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The Waitress

If "The Waitress" were a pie, which it very well may be, it would taste like a variety of flavors from sweet, sour and spciy to utterly delightful! Somehow all of these flavors seem to work for this dish!

The main character a sincerely sweet pie-making artiste. All of her life feelings and problems are translated into different pies. Everyone feels badly for her, especially after her recent pregnancy with her horrible husband. Even her closest friends, two fellow waitresses at the pie shop, tell her they would never trade places with her. I too, would never want to be in her shoes, married to a man like Earl. All of which sets off the deliciousness of the main characters' affair. This movie is by no means a setting of morals and values. Almost all of the characters in it commit adultery or suffer from personality disorders!

But this gives the movie its reality factor as well. Although it's a movie with real problems and sadness, there is humor and irony to be found everywhere. The doctor with whom the main character confides and finds herself in love, is also married. Their love may be the most random suprising part of the movie

The earthquake that screamed "NO NUKES!!!"

The massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions in a nuclear apocalypse.

It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried in a newspaper. As reported deep in the New York Times, the Tokyo Electric Company has admitted that "the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant's builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region."

There are 55 reactors in Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults. Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes.

Homeland conspiracy

Of all the things out there to be afraid of, why have we wasted so much ink and airtime on the vaguely troubled churnings of Michael Chertoff’s gut? And why, for that matter, do the media, dutifully following the lead of the Bush administration, show such ongoing reverence for al-Qaida’s alleged capacity to bring us to our knees and wreck our way of life?

But the $64,000 question amid all the frantic noise (adjusted for inflation, it may be the $2 trillion question) is: Why is our waiting time at the airport punctuated at regular intervals by utterly meaningless reminders over the PA system that the nation is at threat level orange?

I have my theories. It may well be true that air travel security — unlike airplane maintenance (let us pray) — is a profession with no deeper roots in rationality than any other type of fortune telling, but the widespread collusion of otherwise sensible people in the dissemination of vague “warnings” that do not translate into any obvious modification of behavior point to another explanation.

My country ’tis of thee . . .

No Korea boasts from Bush

For the first time in a long time, encouraging news is emanating from North Korea. On July 16, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified earlier reports that the Kim Jong Il regime has shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and stopped producing the plutonium used to build atomic weapons. Yet the Bush administration so far has drawn little attention to this happy achievement by its own diplomats.

            For George W. Bush, the reversal of belligerent behavior by the dictatorship in Pyongyang should be uplifting, especially when both the president and his foreign policy are so widely reviled both here and abroad. Over the past several years, Kim has taunted the rest of the world with increasingly threatening rhetoric and actions, including ballistic missile launches and the alleged test of his country's first nuclear weapon.

            Those experiments met with mixed success at best, but even the prospect of real weapons of mass destruction at Kim's disposal is grim. Putting the eccentric dictator and his deadly toys back in the box must be a relief, even if having him around will always cause anxiety.

John Edwards' fortress

The bulk of John Edwards' wealth is invested in, his recent income derives from, and his biggest contributors are employed by Fortress Investment Group.  Fortress, which paid Edwards almost half a million dollars to advise them, deals in hedge funds and private equity.  Its private equity holdings have not been reported on.  (Where is journalism when there's no sex involved?)  Its hedge funds invest in, among other things, publicly traded companies.  Those are reported to the SEC, most recently on May 15th in this filing: http://tinyurl.com/ytzlba

Speaking truth to power

The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement negotiated in 1997 which went into effect on Feb. 16, 2005. Under it industrial countries which have signed on-which is all of them except for the U.S. and Australia-pledge to reduce their earth-heating carbon emissions by between roughly 5 and 7% below 1990 amounts by 2012. Some countries are going to make or exceed those pledges, and others are not.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, the 5.2% average reduction of emissions is nowhere near enough. There is also a problem because formerly colonized, now industrializing countries like China and India are not part of this first phase of carbon reductions. That is justifiable; it is the industrialized west that is responsible for the vast majority of the carbon that's in the atmosphere now, and it is the industrialized west that needs to lead the turn away from its past and present dirty, polluting, energy production processes. But it is not a good thing at all that China and India are following in the west's footsteps by building far too many polluting coal plants.

Bush has photos of Pelosi

Bush has photos of Pelosi doing… WHAT?

Here's the situation Nancy Pelosi finds herself in.  A full 54% of Americans and 76% of Democrats want Dick Cheney impeached.  Cheney's 13% favorability makes him the least popular president or vice president ever.  The Washington Post reports that Republicans are turning against Cheney.  By failing to act, the Democratic Congress has made itself less popular than Bush.  Were the Congress to impeach Cheney and the Senate to acquit him, the Democrats would win a significant majority in the Senate because the public would toss some Republicans who voted for Cheney out on their asses.  So, the Democrats would not just do the right thing for the future of our nation but achieve electoral victories by moving on impeachment, whether they manage to succeed with it or not.  There's no known downside to trying.

Could there be an unknown downside?  Could there be a reason we don't know about to explain Pelosi's unconstitutional position that Congress will not impeach no matter what?  Couldn't Pelosi point out at least that she was only talking about Bush?  Couldn't she allow justice to run its course for Cheney? 

Slaves to Christ and compassion unite: free markets must prevail

[Warning: Satire Ahead]

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

–John Maynard Keynes

If you’re nodding your head in agreement with Keynes and expecting validation of your opinion as you read this piece, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Forget the humanitarian, bleeding heart nonsense. Let’s reflect on the words of Thomas Sowell instead:

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

We live in reality ladies and gentlemen. Not some utopian fantasy dreamt up by the likes of idealistic dreamers like Marx and Engels.

Ours is indeed a cold, cruel world. The sooner each of us accepts our lot, makes the most of it, and moves on, the better off we will all be. The ingenious and industrious Bill Gates deserves every penny he has. By the same token, the dregs of society inhabiting places like Skid Row and eating from dumpsters are reaping their just rewards for their depraved, lazy, and ignorant ways.

Did U.S. intelligence assets kill Antioch College?

At the time of its announced closure, Antioch College, perhaps America’s most progressive and well-known peace college, had a few visible capitalist hawks on its Board of Trustees.

Bruce P. Bedford, one of only three Trustees not a former alum, had been appointed to the board of Arlington, Virginia company GlobeSecNine in 2005. The company is described by a representative of investment corporation Bear Sterns as having "a unique set of experiences in special forces, classified operations, transportation security and military operations." One can only speculate why the nation’s longest-standing anti-imperialist education institution would appoint a trustee with extensive ties to the military and security industrial complexes.

Business Wire on May 4, 2005 described GlobeSecNine as follows: "GlobeSecNine invests in companies providing U.S. defense, security, global trade management and supply chain solutions to the public and private sectors, and has a strategic alliance with The Scowcroft Group, a business advisory firm headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft."

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