Wednesday, November 20, 2002
You know sometimes it just makes me want to scream. Safire hits it on the head. A felon who was convicted of conspiracy, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence is now in charge of a huge database that will monitor, as safire puts it:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine
subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web
site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade
you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and
every event you attend — all these transactions and communications
will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual,
centralized grand database."
To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial
sources, add every piece of information that government has about
you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll
records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy
neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest
hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream:
a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.
This is the Bush legacy. I really am sick to my stomach. Shall we apply what Atrios calls the If only it were Clinton rule? Clinton appoints Marc Rich to keep a database on every single gun owner in this country gives purchases, vacations, bank accounts, movie rentals, etc...
This is why the Democratic party needs to be scrapped and start over. they are spineless jelly fish and are just as culpable in letting this horror go on.
My Senator.
After the Republicans snuck in last minute special interest giveaways to big business, Lieberman, whose government affairs committee first proposed the department over a year ago, and a major writer of the bill, was on the floor decrying the crass partisanship of the White house. He called the provisions a “shame and an embarrassment”.
Republicans then froze Lieberman out of the final bill writing process in retaliation. What did Joe do? He voted for it, and then was grinning ear to ear saying things like "This is a substantial accomplishment, an historic day in the age of insecurity we've entered,"
IF he was in prison, he’d be someone’s bitch in minutes. Apparently he’s pretty comfortable in the role.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Bush, Sept 23rd, regarding the Homeland Security bill:
"the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington, and not interested in the security of the American people."
Washington Post, on the bill as it has just passed the senate:
Riding along on legislation to create a new federal Department of Homeland Security is a White House-backed provision that could head off dozens of potential lawsuits against Eli Lilly and Co. and other pharmaceutical giants.
[snip]
Richard Diamond, a spokesman for retiring House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), said the provision was inserted because "it was something the White House wanted. It wasn't [Armey's] idea."
[snip]
GOP aides said the language originally offered by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), and now incorporated in the bill, gives Texas A&M the inside track in hosting the first university center on homeland security, to be established within one year. DeLay was elected Wednesday to serve as the House majority leader in the 108th Congress.
The President is a piece of shit.
Right wing rant watch. Weekly rantings of right wing loonies from teh yahoo online political groups.
On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 02:43:20 -0000 "kirkzimpfer"
writes:
>U.S. Evangelist Pat Roberston Says Muslims 'Worse than the Nazis'
>Hindustan Times ^ | Nov. 12, 2002 | Agence France Presse
At least someone is telling the truth.
President Bush Jr is still lying about them.
CWSIV
The Bond Project: On Her Majesties Secret Service.
After suffering through the interminable You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery has had it as Bond (sort of). He’s out and the producers need a new 007. Their choice is George Lazenby, a model who looks the part, but can’t act. This is important for one reason. The Film he stars in, On Her Majesties Secret Service, ranks as one of the best Bond films ever created. With Lazenby being one of the films weakest links.
Before watching this film, its best to forget everything you know about Bond. The film is a radical departure from the other films. It essentially follows two separate storylines. The first being Bonds assignment to capture(or, more appropriately, his order to NOT capture), once again, Blofeld (played by the smarmily vegaslike Telly Savales) and stop him from his latest plot to hold the world ransom (this time in a thankfully less ridiculuos fashion, no volcano hideouts here). The second is the romance between Bond and Tracy Draco, beautifal daughter of an international crime lord. This is a jarring juxtaposition and some die hard bond fans might not like it, but I did for the simple reason that it pays off in the end.
The film jettisons everything that was going wrong with the Bond franchise. No reliance on cheesy gadgets, no cartoonish super hideouts with huge lasers designed to annihilate London. Its more gritty, and extremely faithful to the Fleming novel, and its got a great climax, with some truly impressive action set pieces.
But alas there is Lazenby. The man can’t act. And the film is so overly concerned with him being accepted in the role that they design scenes to try and ingratiate him in the audience. He breaks the fourth wall in the opening scene, which doesn’t work, and there is a cutesy scene showing Bond emptying out his desk after he resigns, packing away all the memorabilia from previous Bond films. This just calls to attention that Connery has indeed left the building. Also the ruffly 60’s suit he wears in the beginning of the film does nothing to inspire confidence. And since the film is such a departure, stylistically as well as plotwise, from other Bond films, it makes it harder to accept him as Bond.
That’s not to say that the film doesn’t suffer in other areas. It does. It suffers from a stop and go pacing from scene to scene. With some scenes like the “montage” of the lovers horseback riding and getting to know each other looking like something out of Love Story, followed immediately by more Bond like track the enemy down, gives you whiplash with the sudden change in tone. To give them credit, both storylines do Dovetail nicely at the climax. Other scenes seem to go on to long (a scene of Bond breaking into an office safe goes on forever) and in a film that clocks in at over 2 hours, this is a bad thing.
Another weak part for me is an extended sequence where Bond is undercover, and the entire time Lazenby’s voice is dubbed over.It’s quite noticable and hard to ignore, and utterly unnecessary.
It is still however one of the strongest films in the franchises history. Even Blofelds ultimate goal is an ingenious twist. He wants immunity for his past crimes. The scenery is breathtaking. Blofelds lair is not only beautiful but believable. Not an evil underground liar, but a mountaintop hideaway disguised as a research facility. The action scenes still hold up to this day, with some breathtakingly beautiful photography. And the ending. The marriage of James Bond and her murder have driven the character for years. And Lazenby nails the moment perfectly.
One of the best Bond films ever made, and certainly the best one for years and years to come.
Which is news? And which is not?
The highest ranking woman and Italian American in the History of the Congress was just elected Minority Leader.
The fact that the new Majority leader believes Creationism should be taught in schools, The EPA should be dismantled, shoved another congressman on the floor of the house while calling him a "chickenshit", A man who when asked what federal regulations he would want to keep, responded "None that I can think of." (Wall Street Journal, 3/3/95), a man who said that Christianity “offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer to the questions of life”. A man who declared that parents should not send their kids to Texas A&M (A State University) because they didn't teach creatonism, and oh by the way Delay was expelled from the school when he was younger because of drinking.
