Section 9

I will be posting a longish piece on Sarah Palin in my next post, sort of a "Palin crosses the Rubicon" bit. Basically a "where does she goes from here" piece.

Tonight.

Good God, it's been almost a month since I've posted last.

Since then, we've had a near Revolution in Iran . However, I strongly believe the Fascist Circle that runs the country will be successful in maintaining power. Despite the hopes and dreams of the likes of Andrew Sullivan, the grip of the Reactionaries and the White Forces remains too profound. Aside from that fact, the incumbent fascist, Mahmoud Ahmadhi-Nejad, remains popular in the countryside and among the working class and the peasants. I suspect that these distinctions are overlooked by the Intelligentsia in the West.

In the United States, I believe the chief political event was the second rollout of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. In all probability, it was a major success for her. Her main achievement was to get Exxon to sign on to the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA), the largest private construction project in the United States and, basically, her baby. This makes will make her a serious player in 2010 and 2012 Republican Politics long after her tiff with David Letterman has passed into history.

Labels: AGIA, Andrew Sullivan, Iran, Republican Party, Sarah Palin

I've seen J.J. Abrams' Star Trek twice. First when it came out, and just again today.

It's a superb piece of entertainment. The pace of the film hides the plot holes and the rather forgettable villain, Nero, played by Eric Bana, does his part to add to the stakes by changing the Trek Universe forever. I won't go through the plot bit by bit here, but what I will say is that Abrams takes an entirely new cast and brings the old Trek characters to life.

He does this by updating Trek for the 21st Century: after all, we have a choice as viewers and fans. We can have this kind of Trek:



....or, we can have our old friends, the fucking Space Hippies.



Which would be that kind of Trek.

We don't want that kind of Trek no more.

Look, I like Sixties Camp as much as the next man. I saw and loved Peter Sellers and Woody Allen in the original Casino Royale, one of David Niven's greatest postwar films. But the notion that you can take great Science Fiction and do a Gene Roddenberry tribute film is simply wrong. They needed to update it, update the ship, and update the personnel.

Yes, the scriptwriters took great liberties in how they got the crew together and how they got James T. Kirk in the center chair right out of the Academy. That doesn't happen in the real world. However, they did create the device of an alternate timeline and actually did the audience the service of explaining it in the dialogue so they could catch the audience (and the Base Trek Fanboys) up to what they were doing.

All of this allows Bob Orci, Mike Kurtzman, David Lindelof, and JJ Abrams to paint a New Trek Universe on a relatively New Canvas, while dealing with some old stuff, such as the Doomsday Machine and the Whale Probe. That's the primary and most important thing they did-they cast off the old Trek universe and allowed themselves to tell new stories with the most compelling characters. It was a well done piece of writing and a nice dodge.

And it worked. The domestic take is up to $200,000,000.00. By the time this thing goes to Blu-Ray Director's Cut it will probably top off at 350 million total. Paramount's bet paid off. It worked most of all with younger audiences. No, it won't beat Harry Potter, but Trek will become one of the top three to four grossing films of the year and set this franchise up as the next Batman series, which is what Paramount wanted.

Sadly, one critic anticipated the presence of the Shat in the film. He was in for a bit of a letdown.

That's right. Hitler found out about the movie, and is he pissed.....

Sorry folks, been tardy and haven't been posting!

To catch up on a few things since my last post that I'll post about:

1. The final and overwhelming conclusion about the guilt of I.F. Stone: Soviet Spy.

2. Condi Rice and her friends and Stanford.

3. The Cheney/Obama TortureFest.

4. My review of Star Trek 90210.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

The National Football League will be holding its Draft tomorrow and Sunday.

Just a note to say that I'm looking for my team, the Miami Dolphins, to drink some Awesome Sauce and go for a serious run stopper or a linebacker in the First Round.

Go Fins!!!!!



In all seriousness, recent trades have depleted the Secondary of its veterans from the previous regime (something Bill Parcells, Dolphins President of Football Operations probably intended). I suspect you will see concentration on that area of the team as well as the previously mentioned linebacking corps. A brief preview can be found here at The Sports Network page.

Labels: Miami Dolphins, NFL, NFL Draft

Just a quick note before I turn in.

This blog will change its general look so Marty and I can have a slightly more moderne look to things.

Other than that, expect me to update the Condi Rice, Anime, and provide many more updated news links.

Content is king, after alll.

Speaking of Condi, here she is!



