Oh, that explains it

Hmm ... maybe former senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson had an overactive laziness gene. And while we're on the subject of candidates and celebrity, the Gentleman from Arizona is equating Barack Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in a new attack ad that everyone and his second cousin twice removed is talking about. Somebody needs to get McCain a new toy that will make him feel like a celebrity again. Someone should also remind him that sometimes a lazy celebrity does get elected president.

D'oha!

The failure of Mata Bharat, the August Presence in Jade and Uncle Sam to come to a compromise may have killed the Doha Round of negotiations in the WTO. Proponents of the agreement argue that tariffs world-wide would have dropped by $130 billion a year. An agricultural "safeguard clause" threshold issue lay at the heart of the collapse with the U.S. catching the blame. The EU's trade negotiator bitterly noted that seven years of hard labor over the agreement were scuttled over a technicality. Doomsayers are squawking about how this could mean an end to multilateral agreements and a resurgence of bilateral agreements. Perhaps. Or perhaps the members of this dysfunctional frat will find their way back to the table and come up with a better solution over a few rounds of Duff.

A career to nowhere

What is it about the GOP this cycle? The newest member to join the scandal caucus is Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. A member of congress since who moved to Alaska before it was even a state in the union -- apparently emigrating there when it was still connected to Russia by a glacier -- Stevens has been indicted by a grand jury on seven counts of falsely reporting income. It is connected to home improvements linked to the oil firm Veco and it's CEO Bill Allen. Perhaps he figured that living in Alaska, no one would notice the home upgrades and the shiny new Land Rover. Even his good pal Sen. Daniel Inouye said he wasn't surprised by the indictment, though he still supports him because, well, congresscritters from the non-contiguous states/possessions/territories/whatnot have to stick together. While VECO got a piece of the Exxon Valdez clean up action, it seems this is a mess that Stevens, his oil company friends and the GOP won't be able to drill their way out of.

100 days and counting

The run for the White House is reaching its final stretch. In the wake of the Magical World Tour, Acting President Obama and the Gentleman from Arizona are already having their tax numbers called into question. Both plans would probably run deficits, but Obama's (1.3 percent of GDP) would likely be smaller than McCain's (1.8 percent). Obama's plan would more likely benefit the middle class while McCain's would benefit the upper class. Of course all of this follows the prediction by Team Bush of a record budget deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year. And while Sen. Kent Conrad (D. N.D.) was busy calling the Actual President At Least On Paper Bush the Worst. President. Ever. an internal report at the Justice Department was calling Alberto Gonzales Worst. Attorney General. Ever. So going into the last 100 days, one expects that this reality show will have more plot twists than a season of Mad Men, but will be less interesting to watch.

A short drop and a sudden stop

One imagines that Naples, Italy, mafia kingpin Adriano Graziano -- now spending quality time in a jail cell -- is glad he doesn't live in Iran. The Iranians made 29 prisoners do the hempen dance on various and sundry charges including murder, narcotics smuggling, armed robbery and organized crime. No word on whether said crimes included piracy and impersonating a clergy of the Church of England. Graziano is also probably glad he isn't Radovan Karadzic who was caught impersonating Dragan Dabic, apparently the Serbian Santa Claus. His lawyer may or may not have filed papers to fight Karadzic's extradition over the matter of 11 war crimes charges stemming from the Yugoslav war. Now that the Italians have swept the trash off the floor of a Roman clothing store, maybe now they can finish getting the trash off the streets of Naples.

Up, up and away

Preparing the mothership for launch: CNN

Don't try this at home: Reuters

Yeti or not: BBC

City sold for $1.55 million: USA Today

The bombs bursting everywhere

Ahmedabad was ground zero for the Indian Mujahideen's series of coordinated bomb attacks Saturday night. The death toll is currently at 45 with 145 people injured. The Indian Mujahideen bases its right to kill innocents on the claim of 60 years of persecution and India's support of U.S. policies. The attacks follow a similar series of bombings in Bangalore the day before. All of this comes in the wake of the government's survival of a confidence vote that edged India closer to the U.S. And while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was calling for calm, everybody's favorite fun time Hindu Nationalist and B.J.P. member Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister stated that "land of Mahatma Gandhi has been bloodied by terrorists whom we shall not spare". Umm, about that ...

