Harry Reid, in defending the filibuster, says that it is to "protect unlimited debate." Sounds good, but if you actually know what's going on, you realize he's lying and hoping that the average American won't catch him on it. The fact is, filibusters having nothing to do with debate. It used to, but after the filibuster became the favorite tool of politicians trying to obstruct the Senate from actually voting on something, the two tier system was begun. I think I described it in a previous post, but here it is again, in short. There are no longer real filibusters (I suppose there could be, they just aren't used). Instead, when a bill is up a Senator will just tell whomever that he plans to filibuster. They will move on to other business instead of the bill at hand, and behind the scenes the Senators will work to clear up any problems so that when they bring up the original business again, the objecting Senator will hopefully have changed his mind. There's no real debate involed in a filibuster at all, so what Senator Reid said was basically a stone cold lie meant to mislead Americans. Shame on him.

I just found out that the guy that invented the Transformers also came up with the idea of the hole cameras in poker, which turned it in to the TV craze it has become. What a genius!

Senator Harry Reid, an outspoken opponent of any change in the social security system, sponsored a bill in 1984 that would have allowed members of Congress and government employees to opt out of social security. It's not good enough for him, but it is for Joe Q. Public? It's simple, really. Reid knows that social security is a load of crap, but to end it would mean he would lose control over all those dollars that should belong to the rest of us.

The AARP has an investment fund wtih almost $1 billion in assets, which they put in much higher risk investments than are being suggested for private SS accounts. Why is investing good for them, but not for Joe Q. Public? Simple, the investment program the AARP has set up includes a hefty cut for the AARP. SS private accounts would not pay the AARP a dime.

It's obvious there's a problem with social security. Less people are being born and entering the work force than before, and that means less SS tax to be paid out to old people, and the problem will only get worse. It needs a fix. Private accounts may not the be best solution, but at least some people are trying to find an answer. What's best for Harry Reid and the AARP is if the American public sticks its head in the sand and ignores the problem in the hope that it will go away. It's unfortunate that Reid and the AARP care less about their constituents than their own wallets and their own power and influence.

Senator George Voinovich has come up with what he calls the kitchen test, which is just another way of saying that he thinks Bolton is too rude and unrefined to be the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations. Isn't that a silly measure? Bolton is extremely qualified, with decades of experience in the State Department, and a personal knowledge base that would blow away most college history professors, but because he allegedly yelled at a subordinate once, Voinovich thinks he's incapable of doing the job.

Find me an elected official who has not yelled at a subordinate at some point, and I will concede that Bolton should not be an Ambassador. Come on guys, we all know your real motive is to be anti-Bush. In the case of Voinovich, a RINO, it may be to play to his constituency, fearing that any support of Bush will lose him votes. Anyway, if you're going to go after Bush nominees just because, at least come up with a better excuse than "He yelled at someone and hurt their feelings."

I've always liked Zell Miller. He started Hope here in Georgia, he gave off an aura of trustworthiness, as oppossed to the aura of slime that many other polticos exude, and his downhome Georgia accent made you think, "here's one guy that's not going to change when he opens office in DC." Anyway this little short interview that I saw quoted on powerlineblog.com really takes the cake:

NRO: Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman, has reemerged in Georgia as the Democratic nominee in Georgia' 4th congressional district.

MILLER: Yes, she has.

NRO: Any thoughts on that?

MILLER: They're not printable.

Regarding the filibuster, when asked by ABC if they thought the Republicans should change Senate rules to make it easier to confirm a judge, a large percentage of poll respondents said no. Of course that's a leading question with deceptive wording. When asked "Should Senate Democrats allow a vote on George Bush's judicial nominees?," 81% said yes. Big surprise, ABC twisted wording around to get the answer they wanted, as did the pollster in the second poll. The difference is that the second poll was done by FoxNews, and they admitted that they worded it so they would get the answer they wanted. ABC would never, in a million years, admit to their agenda.

