

Well, for one thing, many people feel that we can wait them out. Term limits dictate that even the worst president will be gone after eight years. For most of America to wake up it took about six years. So do you have a bloody revolution in the streets to remove a guy who's out in two years?

Our blog is kind of defined by two symbols, one is visual, the guillotine, one is textual, taking off someone's pants. We have two suggested remedies for crimes against humanity--petty embarrassment and death. Clearly this is a brilliant ironic configuration created by SbT which implies the answer is somewhere in the broad realm of possibilities between those extremes.

Admittedly, the guillotine looks more and more appropriate. But the blatant insults to the American people--the ones paying attention anyway--continue to pile up.

In a country that's on fire with rage at its leaders, how many times can the news anchors smile and lead with Britney Spears before even one more year of this is just too damn much?

By the way something, Britney, keep your pants on.

RELATED: Author Naomi Klein: America is succumbing to fascism.

TAGS: Revolution, Bush Era, Al Gore, Constitution

Restore Al Gore's Reputation

That sore loser Al Gore is back complaining again.

Just wait. You'll hear this story in Vanity Fair contextualized that way real soon. Don't believe it.

I spoke to a very intelligent libertarian friend of mine over the weekend. The guy is as sharp as our guillotine. We engaged in one of the most intellectually honest conversations about politics I have ever engaged in with someone who's fundamental beliefs directly oppose mine. Seriously, in the hour long debate, we actually went beyond our own agendas and came up with some good policy ideas that synthesized his approach and mine in ways that would, you know, accomplish something.

It was a profound experience that gave me hope that if lobbyists were removed from the equation, hard-edged capitalists like him and avid social democrats like me could make things work better for everyone.

Then he asked me who I thought would be the next President.

I should have just shrugged and asked him what he thought. Instead I answered. "Hillary Clinton."

He went into convulsions.

"Hey man." I said to him, once the color returned to his face, "I don't like it any more than you do." That was the only dishonest thing I said to the guy all night--I'm sure I would be far more comfortable with Hillary as President than my friend would. What I meant was, "I don't like it either," but I was trying to keep us focused and on common ground. We were doing so well.

I quickly changed the subject. "If he runs, Al Gore is my guy."

he didn't like that either. "Gore? He's nuts."

And with that, ideological bipartisanship ended.

"No, sir!" I fired back. I took a deep breath and I went on and on for ten minutes explaining that over the last seven years Gore has been transformed. I implored my friend to listen to the speech Gore gave on Martin Luther King Day in January 2006.



I told him that this Al Gore:



would inspire people like him. This Al Gore:



would win him over. I gave it everything I had.

He didn't believe a word of it.

And you know what, Al Gore's not the least bit surprised that so many people distrust him.

From Vanity Fair:

As he was running for president, Al Gore said he'd invented the Internet; announced that he had personally discovered Love Canal, the most infamous toxic-waste site in the country; and bragged that he and Tipper had been the sole inspiration for the golden couple in Erich Segal's best-selling novel Love Story (made into a hit movie with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal). He also invented the dog, joked David Letterman, and gave mankind fire.

Could such an obviously intelligent man have been so megalomaniacal and self-deluded to have actually said such things? Well, that's what the news media told us, anyway. And on top of his supposed pomposity and elitism, he was a calculating dork: unable to get dressed in the morning without the advice of a prominent feminist (Naomi Wolf).

(more)

By the way something, the Gore '08 rumors picked up a little momentum when Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney said that there is "a very good chance" that former vice president Al Gore will run and be "very formidable" because Gore has been "right" about Iraq and global warming. Amen.

But we'll know Al Gore's decision when we know. If Gore doesn't run, I'll be pretty pissed about it. But this isn't about '08. It's about '00. The American people haven't been able to get a straight answer about anything from the media since that ridiculous campaign and it's at the root of all our troubles. The truth has to start at the beginning. The decline of this country starts in '00 with the fundamental debasement of journalism and complete subjugation of the truth. Restoring Al Gore's reputation is a vital step to getting back the America we lost.