Time to Barack n Roll

Barack Obama's Magical World Tour packed the haus in the heart of Berlin's Tiergarten. Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, back from her day trip to Ukraine. And while the two discussed security concerns, Merkel reportedly tartly remarked that the preferred site, the Brandenburg Gate, was reserved for presidents, not candidates. Apparently those of rock star status have to settle for standing under the angel. Obama gave his anticipated speech before a crowd estimated in the 100,000 range. The speech was a message of unity of Europe and America and their shared responsibility. The audience lined up for hours and security resembled that of an airport. And while the Germans seem to love him, the French may prove to be a tougher crowd when the Magical World Tour arrives there Friday. Mon dieu!

Hit and run journalist

Everybody's favorite fun time CIA operative leak columnist Robert Novak was involved in an accident in Washington D.C. The self proclaimed "Prince of Darkness" claimed he didn't know he had hit somebody. I'm sure Valerie Plame feels his pain. The pedestrian victim's that is.

Missed it by that much

Mata Bharat must love Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Singh passed a tight confidence vote in the Lok Sabha, India's parliament, after a raucous two day session, by a 275 to 256 margin, with 10 abstentions. The vote came in the wake of a defection on the Left regarding the implementation of a treaty between India and the U.S. over India's nuclear program. Of course the U.S. Congress has yet to pass legislation to hold up its end of the bargain. It also has to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India's communists are against the deal and see closer ties to the U.S. as a bad thing. There was also the spectacle of the BJP party which walked into the Lok Sabha holding wads of rupees in hand and then turned around and traded bribery charges with their opponents. If this is any indication of what lies in wait in the months leading up to India's 2009 general election, we'll see just how much Mata Bharat really loves Singh.

The Gray Lady vs. The Gentleman from Arizona

Bad writing or bad judgement? You decide. Either way this is a text-book example of a dysfunctional relationship.

U.S. vs Salim Hamdan

The first of the U.S. military's war crimes tribunals started Monday and on the undercard is Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur, Salim Hamdan, 37, of Yemen. He has pleaded not guilty. Hamdan was gill-netted in 2001 in Afghanistan and is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Evidence taken under coercion will not be admissible. And some of the prospective jurors were connected to the strike on the Pentagon. This trial actually constitutes a test of the military tribunal system and in the event of an acquittal, Hamdan is still unlikely to be released from custody. Next up on the title card will be Khalid Sheik Mohammed. We'll see how that bout shapes up.

European Day Trippin'

German President Angela Merkel has set off on a day trip to Ukraine. The trip concerned the matter of Ukraine's progress toward western integration: to whit, NATO and EU membership. Merkel promised that on some bright sunny day in the indeterminate, but, rest assured, sooner rather than later future, when Russia doesn't hold Europe by the throat like Darth Vader because of our dependence on its oil and natural gas resources, Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Beginning in December. Honest. They just need to work out a few minor details: "Ukraine will have to upgrade its Soviet-style army in line with Western military standards, fight corruption and promote civil society." Oh, and they have to work out a long-term oil and gas deal with Big Brother to the north. That's all.

Merkel was also in Kyiv to talk up the upcoming EU-Ukraine Summit this September in France. And while the Stabilization and Association Agreement on trade is likely to be a key step forward in the accession process, it should not be misunderstood as being a key step in the accession process. So taking the day to get out and about before the Obama Magical World Tour comes to her town, Merkel probably accomplished as much in Kyiv as Obama will in Berlin.

Voices in the desert of the real

Pope Benedict XVI called for those attending World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, to be "prophets for a new age." One imagines that to be the Age of Aquarius. The pope decried the spreading of the spiritual desert brought on by material prosperity. Apparently there is no word for irony in Latin as 350,000 Catholics from 170 countries attended mass in the Randwick horse racing track. The pope noted that "The world needs this renewal" and people confront "an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair." Attendees did rise to the occasion, repeatedly turning the other cheek when confronted by activists of one sort or another.