I'm a big fan of video games and ahve been for much of my life. It's a unique industry in that the main players on the hardware side, which now is Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, only release new versions of their products every 5 years or so. The last iteration was in 1999 and 2000 when Nintendo released the GameCube, Microsoft the X-Box, and Sony the Playstation 2. The new generation is just around the corner and speculation is rampant. The Playstation 2 is rumored to be powerful far beyond the others, a virtual supercomputer in a small box. The extent of the rumors I ahve read about the new X-Box revolve around its name, and not anything much about what it really does. The Nintendo device is where the real fun comes in. The name I have heard is Nintendo Revolution, and the revolution involved is rumored to be a 3D Projection display for the games. How crazy is that? To add to the veracity is a report that George Lucas plans to turn all his Star Wars movies in 3D films, and mentioned that video game device is soon to be released which will take advantage of new, advanced 3D technology far ahead of mainstream Hollywood. Could that device be the Revolution? Who knows, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed because it sounds incredible. If there's one company in all the world that can take a wacky idea and turn it in to god, it's Nintendo. Or didn't you ever play that game where you maneuver an Italian plumber into jumping on turtles?

On another blog I read a lot, the blogger posted about political correctness and why does it have such a bad name. He wondered why changing wording to not offend people is such a bad thing. It's not. After much thought, I've come up with the problem. It's not that we mind changing our words to not offend people, it's that what offends people changes so much over time, that what was ok to say yesterday could get you censored for hate speech today. The most striking examples have to do with blacks, or maybe African-Americans? 50 years ago you said colored, and saying black would be considered offensive. Now colored is offensive, black is ont he way out, and African-American is the thing to say. But what about black people that aren't of American descent? What if someone was born in Jamaica? How the hell am I supposed to know if someone is African-American or African-Jamaican? Why not black, which covers it all? I never even thought about the difference until I saw some black demagogue haranguing the country about how African-Americans are getting shafted by affirmative action, because it does not distinguish between American blacks, and those from elsewhere, and the ones from elsewhere are taking all the positions. More victim card stuff. And what about the big bad word that lords it over all other big bad words? You know the one, starts with an "n" and is guaranteed to bring a short, white, Jewish kid a beating, and is equally sure to bring a young black hip-hop kid a high-five from his friends. The problem with political correctness is that they will always find a way to call someone insensitive, even if they have to change the rules to do so.

Trey Parker (co-creator of South Park), interviewed by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner in their recent book Hollywood Interrupted: “People in the entertainment industry are by and large whore-chasing drug-addict fuckups,” he said. “But they still believe they’re better than the guy in Wyoming who really loves his wife and takes care of his kids and is a good, outstanding, wholesome person. Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they’re the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.”

Sounds about right to me.

This guy gets it!

I was accussed of chip dumping during an online poker game the other day. Chip dumping is when you team up with another player, and manipulate the game so that you lose all your chips to that other player, or the other way around, thereby giving that player that receives the chips a huge advantage over everyone else. It's always better to be the big stack than the small. At any rate, I found this accusation hilarious. For one, I have no idea who the guy I lost my chips to is, and, for another, I'm not good enough to manipulate the game in such a way as to make chip dumping viable. I guess what really got me laughing was that the guy's major reasoning for the accusation is that no one could be dumb enough to make the move I made unless they were dumping. Little does he know that I make moves that dumb almost every day!

The story that most of the media is pimping is that the two Volcker Committee members that resigned did so because they were done with what they were hired to do. That came from a U.N. spokeperson. One wonders why the media trusts anything the UN says, seeing as they lie and are caught doing it almost every day, yet the media (and much of the left) trusts everything they say. Well this article shows them lying once again. In quotes from one of the resigned investigators, you see that he quit not because he was done, but in protest with the whitewashing of what they are investigating, the clearing of Annan, and the general lack of wanting to get the truth that he encountered.

The Volcker report has been suspect from the start. Rumors of Paul Volcker not following up leads, and ignoring evidence that might make the UN look bad have been rampant. Unfortunately, it will probably work. The report will come out, completely whitewashed, the news media, whose agenda calls for the UN to be big and succesful and the final world authority, will accept the report without caveat, and the general public will never hear about all the problems that were ignored or whitewashed, and thus the UN will gain a lot of respect for being immoral crooks who pimp out children and watch mass slaughters happen before their eyes without shedding a tear.

