Sent to me by way of Raza at High Industrial: Is Bush Wired? Hmmm…I see two major problems with this particular conspiracy theory. For one, given how much Dubya is photographed, an earpiece would be extremely hard to hide. For another, if Dubya were being prompted from afar, one would think he’d be much more articulate than he in fact is most of the time. Update: Salon follows the meme.
Voice of Trillian.
Zooey Deschanel checks in to discuss progress on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, probably my most eagerly awaited fanboy film of next summer (and, yes, unfortunately, I’m counting Episode III and FF.)
Indiana Jones and the Bus of Jethro.
Now here’s a strange cultural artifact…Harrison Ford appears as Jethro the Snoop-talkin’ Bus Driver for this extremely low-budget snowboarding film, Water to Wine. Bizarre as this is, I think it might just have been more entertaining than Random Hearts.
Lemony Snicket, Sour Byck.
In today’s movie bin, a post-Eternal Sunshine Jim Carrey returns to hamming it up in the full trailer for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Sean Penn (with the aid of 21 Grams co-star Naomi Watts and Don Cheadle) resurrects Samuel Byck (also featured in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins) in the international teaser for The Assassination of Richard Nixon.
In Effect.
Mark Noferi — an old friend, former DC speechwriter, current Stanford law student, and inveterate Red Sox fan — has joined the Blog Nation over at Nofeblog. Worth checking out, particularly if your interests run towards law, music, baseball, and/or politics.
NIN v. Ace of Base?
Bored by the pre-debate spin cycle and inspired by Lots of Co’s alt.homecoming mix, I went scouring the Internet yesterday evening for some of the mixes Max mentioned (such as “Without Vader“, a.k.a. Eminem v. John Williams) and found Bass 21, which includes a number of versus versions for perusing and/or downloading to the iPod. Enjoy. (I must admit a particularly guilty fondness for “Go Toxic,” a.k.a. Britney v. Yaz.)
Nihilists, Dude.
Perhaps John Woo can take a cue from the Coens…By way of Quiddity, it’s Masters of the Universe meets The Big Lebowski, and it appears Skeletor was a founding member of Autobahn. Pretty profane, Dude, and unsafe for work.
Found Wanting.
“The global test is the measurement of the president’s assertions against the real world, the world you and I can see. This is the test Bush has failed.” Will Saletan dispels the “global test” canard that the GOP has been latching on to since last Thursday.
Operation Iraqi Falsehood.
Yesterday, Paul Bremer — Dubya’s former chief man in Iraq — admitted in remarks intended for a private audience that many more troops were needed on the ground after Saddam’s fall to stave off looting and lawlessness. Today, a report by Charles Duelfer — the chief weapons inspector in Iraq (after the departed David Kay, who’s already quit the WMD party line) — concludes “that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.” How many more “failures of judgment” in Iraq, to put it charitably, do we need to see from these jokers?
Round 2: Draw.
Well, to my partisan eye, Dick Cheney proved time and time again in tonight’s sole veep debate that he’s not only an inveterate liar but a major-league asshole. (Yeah, big time.) Iraq (“It’s going great!”), Osama (“We never stopped going after him!”), the homefront (“Things are looking up!”), you name it…the guy just seems to have no compunction about dissembling flat-out to the American people. Said the veep early on, “The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.” Really, Dick? How were we supposed to take Saddam “had long-established ties with Al Qaeda” then? Similarly, the audacity of Dick Cheney attacking John Kerry for voting against weapons systems he himself opposed is simply staggering.
From lies to misdirection. How did Cheney try to explain away Halliburton’s sweetheart no-bid Iraq contracts, and the subsequent looking askance at their egregious overbilling of the American people? “Um, John, I’ve never seen you around the Senate before.” (Not true, of course, but nice of Dick to send voters to the Soros-run FactCheck.com rather than FactCheck.org, though.) And, when Edwards skewered the veep with his own voting record from back in the day — no to Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and the Education Dept, no to MLK Day and to condemning apartheid(?!) — what was Cheney’s answer? “Oh, I think his record speaks for itself.” You’re damn right it does, as does yours.
All that being said, I thought Edwards missed a few chances to put the hurt on Cheney in the early going, and should have responded harder to the ridiculous “facing-up-to-Howard Dean” riff. And he didn’t really hit his stride until the domestic-policy-oriented second half, when less-interested swing voters out there had probably started tuning out. (Conversely, I thought Cheney self-destructed for awhile there, mumbling about No Child Left Behind in a question about jobs.) So, while my gut (and the insta-polling) say Edwards took this one, I’m guessing the numbers in the next few days will show a draw, if only because Cheney seemed at least somewhat cognizant of the world around him, unlike his running mate. Next stop: Friday.