WTF Is It Now?!?

I want to thank everyone who responded with movie-rental suggestions last week. I tried. The BF decided on "Hannibal", which was just too damn gross for me - I watched the last half-hour with my blanket covering everything but the top left corner of my field of vision. The only thing good that came out of it was that the BF swore off eating brains for the rest of his life.

We followed that with "Attack of the Clones" - good gravy, WTF was Lucas thinking?? I wanted to kick that wooden, sullen, arrogant mochaccino boy-slut right in his hairless 'nads. Jedi, my ass. Attack of the pubes was more like it. I was waiting for them to jump off a skateboard and start singing "Some Enchanted Evening" while downing some Smirnoff Ices. Dude. Still, the fight scenes and those long-necked critters on the clone planet were pretty cool.


New
Sort of! It's 'Shut Up!', the latest flash from Take Back The Media: Bill O'Reilly - If you're Rush Limbaugh, he'll defend your freedom of speech. If you're Jeremy Glick, he'll tell you to 'shut up' and cut your mic. 'Fair & balanced?' You decide. With musical guest Kelly Osbourne!




"unilateralism and arrogance"
Ouch.
Tony Blair felt compelled to defend his support for the United States before a hostile TV audience this past week. Participants derided him as "Vice President" and "the member [of Parliament] from north Texas," dismissed Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council as "absolutely laughable" and equated pResident Bush with the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. The recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the elite met to ponder global issues, morphed into a six-day critique of the Bush administration.

"I was making the case that if we go into Iraq and discover weapons of mass destruction, then the world would come to realize we'd been right," Gary Smith, executive director of the American Academy, recalled. "And they told me, 'If that happens, it's only because the CIA planted them.' I was floored."

In Britain, Blair has dismissed anti-Americanism as "a foolish indulgence." But aides say he is increasingly aware that the gap between his views and public opinion is widening, and he has launched a major public relations campaign of speeches and television appearances to try to narrow it. The distance he has to go was suggested by a challenge from one member of the studio audience he addressed last week: "I would say to you, Prime Minister, that [if] the war is to get rid of a despotic dictator who has no real democratic mandate, who's very destabilizing, who commits human rights violations - is Mr. Bush next, perhaps?" - from the Washington Post.



The Wimps of War
When the going gets tough, Mr. Bush changes the subject. Double-ouch.

George W. Bush's admirers often describe his stand against Saddam Hussein as "Churchillian." Yet his speeches about Iraq - and for that matter about everything else - have been notably lacking in promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat. Has there ever before been a leader who combined so much martial rhetoric with so few calls for sacrifice?

Or to put it a bit differently: Is Mr. Bush, for all his tough talk, unwilling to admit that going to war involves some hard choices? Unfortunately, that would be all too consistent with his governing style. And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power - a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq - is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States. - from Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times.