If you need yet another reason to favor the Fair Tax Plan, this is it. This article is all about tax shelters and how about a quarter of the world's assets are held in tax shelters, usually little sialnds in the middle of a big ocean. One expert whines that the use of tax shelters shifts the burden of taxation from the people who can afford to those who can't. In the U.S. if you are poor, not only do you not pay taxes, many times you get a refund. And the rich supposedly don't pay taxes at all (despite the incontrovertible fact that rich people pay a good bit over half the tax revenue in this country, they are rich, so they must be evil, so obviously they are hiding all their money on an island and not paying any taxes at all), so I guess my Dad is paying all the tax revenue the US gets each year, which means the IRS must not be doing too bad, because he got a refund.

Anyway, my main point is that the Fair Tax Plan would solve all these tax haven problems, because none of that money would be taxed even if it stayed in the US. Not unless they spent it, anyway. And then we'd have billions, maybe even trillions, of extra dollars floating around in our banking system, earning interest, providing capital for loans, feeding the poor, whatever. Not a bad deal. I'm still waiting for someone to give one valid reason AGAINST the Fair Tax Plan that can't be quickly and easily refuted. Most of the people I have seena rguing against didn't even bother to read the plan, or chose not to care about the specifics, or decided to lie, because the arguments all left out important facts, or gave misleading and incorrect information.

The simple version of this article is that foundations run by George Soros were given over $30 billion by the US government. Soros then gave over $20 billion to moveon.org. One wonders how much US tax revenue was ultimately given to moveon.org to campaign for John Kerry, something that is not supposed to be done. Of course, as I said, this is a simplistic look at the affair, I'm sure that Soros has it all covered. I doubt the $30 billion went in to his personal coffers to then be used by moveon.org. On the other hand, should the government really be giving that much money to groups run by a man who they know is giving equally huge amounts of money to political groups? Also, how about giving all that money to groups run by a man who ebtrays his won liberal principals every day, but especially when he used currency speculation to nearly destroy the British economy, and thus the wealth of the little working people he claims to be a defender of. The games he played with national economies to make himself filthy rich hurt far more individuals in the wallet than anything Bush has ever done, and Bush is supposed to be the protector of the rich who doesn't ca re about the little guy. When you compare actual actions instead of rhetoric, Soros should be an enemy of the left, not a hero.

Looks like the Prime Minister of Canada has some connection to the Oil-for-Food scandal. I'm betting he was more than just slightly connected, but who knows? It's interesting how the tendrils of oil-for-food are touching so many organizations and people that opposed the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam. Makes you wonder if their opposition was on the ideological grounds they claimed, or if it was just fear of their profits drying up.

This is a story I ran across about a doctor who specialized in pain reduction, which basically means he prescribed opiates. The facts, as I discovered them to be, are as follows. Because this is a very senstive area, due to so many drug war laws and such, he had an agreement with the DEA to provide them all his paperwork and records to avoid any hint of illegal distribution of drugs. Turns out something like 15 out of 400 of his patients lied to get higher dosages, or volumes of drugs, and then resold them, making a killing. The doctor discovered a few of them and stopped being their doctor, and he got suspicious of a few others, and watched them closely, along with telling the DEA of his suspicions.

Turns out the DEA already knew about some of the illegal actions taken by his patients, but they didn't bother to tell the doctor, or work with him in any way. They had bigger fish to fry; the doctor himself. Eventually they busted the doctor, bribed certain of those less than honest patients to testify agaisnt him, and somehow swung it so that none of his honest patients were allowed to testify, nor was he allowed to reveal to the court that he had been giving all his records tot he DEA and cooperating completely with them. In other words, someone wanted to make a big bust, so they picked him and railroaded him.

Drug policy in this country is so screwed up and ruins so many basically innocent lives that you would think a tipping point is coming (thanks Malcolm Gladwell) and people will get fed up with their neighbor being hauled to jail for 20 years for smoking a joint. Or how about all the kids that get caught with a tiny bit of pot and lose the right to federal grants and loans for college? That sends the message that it's ok to do drugs if you're rich, but if you're poor, you better not!

Throughout the first W. administration, there was a lot of talk about how Colin Powell was an Uncle Tom, and no black man could get to an office that high unless he was a willing tool of the people that put him there. 95% of these racist comments came from people who were Bush-haters (in other words, left-wing liberals). They continued on this theme with Condaleeza Rice. Now Powell has come out in public as very dissatisfied with the possiblity of John Bolton becoming UN Ambassador. Looks like Powell isn't such a lapdog as he was perviosuly presented, and now Dems are falling all over themselves to talk about what a great man he is, now that he agrees with them. Hypocrites! The political left in D.C. seems to take every chance they have to play the race card. Powell is an Uncle Tom when he disagrees, and a great man with his won mind when he agrees with them.