But the Catholic Church's head vicar isn't the only facing a challenge. The Dalai Lama faces one as well over a group of Tibetans who may be facing a bit of religious discrimination: the followers of Dorje Shugden, or Shugdenpas. It's a problem that may rise to the human rights level. Even Hinduism is facing a historical challenge as the rise of tourists is having serious consequences for Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a religious historic site likely to fall to the forces of materialism. It's all enough to make one wonder if the flesh has become so weak as to be impervious to the spirit, no matter how willing.

Obama's magical world tour

Barack Obama's trip to Afghanistan, as part of a Congressional junket, had a rather inauspicious start. In what has been called a "misunderstanding", between nine and 13 Afghan police officers were killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan's Farah province. This is just the latest in a string of recent incidents that have resulted in dead Afghan civilians. Obama's call for a 16 month timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq has met with approval by Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki, though Maliki says his comments are no endorsement of Obama. Not that it mattered. The Obama camp jumped on Maliki's comments anyway. Obama is set to stand under the angel in the middle of Berlin's Teirgarten next week. While Europeans seem to have great affection for Obama, Europe's leaders are sniffing warily at his policy proposals and inexperience. And so Obama had lunch with the troops and Afghan President Hamid Karzai Sunday morning. And while the exchange seemed pleasant enough, one hopes that there'll be fewer "misunderstandings" in the days ahead.

All for the lack of the right scorecard

Life is out there. Maybe: WashPost

She's back: LA Times

Details. Details: AOL News

One toke under the waterline: Reuters

Economic Cloverfield - Scene 42

Mainstreet continues to go squish under foot. Consumer prices rose 1.1 in the last quarter, the highest since 1991. The Fed is in a double bind unable to either raise or lower interest rates in fear of doing damage to an already damaged economy. The FBI is now investigating Indymac Bancorp for fraud, and both parties are balking at the idea of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Time for another round of economic stimulus, right?

Not so fast. That's proving problematic at the very height of election season.

Sure, the price of oil did drop $10 over the past two days, closing at $134.60 a barrel, pushing the Dow up 300 points. But that's only a Iranian missile test away from shooting back up again. Unfortunately, Team Bush continues to remain attached to the idea that expanding oil drilling in U.S. protected regions is the way to stimulate the economy, despite the fact that not one drop of said oil would even hit the market, much less get drawn, before the end of the year if they started now.

Speaking on the effects of the initial stimulus President Bush said “Let it run its course. I’m an optimist.” He can afford to be. It's not his pocketbook that's being eaten.

Dissing and dismissing the lame duck

Team Bush lost one Monday as Congress overrode the president’s veto over a bill that would have stopped a planned 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The vote in the both houses was fairly large: 383 to 41 in the House, 70 to 26 in the Senate. This marks the only third time during the reign of Team Bush that Congress has opted not to simply roll over and show throat.

One picture, thousands of words

The first rule of humor is it should be funny. The second rule is that if you have to explain the joke, then it isn’t funny. An art professor once explained that art should make the viewer uncomfortable. Well the New Yorker certainly accomplished that. At the end of an interview aired on Monday with Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Ryan Lizza was at pains to explain the cover of the issue in which his story about Barack Obama was featured. He described Barry Blitt’s cover as an act of satire that would have been clearly understood by the magazine’s readership. Well that readership consists of all of 500 people, (It used to be 501 but we let our subscription lapse in the late 1990s) and they're not the Budweiser drinking public either (New Yorker readers probably drink Samuel Adams). That's left The New Yorker’s editor busy trying to do damage control.

That's unfortunate because the cover was supposed to expose the ridiculousness of the rightwing caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama. Sadly, it wasn’t received that way. Interestingly enough, the offending cover isn’t even on The New Yorker’s home page. Still, the cover made a point about the necessity of satire during an election season. Gary Trudeau offers some interesting thoughts about modern satire as a cartoonist. He rightly bemoans the dearth of satire on the comics pages and the disappearance of the political cartoonist from newsrooms across America.

In his book, “Culture of Complaint”, art critic Robert Hughes makes the argument against the use of modern art to champion political causes. He doesn’t seem to have considered the place of satire in art to puncture political pretentiousness. Nor does he seem to have erected a tent big enough to include Trudeau and Blitt and those practicing their trade. In the end, any work of art has to stand and fall on its own merits. If it doesn’t, then it probably has failed, and no amount of explaining can fix that.