AUDIO: There's an MP3 of Gore's MLK Day speech here.

TAGS: Al Gore, Election 2000, Election 2008, Media Bias

Weather Woes

It Really IS Floodin' Down in Texas

(I don't know if all the telephone lines are down.)

If you watch CNN, you would think that the big weather news is Hurricane Dean hitting Jamaica, or maybe the typhoon hitting China. Nice comfortable stories in that they don't effect anybody in the United States.

Surely you've heard about the flooding down in Texas, Oklahoma, and Minnesota that resulted in 13 deaths - but the big story weather-wise, at least in terms of death toll, isn't getting that much interest in the States.

From the BBC: A two-week heatwave in the southern and Midwestern US has resulted in the deaths of at least 43 people, many of whom were elderly, officials have said.

On Sunday, temperatures dropped to 94F (34C) in Memphis, Tennessee - the first time in 10 days they did not top 100F.

Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, South Carolina and Mississippi have also been affected.
...
Mr Wharton said the city's "heat index", a measure that factors in humidity to describe how hot the weather feels, had risen above 100F every day since 27 June.

Weather forecasters said the temperature would be around 96F (36C) on Monday and remain close to 100F (38C) for the rest of the week.

Why isn't this story getting as much airtime as the others? Maybe because it can't be so readily dramatized by the likes of Tucker Carlson (who so infamously put himself in the path of Hurricane Katrina's 100-mph. winds live on CNN a couple years ago.) Or maybe it's just old news, the same old same old. After all, "Last summer, a heatwave killed at least 143 people in California." (Story) And anyway, just because a story has happened before doesn't mean that it isn't news anymore. In fact, the sheer number of weather-related news stories in the last few years is a story in itself.

More probably the US news services are silent on this because people in Big Oil don't like the media talking about something that can reasonably be attributed to man-driven global climate change. That and the fact that free speech is now limited to designated free speech zones by the government. (Apparently none of the big networks, or the cable channels are situated inside such zones.) But they are talking, at least outside of the USA - look at these two related stories from The Guardian:

Scientists Warn on Climate Tipping Points:
Some tipping points for climate change could be closer than previously thought. Scientists are predicting that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable and lead to catastrophic sea-level rises around the world.

In drawing together research on tipping points, where damage due to climate change occurs irreversibly and at an increasing rate, the researchers concluded that the risks were much greater than those predicted by the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

If the Greenland ice sheet melted completely, for example, it would raise global sea levels by seven metres. According to the IPCC report, the melting should take about 1,000 years. But the study, by Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, showed the break-up could happen more quickly, in 300 years. Professor Lenton said: "We know that ice sheets in the last ice age collapsed faster than any current models can capture, so our models are known to be too sluggish."

But nobody, even in Britain seems concerned enough to actually do anything about it.

Too Much Effort to Adopt Greener Lifestyle
Millions of people across Britain think their behaviour does not contribute to climate change and find it too much effort to make green changes to their lifestyle, a government survey suggests.

About a quarter of people polled agreed with statements such as: "It takes too much effort to do things that are environmentally friendly" and "I don't believe my behaviour and everyday lifestyle contribute to climate change". About half the people disagreed with the statements.

Maybe someone should consider the effort it will take to evacuate London, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle*, and all of Florida and move their inhabitants about 50 miles inland. Wasn't the loss of New Orleans enough of a wakeup call? I think maybe everyone should watch An Inconvenient Truth again. And maybe click the TAKE ACTION link.
* - (to name but a few. Almost ALL of the world's largest cities are at or near sea level.)

"What changed in the US with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling
that we'd entered a PERIOD OF CONSEQUENCES"
- Al Gore -

The only good consequence of this is that I get to post one of my all-time favorite live Stevie Ray Vaughan performances.

TAGS:
An Inconvenient Truth, Global Warming, Environment
DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!
Stevie Ray Vaughan