If you needed more proof that all politicians are hypocrites, here it is. There's all this talk about filibusters and using them to block votes on judicial nominations, and the GOP is tlaking about the "nuclear option" to change the rules so you can end a filibuster with a majority vote, and thus be able to commence the majority vote on the nomination approvals. Democrats are whining that the GOP is trying to change all the rules and go agaisnt the Constitution and hundreds of years of history.

So much misinformation!!!! To start, the current rules on filibustering were only added about 50 years go. And while the GOP has used the same tactic on judicial nominations once before, the Dems are doing it all the time now. The hypocrisy comes from the fact that the GOP used the tactic themselves for something in 1995, and at that time at least 19 Democratic congresspeople were in favor of what the GOP is calling the nuclear option. Now many of these same congressmen are on the other side and suddenly the nuclear option is the root of all evil. Hypocrites.

Poker can be so darn frustrating! I thought I had finally hit the point where I can be a consistently winning player, even if that just means my initial $50 bankroll moves up to $60 after a week. I'd be happy with that, because I enjoy playing the game, and staying even would allow me to play for as long as I want. Unfortunately, after I got my $50 up to a high of $106, I changed my playing style a bit, and played drunk twice, so now I'm down to $40!

Online poker really is a lot of fun, and there is such a variety of games and levels out there that you can play $1 buy-in NL hold'em tournaments, or $500-$1000 limit ring games and anything in between pretty much any time you want. I play on Full Tilt Poker, and typically stick to one table tournaments for a $5 buy-in with the winner getting $22.50. Sometimes I play multi-table tournaments, with my best finish being 6th (out of 180) for a $35 profit. If I'd just folded that last hand instead of trying to bet the other guy out of the pot, I'd probably have finished third for another $65. At any rate, poker is fun, and if I keep playing at a basically stay-even level, I'll be happy. But it would be nice to start winning all the time, maybe even get really good. I'm certainly trying, but I wish I had a big enough bankroll to play at a higher level where the competition will be stronger and I can learn to adjust to a better game.

About the smoking bans going up all over the country.... I don't like them. I think a business owner should have every right to allow people to smoke in his business if he wants, and those that don't like it can find somewhere else to go. It's just more nanny-state poltiics. Find something you don't like, and complain until the government bans it. Then when someone else tries the same stuff pushing for a ban you do not support, you start whining about the imperial government. Most everyone has fit in to this sort of hypocrisy at some point. The simple fact of the matter is that the government needs to stay out of private affairs, and should not be legislating how we live our lives.

That said, I fully support the right of a business owner to fire employees who smoke. It's their business, they can employ whomever they want, and there should be no restrictions at all, even the ones that are on the books right now like racial motivated employment, gender discrimination, all that jazz. If I own a business and decide to only hire males with bald spots, that's my right, no matter if there are more qualified candidates who have full heads of hair. I've discussed the fantasy of starting a business with some friends, and we all agreed that we wouldn't hire morons (and, all of us being highly intelligent, a moron to us is probably anyone who is only average intelligence or worse), and that if one slipped through the cracks, we'd fire them eventually. Is there intelligence discrimination? Also, if I had a secretary... Well I'm a single guy who is as superficial as the next guy, so I'm going to probably skip over hiring anyone but someone who matches the picture of a secretary that I have in my head. I'm sure I could get in hot water with discrimination suits for that, but it's my business, why shouldn't I be able to hire only buxom blondes, or short asian men if that's what I want?

This has got to be one of the best years for new TV shows ever. The freshmen class of dramas has been excellent, completely changing my weekly lineup. I've waxed eloquent on Lost and Veronica Mars before, but House has stepped it up and become must-see for me. A skeptic was at my place last night and didn't want to watch House. She got lazy and stuck around too long, and I turned House on. By the end of the episode, she was hooked.

