I recently snagged a couple of episodes of the anime series Fruits Basket. It's an unusual comedy series about a 16-year-old orphaned girl who is befriended by a family under an unusual curse: When someone of the opposite sex hugs one of them, he or she transforms into one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac! I've only seen a couple of episodes, but so far it's an entertaining series that blends comedy, drama and romance. Here's more information on the series, a fan site with several picture galleries, and desktop images courtesy Animewallpapers.com.
In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection.
That statement implies that Bush really has "free-trade principles" that extend beyond mere marketing, or indeed any principles other than getting elected in 2004. It seems to me principles are those values one sticks by. Somehow I doubt Bush really lost much sleep over accepting the advice of Karl Rove (or whomever) to make this move.
President Bush "is asking Congress for $80 billion to help rebuild Iraq," Letterman cracked. "And when you make out that check, remember there are two L's in Halliburton."
Here's an interesting Eric Alterman column questioning the Administration's story -- or rather, stories -- of what it did on September 11, 2001. Mark Kleiman comments, "The contrast between the press coverage, or non-coverage, of this and all the fuss about Gore's mother's dog's prescription and the difference between touring a disaster site with the Director of FEMA and the Deputy Director of FEMA is pertty astonishing."
*If memory serves me right, Let it Be is the last Beatles album released, but not the last one recorded. The superlative Abbey Road was recorded last, but the band's fractiousness -- which led in part to Spector being called in as producer -- delayed the release of Let it Be.
Hold on folks. If the average American used their common sense and/or just voted his or her pocket book and/or wouldn't allow themselves to be frightened into voting a certain way, I'd agree. However, W and the boys use fear very effectively -- and they haven't really even warmed up the 2004 election year model of the "Scare-O-Matic" yet.
I do think Republicans are in trouble and this administration looks more amateurish on every front with each passing minute. Interestingly enough, I'd argue that it isn't that W and the boys have gotten any worse at their jobs over the last few months or anything.
It's just that the media is finally paying attention to just how bad they are at their jobs.
It remains to be seen how the media will handle the inevitable GOP assault of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). But there's no question that the Democrats have to be prepared for all kinds of dirty pool, like the hatchet job Fox News performed on Howard Dean to make it seem like he was calling Hamas "soldiers" when in reality he was saying -- and I agree -- that they've made themselves combatants and therefore legitimate targets.
Hardly a radical idea, that, but definitely a radical distortion. And that's just the beginning, folks, so hold on to your hats.
Shuriken Assault is a Flash version of the challenge stage from the classic arcade game Shinobi. The player throws shuriken (ninja throwing stars) at waves of attacking ninja. c00L!
E.J. Dionne and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick opine that the postponement of the California recall election by a panel of the 9th Circuit is a direct rebuke to the Supreme Court's Bush v Gore decision, which the panel cites as precedent a dozen times despite the SCOTUS' lame disclaimer that the ruling was good for one time only (a tacit admission, in my opinion, that the Court knew how bogus its decision was). Here's Lithwick:
There's really only one way to read the panel's decision from Monday. It's a sauce-for-the-gander exercise in payback. Pure and simple. The panel not only refused to accept the Supremes' admonition that the nation would not be fooled again; it refused even to address it. Applying Bush v. Gore again and again in the unanimous opinion, the judges told the high court that it has no power to declare a case a one-ride ticket and defied the court to step in again to tell them otherwise. (The court isn't likely to step in, as many have now noted, because they cannot win if they do. By getting involved, they risk either looking corrupt and partisan if they reverse the decision or permitting the courts to legislate things like the distances between polling places and the pant-length for elections workers for all eternity.)
Dionne adds:
Critics of the 9th Circuit panel are trying to argue that the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore was applying its equal protection argument only to recounts, not to the method through which votes were cast. But this argument is simply an admission that the Supreme Court majority didn't really care about equal protection of voters. It was looking for a narrow, one-time fix that would make George Bush president. If the Supreme Court ever rejects the use of its precedents by the 9th Circuit, it will make this abundantly clear.
The beauty part is, as some of the frothing conservative critics either fail to recognize or deliberately ignore, is that the decision doesn't cancel the election, merely postpones it until the punch-card ballot systems that the California Secretary of State has admitted are too unreliable are phased out.
And, of course, the Republican contention that counting the votes in Florida would do irreparable harm to Bush speaks for itself.
Jim Henley has an excellent critique of the so-called "flypaper strategy" (as he puts it, "A 'strategy' is apparently an explanation you come up with to explain why what you did turns out to have been a brilliant idea even though it didn't work out like you said it would.").
Yeah, it isn't Halloween season yet, but this news is worth noting anyway.
The ultra-creepy Silent Hill survival horror video game series is about the become the basis of a feature film, according to GameSpot.
Attached to the project is producer Samuel Hadida, whose credits include True Romance, Spider, and Brotherhood of the Wolf, the latter of which was directed by Christophe Gans. Konami confirmed that Gans would be the director. Gans' other credits include H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon: Book of the Dead and the Japanese anime Crying Freeman.
Konami will be working closely with Davis Films on the film's script, creature and character design, and soundtrack. Konami did not provide details on the cast, filming location, or schedule and did not indicate whether the film would adapt specific episodes in the series or follow an original storyline set in the Silent Hill universe.
