village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway YES!!! Im so happy. Okay first off I totally agree with Dean and how he says that "Clinton led the Dems into complacency and defeat." After this recent election it became more clear to me than ever how slippery and selfish Bill Clinton is and was. I used to be a hearld of the man but now I will be first to say that he is a populist snake. He simply does whats best for him and his personal betterment. His attitude that the Dems needed to move more towards the cetner is EXACTLY why the democrats are in disarray right now. He and James Carville watered down the party to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable from the republicans.



Joe Lieberman you're a smarmy liver spotted old man who cant tell your political alignments from a hole in the wall. Of course Dean isnt his first choice. Joe switch your party, you're not doing the Dems ANY good.



John Kerry. Well I have to admit that now I was on the "Anybody but Bush bandwagon" and I was behind this cardboard cutout for all the wrong reasons. I have to agree the man is a flip flopper and is a populist as well. Once again he has made another VAGUE statement to the people of this nation. "He's going to be a spokesman in certain ways. Obviously the chairman has to go to the Jefferson-Jackson dinners and other things. Howard is going to be very good for the party. A lot of people are worried about it, I'm not. I think he's been out there in the country. He's listened to people. . . . He's a person who believes in grassroots." WHAT THE HELL DID HE JUST SAY?!! Cant you just say whether or not you're happy with the fact that Dean is the new chairman? IS THAT SO DIFFICULT!!!???



Furthermore I think all the Republicans are scared of Dean. All the pundits say that this is suicide and that its a huge mistake. I see right through that and they are afraid. Dean is going to attack the Republicans head on and I feel that he going to revolutionize the party and that the sun will set on their grip of the government while he is the chairman. Congrats Howard, YEAHHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHOOOOWOWOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Man

Is a freak of nature.

I just got done watching Troy and wow what a mess that movie was. First of all the most blaring inaacuracy in the movie is that Agememnon did not die at Troy. He dies when he returns to Mycenae, killed by his wife Clitomnestra. She kills him because he had his daughter sacrificed to Posiedon so that he wouldnt be stuck at sea.



The first 20 minutes of this movie were agonizing. Every scene kept repeating ad nauseum that this was an epic war. It also seemed that the characters in the movie are pre- cognitive of thier legacies, they somehow know that they are epic characters. I thought Achilles' was portrayed as some kind matrix-like superhuman. Ridiculous. Also I couldnt quite pin down what Brad Pitt was trying to accomplish in the way of an accent. It was a mix between british and a roided out venice beach bodybuilder. Peter O'Toole looked like an aged gay man the entire time and whenever Orlando Bloom and the hack of an actress that played Helen were on screen I wanted to barf. This movie was a piece of trash. Im so glad it flopped. I hate movies.

The Washington Monthly This is interesting. I hadn't heard anything about this. Im perplexed nonetheless. What does John Stossel have against organic produce?! He bends the results of all these tests to demonize organic foods. WHY?! John Stossel you are a tool, you belong in the tool box with Robert Novak.

I just finished reading "Me talk pretty one day" by David Sedaris. I have been hooked on the comedy of his sister, Amy, for quite sometime and I decided to finally pick up this book and read it.



What an amazing collection of essays. I have never related so much to a book before. His stream of thought and the way he tells the stories is brilliant. He takes the mundane situations of everday life and peppers them with language to create vivid tales of life that I am uterly envious of. He even takes the most undesirable situations and narrates them into an adventure.



I particularly related to the last chapter, one where he exposes about his father's habit of buying old vegetables and meat from the grocery store. I grew up with a similar father and to this day he cant resist items that are marked for sale because they are old. Reading the final chapter was as if reading my own memories.



I was fascinated by his time in Paris in the book as well. I just went for my first time this summer and I was deeply disappointed by my experience. I expected to be taken away, seduced by the "City of Light" but instead I was disgusted and repulsed. It seemed to me a city devoid of all life, passion, and creative juice. It has reached, in my view, a state where it cares nothing about its present existence but instead lives in the present in a vicarious haze of its past. Sedaris, however, offers a different American perspective on Paris, one of someone that has spent a considerable amount of time there. His view is more anthropological. He makes keen observations about the french, their language, and their culture. He finds a niche for himself in Paris but yet doesnt lose his perspective as an outsider. The result is a collection of great stories of Parisian and provincial life and the linguistic hardships that accompany him throughout his stay.



I highly recommend this book. I will be reading his latest book, "Naked," in the very near future.

AlterNet: Election 2004: How Bush Won This topic is getting very very tired. I was bummed out as anyone when Bush won the election but PLEASE can we not rehash the topic anymore. However, I found this quote from a letter in the article highly amusing. Its from a letter written to Bush from the Rev. Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University:



"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America – though she doesn't deserve it – a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. ... Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. ... Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years – a brief time only – to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God. ... If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them."



P.S. I'll be opening my own University in the near future and I am announcing my presidency of it, effective as of now.

alternate: The Neverending Story This article is interesting. I agree with some of it, then again some of it doesn't quite jive with my sensibilities. I have to agree with the commentary about the compassion of the human race just being a few inches under the surface and how the media dictates when it is and isn't okay to feel sorry for other people suffering around the world.



I personally think about all of the human suffering around the world on a daily basis. Maybe its because I work in scientific research and I like to think that the work I'm doing today might help someone in the near future. I think it would do everyone some good to take time and reflect on how your actions might serve other people in the world that might be suffering. You shouldnt change your profession per SE but it would help a lot if everyone did some research on the net about a charity that could help others that are in need. If you step back and told the story of the last couple of weeks to someone from the suitable headline might sound hyperbolic, "Human compassion sparked only by the the force of Tsunami." Sadly this isn't an exaggeration.