According to Neal Boortz, the ratings for Air America, the liberal radio network, are horrible, near the bottom in almost every city they broadcast in. Neal's theory is that if Air America does not succeed, then the leftists in Washington will try to pass "Fairness Doctrine" type laws to defeat the right wing radio shows. In other words, if you can't beat them at their own game, then legislate around it. With 1st Amendment restricting laws like McCain-Feingold already on the books, it would not surprise me in the least if this happens. Both sides of the floor like to restrict criticism by using the law, though the left, championing such legislation as hate crime laws, seems to have the least respect for free speech. Heck, John Kerry said in an interview a few weeks ago that something should be done about bloggers because they talk about stuff that is unsubstantiated.... Unlike, say, Dan Rather with the "fake but accurate" memos? Most people, when they hear something they don't like, will at least think about a way to keep whomever it is from saying what they are saying anymore. It's human nature. The problem is when people are so full of righteousness that they go further than thinking about it, and actually find ways to stop the words they don't like from spreading. There are two groups that are obvious fits for the term "righteous." The religious right, which, for the most part, tries to restrict speech in terms of naughty words in music or on TV, and the protesting wing of the left, who are so sure they are right and violence is always bad and Bush is evil and all that jazz, that they are willing to compromise their freedom to stop what they don't like. It's ironic, many of the same people that bitch about the Patriot Act restricting civil liberties would like nothing better than if a law was passed requiring radio stations to present equal right and left views on issues.

A nifty article on the neocons, and how they have changed over time. Not the neocons themselves, but the concept. When it was first used, the term referred to former liberals who found themselves siding with the right against Communists and were then driven further right by the excesses of the left during the '60s. In the 80's, neocons were most closely associated with the idea of propping up friendly dictators to achieve stability, an idea which Bush has thrown in the trash can. Bush is doing an absolute 180 from what 80's neocons pushed, yet somehow Bush is being a called a tool of the neocons. What can we glean from this? One, many people, especially on the left, consider the term "neocon" as derisive, often used in an attempt to create a gap on the right. Convince the religious right, for instance, that their ideals are being swept aside by the rise of the neocons, despite the fact that the people they are calling neocons are calling for pretty standard conservative ideas. Two, many people have taken to calling anyone who is Jewish and disagrees with them on the right as a neocon. Three, people are calling anyone who supports Israel from the right a neocon, again in an attempt to create a gap between them and the rest of the GOP, despite the fact that no such idelogical gap exists.

At any rate, next time you hear someone called a neocon, take it with a grain of salt, and don't use the term to associate anyone with any particular ideas, because there is no such thing as a neocon.

The New York Times discusses the number of Iraqi deaths attributed to Saddam, based on the number of bodies dug up in mass graves. Unlike the 100k of civilian deatsh cited as caused by the war, here we have actual proof that Saddam's rule led to the mass murder of at least 300,000. The 100,000 has absolutely no evidence to back it up, just estimates from the Lancet. So remember next time you talk about the war, that Bush saved a lot more lives than he caused harm to. If not for Bush, Saddam would still be killing more and more.

I'm so sick of old people talking about how my generation has no loyalty to our employers. The fact is, we don't, but only because the employers have no loyalty to us. Mine act ually does, and I plan to be loyal to them, at least for a good while, but most companies skimp on the benefits for their normal employees as much as possible, and then give out huge bonuses to execs, even when the company is losing money. That sort of behavior does not engender much loyalty. So the next time some ignorant old fogey is whining about how young people have no loyalty, please remind them that it is the CEOs and corporate leaders of their generation that changed the corporate culture to such that drives away would-be loyal employees.

Georgia Tech's basketball team has some problems now. Jarret Jack, our point guard, is possibly going to the NBA, and the backup, soon to be sophomore Zam Frederick, is going go transfer, so if Jack goes in the draft, we won't have a point guard.

An interesting piece on the differences between minorities who try to succeed through hard work and saving, and those that try to succeed by convincing the government to give them other peoples' money.

Every four years, we have a Presidential election. Everytime a Republican wins, people start calling for a popular vote, instead of our current, insulated electoral college system. Right now the state of Washington, which elects their governor by popular vote, is still trying to count all the votes from their November election. A quick and dirty recap of the action: People vote. The GOP candidate is declared the winner in a fairly close race. The Dems complain, suddenly thousands of 'lost' votes turn up, with one county's total number of votes now higher than the total number of registered voters, and now the Democrat's candidate is declared the winner (this is already several weeks after the election). The Republicans cry foul, but now, all of the sudden, the Democrats are saying it was a fair election with no voter fraud, despite saying just the opposite when they were losing. Now it's March, five months later, and one county is now announcing that they found another 111 ballots. Just so you know, the previous final tally of votes gave the Dem the victory by 94 votes, so 111 suddenly discovered ballots is a big deal.