She's out at Stanford, getting in training for her inevitable appearance at Obama's Moscow Show Trial.

Sad, but true. More on that later.

Labels: Blogger, Condi, Condoleezza Rice, Obama, Show Trials

Word is she's dating Michael Phelps...

I mean, Jesus tap-dancing Christ!

Perez Hilton, professional gay man and all around pain in the ass, asked the Gay Marriage question of Miss California, Carrie Prejean. She answered, as nicely as she could, that she believed that marriage was between a man and a woman, but that she hoped she didn't offend anyone. Perez must have found out that she went to college (a Christian College near La Jolla) and hit her with the Gay Marriage question.

Perez, you old Queen. Stop it! All he did was to give Carrie and himself more internet traffic.

As for me, I'm a federalist on the issue. I happen to be in favor of matrimonial rights for gay and lesbian couples, which puts me on the outs with most of the conservative movement and much of the Republican Party. My brother is gay and lives in California. I was not happy to see Proposition 8 pass and strip away his right to matrimony under the California Constitution. However, I oppose the way that HRC and the gay litigation community has gone about trying to institutionalize same-sex marriage in this country: through unelected judges. That a backlash was not expected shows how oblivious to the tone of the great middle of this country the activist base of the Democratic Party has become.

Again, Mr. Madison's Constitution provides us with a solution: Federalism. Some states, such as New York, Oregon, or California (eventually) will be amenable to gay marriage. Other states, less so. It is for the people, through their legislatures (such as in Vermont recently) to speak to this issue. Not the courts and not through the agency of direct democracy, such as in California-where pressure groups can run attack ads and tilt referenda one way or another. We have state legislatures for a reason. Let us use them.

Labels: California, Carrie Prejean, gay marriage, Perez Hilton, Proposition 8, U.S. Constititution

Oh, and by the way, you can see just how far back some of this shit goes. Some of Marty's stuff goes back to the Dawn of Bushism, while my stuff goes back to the beginning of the Arnold Era in California.

I dropped blogging for three years, at least.

Now that the Republican Party is a respectable Opposition Party again, I , at least get to have all sorts of good clean fun. Meantime, it appears that Show Trials are in the offing over Bush Administration waterboarding of people like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other charm school graduates. My opinion: a critical mistake by Obama that will lead to increased Republican cohesion and a greater inability to get his agenda enacted. David Frum echoes my long term concerns in his
post of today at New Majority.

Important takeaway from Frum:

Until now, however, this revenge cycle has had one limit: It ends when the administration under attack ends. The Clinton administration did not prosecute Reagan and Bush officials; the Bush administration did not act against Clinton officials.

Now Obama is musing about extending the political reach of the criminal law. If he does so, he will find he has opened a new front of political warfare that will not soon end.

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush drew a curtain of oblivion against all the errors and mistakes that had led up to the attacks. There was accusation and counter-accusation in the media, but at the official level there was no recrimination against President Clinton’s decision not to kill bin Laden when he had the chance, no action against those who had failed to stop the 9/11 hijackers from entering the country.

If Obama proceeds to take legal action against those who did what they thought was right to defend the country, all that will change. Prosecutions launched by Obama will not stop when Obama declares “game over.” If overzealousness under Bush becomes a crime under Obama, underzealousness under Obama will become a crime under the next Republican president.

Revenge will be exacted for revenge, the costs of government service will escalate, mobilizing cross-party support will become practically impossible for any important action, and the political life of the American republic will take another step toward the play-for-keeps destructiveness of the last days of the Roman republic.

My belief is that Obama and the Democrats are at the zenith of their power. This is when men of power commonly make their great mistakes. My suspicion is that a campaign of political prosecutions against Republican officials will not only poison the atmosphere in Washington, but lead to Republican coherence that would not have occurred otherwise.

This move on the part of Obama is a huge mistake, and will come back to haunt him. Voters want both parties to work together to solve their problems. Obama is giving away what made him special, his post-partisan veneer. This is a gift to Republicans that the President did not have to offer, but once given, cannot be returned.

Frum's comparison to the Late Republic is haunting but quite apt, apparently.

Big Props to my Cousin, Marty Fugate, for getting me back on my own blog.

Google Blogger lost my new email address, so I had to depend on Marty to get back on line.

Thanks again, Frugate!!!

What will we be doing? Well, off and on, we'll be discussing politik, kultur, movies, and whatnot.

Not much more to say, except, I'm back.

Labels: Absence, Epic Fail, Fugstat