The Silent Hill series has sold more than four million copies worldwide on several platforms.
Let's hope they do a better job than the makers of the barely-pleasing Resident Evil flick.
Yesterday's All Things Considered on NPR carried a fascinating piece (RealAudio required) on the music that plays at Japanese train stations. The piece's author, Andy Raskin, had lived in Japan and was back on business. He notes that the shrill warnings that trains were about to depart have been replaced by beautiful interludes of synthesized music, with each train bearing its own signature tune. Raskin said the change was intended to reduce the sense of urgency that caused commuters to crown onto trains about to depart, but from his observations, the tactic isn't working yet. Still, the music is beautiful and fascinating.
Jeff Cooper opines that we may soon see developments in the Valerie Plame affair, pointing to a recent Chatterbox entry noting that a reporter asked White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan a direct question about the matter.
[McClellan]: That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. If I could find out who anonymous people were, I would. I just said, it's totally ridiculous.
...[I]t's pretty unsettling that McClellan refuses to answer the question at all. Rove is, after all, the president's principal political adviser, a man so influential that a recent book about him was titled Bush's Brain. McClellan could have said something like, "I have a very hard time imagining that to be true, but if you like I'll ask him." But McClellan didn't say that.
Business Pundit has an interesting chart that may do much to explain the recent slump in record sales: the explosion of the Web surfing, video games and DVDs.
I was surprised and pleased to see that reading rates for books, magazines, and newspapers have more or less held its own, albeit declining slightly.
Wampum informs me that Lisa English of Ruminate This has rushed her ailing son to the hospital. Planet Swank sends sincere wishes for his speedy recovery. Please remember Lisa in your thoughts and prayers.
Wednesday, however, President Bush said there was no solid evidence that Saddam was directly connected to the attacks on New York and Washington.
''We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks,'' Bush said in a brief encounter with reporters after a meeting with members of Congress.
I was reassured, however, to Bush's habit of mendacity once more on display:
Bush added, ''There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda ties.''
No question? He's got to be kidding. If Bush has evidence to back that statement up --especially with so many al Qaeda and Saddam regime figures in custody -- I'd love to see it.
In fact, Busy^3 provides the transcript, and the deception is self-evident:
GEORGE W. BUSH: No, we've had no evidence that Saddam was involved with the September the 11th... ...no, what the vice president said was that he has been involved with al-Qaeda, and Al Zaqarawi (ph), al-Qaeda operative, in Baghdad, he's the guy that ordered the killing of a U.S. diplomat, he's a man still running loose, involved with the poisons network, involved with Ansar Al-Islam. There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda ties.
Ansar al-Islam, let's recall, operated in northern Iraq under the protection of the US no-fly zone, which effectively limited Saddam's control. Saddam's only demonstrable ties with that group is that he was powerless to chase it out of his country. If that's the best Bush has, it's pathetic.
Josh Marshall thinks the President's uncharacteristic -- and long-overdue -- declaration is in response to a changing climate in Washington, with the press asking touch questions and Bush's own party starting to look for legislative cover.
And Demagogue links to this Robert Scheer column that catalogs the Administration's history of making misleading "misstatements" loudly and publicly and then issuing corrections, if ever, later on the q.t., and underscores how bogus Bush's al Qaeda claim is:
Even if the leaders of the Bush team were half as smart as they think they are, it would be amazing that they "misspoke" as often as they have. As happened Sunday when Tim Russert challenged Vice President Dick Cheney to defend his claim, made on Meet the Press before the war, that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. "Yeah, I did misspeak," Cheney admitted. "We never had any evidence that [Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon."
The pattern is clear: Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar. It is really quite ingenious in its cynical effectiveness, and Wolfowitz's latest performance is a classic example--even his correction needs correcting.
The Zarqawi connection has been a red herring since Colin Powell emphasized it in his prewar presentation to the United Nations Security Council, telling the world how Zarqawi was running a chemical weapons lab. Problem was, the site was not in Iraqi control but was in the US-patrolled no-fly zone, and when reporters visited it in the days immediately after Powell's speech they found nothing that indicated anything like a chemical weapons lab.
The fundamentalist militia known as Ansar al Islam that controlled the area, meanwhile, was supported by Hussein's enemies in Iran. Nor has any evidence of connections between Ansar al Islam and Hussein's regime surfaced since the U.S invasion, as Wolfowitz conceded in congressional testimony last Tuesday.
At that same Senate hearing, Vincent Cannistraro, formerly the CIA's director of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, testified: "There was no substantive itelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war. Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."
I guess for Bush, a longtime habit of deception is hard to break.
Interesting Times has more reaction to Fox News's retort to Christine Amanpour's comments that the media censored itself in covering the Iraq war ("Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda").
The more I think about this the more outrageous I realize this is. The spokesdrone for FOX has essentially admitted two things: her network is a propaganda organ for Bush and anyone who doesn't fall in line should be considered enemies of the state. Furthermore, this statement is so blatant that it indicates that they no longer feel the need to hide their true feelings on this matter behind some veneer of respectable journalism.
Former Senator Max Cleland has a blistering op-ed in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution blasting Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons:
...Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.
They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable.
A key piece of that intelligence was an outright lie that the White House put into the president's State of the