What does all this tell you? The electoral college has its problems, but the benefit is that you don't have to suffer through what Washington is going through. Of course there were problems in the 2000 Presidential election, but that was due to voter fraud complaints, not ballot lost and found problems.

Great article about Pope John Paul II and his relationship with Jews. He had a good friend who was Jewish when he was a child, and that relationship continued to influence him throughout his life.

There's some funny stuff in the tax code if you look really hard. I like that the IRS tells you that you are required to report illegal income, whether it's from sales of illegal drugs, or kickbacks on busines contract. This reminds me of some of the laws that are still on the books regarding marijuana. Pot dealers are required by law to purchase marijuana tax stamps to go with each sale of their product. It's illegal to sell pot without a tax stamp. Of course it's also illegal to sell pot with a tax stamp, so I don't think a whole lot of dealers are going to their local tax office to purchase the proper stamps. This all stems from why pot was made illegal in the U.S. inthe first place; too hard to tax. Along with the disturbing fact that jazz musicians smoke pot, and high school kids tend to become crazed ax murderers when they get stoned, the tax issue has demonized a wonderful medication for 80 years.

I'm very sad today. After many years of eagerly donating my blood when I can, I got rejected by the Red Cross today due to my hair-loss medication. Until they find a permanent solution to male pattern baldness, I can never give blood again.

I keep saying I'm tired of politics, and then I get sucked back in. Maybe I'm just tired of writing about politics. I noticed a friend's site is getting actual random readers, and I wondered why mine doesn't. Then I remembered a few things:

1. I never started this blog with the intention of picking up any readers at all, I started it to motivate me to write.
2. I never really spend much time, effort, or thought on what I write here, and hardly ever do any research to back up my claims, which are things I need to do if I want lots of people to read this blog. But I don't, so it doesn't matter. Scott seems to really put a lot of time and thought in to his posts, and I congratulate him for his burgeoning success. It's just not my goal.
3. This leads me to a logical fallacy in my plan. If I'm not trying to write as well as I can (and I realize most of my writing on here is crap compared to the quality with which I write offline), then what's the point of having a blog as an encouragement to get me to write more? If I want to write more serious, quality prose, then I need to do it, and stop making excuses. Having a bunch of random political rants has not in any way helped my writing style or ability.

What does this mean for this blog? Probably nothing, but at least I can no longer use the excuse that I've written on my blog to keep me from writing more offline. I honestly feel that when I write prose, my style is pretty darn good. All my teachers have certainly thought so. Is it good enough to make a living at writing? Not alone. I still need content, and that's always my problem. I can never think of any stories I really want to tell. Now that I'm going to be starting grad school, I will have even less time to write. On the other hand, I've often found in my life that the less slack-off time I have, the more I make use my slack-off time to be productive.

I swear, come people will take any chance they have to take a shot at America. I just read an article where some guy was saying there won't be an American Pope because we're a superpower and have George Bush. What does one have to do with the other? I don't think there should be an American Pope because American Catholic priests seem to have a problem keeping their hands off little boys. I know that the vast majority of them do not have this evil affliction, but they sure don't seem to be doing much to stop it from happening, or give much punishment to those that do, except when public pressure has absolutely forced them. I'm not Catholic, obviously, but at this point I'd trust a Baptist preacher way before an American Catholic priest, which is too bad, because it seems like they used to be a very respected group.

My roommate and I were having a discussion about responsibility in the media and with individual bloggers. Is it wrong for someone to leak sensitive information that could cause harm in the name of getting the scoop? Tangential to that conversation is the question of good taste, and my local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has shown that they have little of that.