Lotus and chrysanthemum

The Land of the Rising Sun has had a unique spiritual environment. While Shinto has been the belief of life, Buddhism has been the solace in death. Amaterasu and Buddha living together in the kind of harmony that the Children of Abraham do not. But this may be changing. Not because a split has opened between them, but rather, because the beneficiaries of ‘funeral Buddhism’ are literally dying off. And those that aren’t are moving on. And Buddhism’s support of the Japanese war machine during the Second World War did it no favors either.

The triumph and tragedy of the non-Levantine faiths is that they don’t proselytize. And, as the Dalai Lama pointed out in a recently published history, Buddhism, at least as it has been practiced in Tibet, has lacked the public service mission of the Abrahamic faiths. The priesthood in Japanese Buddhism is a family business passed on from one generation to the next, and the latest generation isn’t in a hurry to take over the business. These reasons have played their own parts in the crisis of Japanese Buddhism.

It would be a shame to see the sun set on Buddhism in Japan. But Buddhism’s roots run deep and perhaps it’ll simply be reborn in innovative ways in the next generation.

“Yeah, I know I’m ugly.”

One wishes that Guillermo del Toro had a screenplay worthy of the stunning visuals and the fundamental theme of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth was a masterpiece of storytelling, a rather grim faerie tale set in Franco’s Spain. That same stunning visual vocabulary is employed with a much wider range in Golden Army.

The central theme of the story is that human civilization has been bought at a terrible price. A pact between humanity and the forces of nature – faeriekind – has been violated. And while it is the faerie prince that has declared war on humanity, it’s not entirely unwarranted. The interesting conceit of the movie is that the only difference between the mythic world of the fae and trolls and that of humanity is perspective.

The story seemed little more than a comic book script, and not even a glorified one at that. One wishes as much care and attention to the details had gone into the crafting of the story that went into the crafting of the visuals. And in yet another season dominated by comic book-based movies, that’s disappointing. Let's hope his next project, The Hobbit, has happier results.

Independent's Day

One served time in the Minnesota governor's mansion, the other served time in the Michigan penal system. Both are listed as independents and both has thrown their hats into the election ring. Looking to be the leader of the "Dark Alley" caucus, the former Jesse 'the Governor' Ventura would like us to stand by to standby for a possible Tuesday maybe for his entry into a race between incumbent Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman and everybody's favorite fun-time Comedy Central "Indecision" comedian and Strange Bedfellow of Arianna Huffington, Al Franken. Looking to be the leader of the "Death Becomes a Congressmen" caucus is none other than Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian is running against incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg in Michigan. The only one who seems to be in this race for something beyond himself is Ralph Nader. His purpose in running on the national level is to provide inspiration for independent candidates at all levels. And in this election, that may be one of the most inspiring messages any candidate can offer.

Affairs of the Heart

Feel like you're being harassed at work? Maybe he's just misreading your signs. According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, communication styles of men and women are very different, with males misidentifying female intent 12 percent of the time, and with females sending out signals that confuse males. Confusing signals may make the establishment of relationships difficult. Miscommunications in relationships can lead to fatal arguments. And while it is unclear if this communications gap contributes to cheating after the relationship is established, telling the truth about the affair has serious drawbacks. The reality is that the gulf between men and women has expanded, leaving both sides seriously confused about themselves, and their relationship to each other. No wonder Sartre famously remarked that "Hell is other people."

By the rockets’ red glare

Talk about overcompensating, in a demonstration worthy of Xerxes, the Iranians test fired not one, but between seven to nine missiles. Someone needs a time out. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates helpfully characterized the Iranian action as “signaling”, and Undersecretary of State William Burns claimed “Iran's real nuclear progress has been less than the sum of its boasts.” This comes during the seventh-inning stretch between the primaries and the national political conventions and it begs the question of which candidate do the Iranians hope will benefit from Iran’s acting out. Officials are still analyzing the data connected to the missiles that were fired for size and performance, but seemed pretty certain that a missile capable of hitting Israel, the Shahab-3, was among them. And the test, of course, put the market on edge as the price of oil increased $2.24 before falling later and closing flat. Iranian Gen. Hossein Salami declared “our finger is always on the trigger.” In the words of Sting, one hopes that the Iranians “love their children too.”

