Is Torture Not Intended for General Audiences?

This poster has been censored by the
Motion Pictures of America Association (MPAA)

Alex Gibney's documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which traces the pattern of torture practice from Afghanistan's Bagram prison to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay. The image in question is a news photo of two U.S. soldiers walking away from the camera with a hooded detainee between them.

According to Variety An MPAA spokesman said:

We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration.

Is the real reason for MPAA's objection is that the hood makes a documentary about torture seem more like a horror movie?

We can't have that.

Final Presidential Press Conference of 2007

QUESTION: Mr. President, you maybe saw that President Clinton said recently that one of the first actions of a new Clinton administration would be to send Presidents 41 and 42 on a worldwide goodwill mission to restore the country's good name abroad. I wonder if you think such a thing is necessary?

World Public Opinion

WTF? Where's This So-Called Liberal Media?

Warning! Wednesday Night Rant!

I Know where the liberal media isn't.

I don't think it's on National Public Radio. It certainly is not on C-Span:According to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research,

right-wing think tanks got 51 percent of C-SPAN’s total coverage in 2006, while left-of-center think tanks only got 18 percent of their coverage.

Maybe Liberal media is to be found on MSNBC's Keith Olberman's Countdown. I don't much like his show, however. Especially with that bimbo who's taking his place recently: the one who devoted 12½ minutes of noninterupted air time to the Clinton clowns last night.

However, I'm not really looking for 'liberal media'.

For me, all I want is objectivity, fact-based, reality reported by journalists with integrity and funded without strings controlled by corporate bosses.

The gold standard for me is the British Broadcasting Corporation. I am fortunate to get the BBC on my local AM radio station (owned by a conservative newspaper).

Listening to 'Beebe' for a year convinces me that my brothers and sisters who live in the notorious fly-over states are not stupid. They are just not informed. They would be, could be and should be fact-based, but they do not hear of facts. All they hear is American teevee, American gospel, American gossip. Their politics is full of polemics and bumpersticker superficialities. Because that's the only way their media 'informs' them.

My brothers and sisters are enslaved by our dysfunctional corporate-controlled, ratings-driven media which enshrouds our continent from sea to shining sea. We can do better.

Set my people free.

Any One Who Votes for Clinton in the Primaries is Rolling the Dice

I have never seen such craziness.

Not, anyway, since John Kerry was flirting with John McCain as a potential running mate in 2004.

To Charlie Rose, Bill Clinton describes Sen. Barack Obama as a callow, highly ambitious political prodigy who is asking voters to "roll the dice" and elect him president. Clinton should know - that's a fair description of himself when he first sought the presidency in 1992.

And then,Hillary says Obama hasn't done the 'hard work' she has. That can only remind all of us that HRC sounds more and more like GWB everyday.

Finally, in Orangeburg (SC) on Monday, Bill Clinton said that the first thing wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is to dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president - Bush's son, George W. Bush.

Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again.

Well, any one who would believe this crap, would also be taken by surprise to hear that Lieberman would endorse McCain.

Sure enough, Daddy Bush's (President #41) office came out in the same news cycle with an adamant denial. Former President Bush’s chief of staff Jean Becker said that he

wholeheartedly supports the President of the United States, including his foreign policy. He has never discussed an ‘around-the-world-mission’ with either former President Bill Clinton or Sen. Clinton, nor does he think such a mission is warranted since he is proud of the role America continues to play around the world as the beacon of hope for freedom and democracy.

President Bush is excited about several of the excellent Republican candidates running for president, and looks forward to discussing their candidacy once the Republican nominee is determined.

Of course, Clinton wasn't serious. Bill 'Big Dog' Clinton is still the callow youth. He'll say anything, tell any story to grab the spotlight for entertainment. He likes to have a good time as a loose cannon. His Presidency was too boring a job to keep him interested. Hillary's presidency will be likewise a drag on him. I don't know if Hillary is presidential, but I think it's too bad that we can't entertain her as POTUS without having to entertain her spouse as well.

Speaking as someone who voted to put the Clintons in the White House for eight years, I have to say that the pair of them are so over.

Senator Chris Dodd Wants to Un-Redact the Constitution

Showdown on the FISA Bill









He's making his stand today in a one-man filibuster. He needs help!The latest word from the Dodd camp regarding what will happen on the FISA Bill is that today, Dodd will take the floor and not yield.

He can take "questions" from other senators during the filibuster, which can be no more than 20 minutes. We understand that Kennedy and Feingold so far have agreed to do this.

They're asking for people to contact their Senators. Dodd is going to have plenty of time to read, so there's time for you to drop a couple of dimes and make the calls. Click below and join the Dodd Squad!

Why Al Gore Is Not Running for President

When you address an inconvenient truth,

and when you address the world,
you can't afford
to pander.

Big Al made the right call. He has a larger constituency.

Baseball: Who We Used to Be

Jacques Barzun and Tim Rutten on America's Past National Pastime

Baseball's shame is our shame too.

The historian Jacques Barzun once remarked,

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.

SNIP (a big one)

Barzun is right about baseball's intimacy with the American spirit. What other game could have coaxed poetic sentiment from both Walt Whitman and Calvin Coolidge? The game of baseball speaks to us of that idyllic national past we imagine in common. It is played in a green and open space -- as if such things were not now the luxury they are for so many. Every baseball game -- not match or contest, but game -- is rich with infinite promise, just as we believe American lives once were. We chalk the diamond's boundaries and we allocate each game nine innings, but -- theoretically -- once the first pitch is thrown, every baseball game could go on indefinitely and every ball once hit could, if it stayed between the foul lines, remain in play forever, pursued through all eternity by some tireless fielder.

Alone among the games we play, baseball records -- and rewards -- individual effort, team play . . . and sacrifice.

Baseball's seasonal rhythms are those of our own rural paradise lost -- hopeful promise in springtime; diligent toil through summer; harvest and reward in autumn; the warmth of well-earned rest in winter. So it was in that long ago America of our collectively imagined past. So, somehow, it seems it might be still -- or, perhaps, again -- as we sit in the sunlight and pass a couple of hours of time that stands apart from normal time, watching the young, the strong and the fleet play our game.

It would be lovely to believe that honest, sober, fearless George Mitchell -- having done the impossible by bringing peace to Northern Ireland -- might now work a domestic miracle, and somehow recall us all to the memory of our better sporting nature.

SNIP!

There's a lot more to read from Rutten's column, in its original. I just couldn't go deep, down and dirty on the negatives.