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, and one of Atlanta's patron saints, donated half a billion dollars to build an aquarium in downtown Atlanta. The city is hoping that the aquarium combined with current attractions like the World of Coke, Underground Atlanta, and Centennial Olympic Park, will finally create a critical mass of downtown attractions, enough to keep the tourists coming, and, with luck, even get people to start living downtown. All Bernie wanted was that the plans for the aquarium be kept secret so that it would fresh, exciting, and a complete surprise to visitors when it opens. The AJC decided to flip Bernie the bird, and they used the open records law to get the plans and plaster every detail all over the front page of the paper. If there was a decent alternative to the AJC for local news, this would be the last straw. If there was any real competition, the AJC would be bankrupt. I don't know a single person who considers the AJC a decent paper, and that's pretty sad. If the city really wants people to want to live in Atlanta, they should see about attracting some competition in the print news arena.

Time Magazine had a list of their top 6 dramas on TV today. Among the shows I don't watch was The Shield, along with some random medical or police procedural drama. Also included was Veronica Mars, which I picked up on a week or two ago and love to an extent not felt by me since Buffy, and another show on the list, Lost. House was on there, and I do love it. And finally Battlestar Galactica. I thought, how good can that possibly be, but since I like to get a whole bunch of episodes at once and watch them while I play poker (having a distraction like that keeps me from playing too many hands), I got the miniseries and the entire first season and watched them this weekend. Loved it, great show! Sci-fi wise as good as any thing since Star Trek: The Next Generation, and, with more time under its belt, it may surpass ST:TNG. This has the potential to be the king of TV sci-fi all-time!

I'm amazed at the quality of drama on TV nowadays. Too bad comedy completely sucks, except for Scrubs, Arrested Development (which I hear is going to be canceled), and Malcolm in the Middle. Of course I get more laughs from an episode of The O.C. (which, sadly, is not nearly as good as season 1) then from most any sitcom I've ever watched.

I just wanted to say "Bravo!" to the people of the Minutemen project. If you're not aware, this is a group of US citizens who are frustrated with the permiability of our southern border and decided to do something about it. Despite being called vigilantes by President Bush, they are in no way taking the law into their own hands. They caught 18 illegals trying to jump the border this weekend. What did they do? They didn't beat them, or punish them, they simply saw them, called the authorities, and got out of the way. The ACLU is saying that they are violating civil rights. In what way is reporting lawbreakers a violation of civil rights? By that logic, people who call the police with information on a shooting are violating the shooters' civil rights.

In a previous post, I talked about the McCain-Feingold Act and how it may be extended to the internet and to blogs in particular. In a comment in repsonse to another comment, I mentioned that it was because of McCain-Feingold that a group like moveon.org was able to hijack the Democratic party. That got me thinking of a mostly unrelated double standard between left and right. When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had their day in the news, they were decried as part of the right wing attack machine, with their every move plotted by Karl Rove. In other words, the media and the left wing refused to allow the thought that any group might independently favor Bush, that the only groups that favored Bush were under the control of Karl Rove and/or the GOP. The double standard comes in with groups like moveon.org, who, among other things, had videos on their website comparing Bush to Hitler. When Kerry was criticized for this by the right, the mantra was that moveon.org was not affiliated with John Kerry or the Democratic Party, and they got off with little harm. Why is it that anyone who agrees with the right wing or the GOP is attacked by most of the mainstream media as either a religious fanatic or controlled by Karl Rove, but when someone leans left and attacks Bush with lies and slander and is caught, they have no relation to the Democratic Party?

On another topic, Sandy Berger confessed today that the documents he took from the National Archives were taken deliberately, not by accident, and they were taken to hide things Clinton did or did not know and do about terrorism in the US, and specifically Osama and friends in 2000, which would have been a great time to prevent 9/11 if they hadn't decided to leave it alone. Do I blame them? No, who would have imagined what happened? But ont eh same not, you either have to villify Clinton for the same thing that Bush was villified for (not being able to read minds and predict the future) or you have to let Bush off the hook. Otherwise you are a hypocrite. Unfortunately that doesn't matter. The mainstream media and the left wing will continue to act as if Clinton was a saint and that everything in the world was perfect until Bush was elected. It's funny how ignorant people like to blame Bush for things like Enron (Bush loves big business!!) when most of the accounting scandals happened under Clinton, and the bad guys were caught under Bush. Unlike much of the left wing, however, I realize that the attitude of several left wing extremists is not neccesarily the attitude of the Democratic party leadership (though I'm sure Cynthia McKinney agrees with the left wing nutjobs).