Margin of prophet

Perhaps Team Bush has taken the long view of the long war and decided it is easier to defeat the Iranians by flooding their market with a known carcinogen.

Iran so far away

During a stop in Malaysia, Iranian President Mahmoud I'm-a-loon-jihadi declared that there wouldn't "be any war in the future." To bad that he doesn't get to decide that. The military answers to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and they announced their latest military drill on their Web site, and stated that if they are attacked, Tel Aviv and the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf will be targeted. The results of a 2002 war game in the gulf are less than reassuring. Even as India now moving forward with the passage of a deal with the U.S. over it's nuclear program, the standoff over Iran's nuclear program continues, with Iran saying it is unwilling to suspend its uranium enrichment program. While the U.S. and Israel have had nothing to say on this latest outburst by Iran, only time will tell if there's a war with Iran or not.

What would our founding father do

At a time when fake priests are finding their way into the Vatican itself and taking confessions, Rome offered its opinion on the Anglican Church's move to ordain female bishops, a proposal that still has to pass through England's parliament. Concerned that it might the upset the millennia-old boys club tradition that has worked out so well, it declared that it would not bode well for Catholic-Anglican reconciliation. This is progress as the Anglicans first moved to approve women as ministers in 1992. The Anglican Church will still need to draw up a 'code of practice' and the first female bishops won't take office before 2014. This comes at a time when not only is the question being raised about what Jesus would have done, but also what did he do? A stone tablet dating from the era of his ministry suggests that the idea of a messiah rising from the dead after three days, and the coming of apocalypses, were very much in the collective imagination of the day and may have been used by the disciples to deal with the Crucifixion. Like in the case of that other sacred document, the U.S. Constitution, it is less important what the founding father, or fathers, would have done than what we choose to do with what they passed on to us. That at least would be authentic.

Only in America

Americans Thai'd for 11th place: Time

Celebrating America's big cheeses: Reuters

“A gamecock shows me what an American should be like”: NYTimes

Like father, like son: CNN

Sic transit Jesse Helms

Jesse Helms, a former North Carolina U.S. Senator died at 1:15 a.m. of natural causes at a nursing home in Raleigh. A former newspaper man and WWII Navy veteran, Helms was first elected to the Senate in 1972. He served for 30 years in Congress and came be known as “Senator No.” A conservative icon that was repeatedly accused of race-baiting, his career highlights included serving as chairman of the Agriculture Committee and Foreign Relations Committees. He retired from the Senate in 2002.

A controversial critic of modern culture he very publicly took on the National Endowment of the Arts in 1989. Another of his public crusades was against the United Nations. In attempting to force reform in the international body, he held up payments to the body by the U.S. to the tune of $1 billion through the Helms-Biden Act. He also blocked passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

He was 86.

A sort of homecoming

Guerrillas got FARCed in an operation that deserves to be called "daring," and "well executed." Colombian soldiers successfully infiltrated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and freed a number of hostages including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans and 11 Colombians. After six years, Betancourt got to see her two children, 16 and 13 and is expected to meet with her cheerleader French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Americans, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell, were expected to be reunited with their families Thursday. This constitutes a major blow to the revolutionary movement that has seen its leader die and its laptops fall into government hands. Now all the Colombian government has to do is get the other 700 prisoners released.

Selling your soul

In "Season of Mists", Neil Gaiman's Lucifer laments to Morpheus "I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul?" A New Zealand man 24-year-old man sold a deed of ownership to his soul to Hell Pizza. There is no word on whether sacred mushrooms will be an available topping. In 2001, University of Washington student Adam Burtle tried to sell his soul on eBay (which was only worth $6.66 to his former girlfriend). So we've gone from the true essence of life to $3,800 as the price for a soul. Lucifer would be amused.

La guerre des étoiles

Sarko: ESA should be more like NASA. Sacre Bleu!: BBC

Surrender Toto: WPBF

Everything is just peachy in the state of Denmark: Reuters

The Hypnotoad: NatGeo