The truth is out there

This is the kind of thing that just depresses me about my home land to no end.

Whether or not you agree with his politics, it really, honestly has been proven without a doubt that Barack Obama is not a Muslim. That he was not actually born in Indonesia or Guatemala or wherever. He may be a liberal tax-and-spender, but he's no foreign invasion leader. Yet the lies persist.

I just don't get it. Is believing in whatever the vast right wing conspiracy of the day is just shorthand for "I don't like the guy's politics"? Much as I despise the administration of George W. Bush, I never bought into the conspiracy that he somehow planned/knew about 9/11. Yet people just love their conspiracy theories. As if a secret Muslim infiltrator could actually get elected President in Fox News America?

It's frankly embarrassing sometimes at my work, where I'm surrounded by Kiwis, Australians, Brits and South Africans, and having to defend the US when a story like this comes across the wire. It feeds into all the sad stereotypes people have about my country. (Of course, every country has its idiots, demagogues and ranters, a fact I like to point out when anyone gets too high on the 'bash America' bandwagon. New Zealand politicians tend to be less brash and omnipresent than Americans, but it's got its share of well, wankers.)

A great reason for why the Obama myths persist in mainstream society lies in the fact that media are scared to death of stating an outright fact when it comes to politics, for fear of offending some demographic. Too many stories on this sort of thing mushmouth their way around the point, using vague language rather than just calling a lie a lie, an untruth an untruth. Journalists today have been taught that being factual isn't being "balanced."

I dunno. Is it just easier to believe whatever you're told that fits into your personal worldview? But as the always thoughtful Arthur puts it, propaganda works. Say something enough and people will start to believe it. It's a shame that the 24-hour news cycle, always logged on Internet world of knowledge and freedom seems to have in many ways actually made this kind of climate worse. The truth is out there... somewhere, I guess, maybe.

Who's drinking the tea party?

I'm an expatriate, but I've never subscribed to the whole "I left America because I hate it" notion of being an American living overseas. We moved to New Zealand because of family, and because hey, it'd be neat to live in a foreign country for a while, however long it ends up being for. George Bush being President had nothing to do with it. But I love many many things about the US, miss it a lot, and usually stick up for it when I get the occasional "America-bashing" comment from people here.

But I admit -- I don't understand this "Tea Party" nonsense or the school of Sarah Palinism at all. The incoherent rage and anger of people like the Glenn Becks and Bill O'Reillys and so forth is bizarre to me. There are people on the Republican end of things I've respected, but they seem to be a dwindling voice amongst the crazies. People on both sides of the political divide get angry and idiotic, but I don't know, it just seems like the American right wing has a patent on over-the-top lunacy.

Living overseas, I see everything now through a curious filter of distance. I wonder, are people really getting crazier, or is that just the way it seems from afar? I end up often feeling like I need to apologise for my country, or trying to explain to people that a politician or a talk show host does not equal a country.

When you get people like Sarah Palin saying things like 'Don't retreat, just reload," and you think about the likelihood that a certain amount of disturbed, gun-owning people are likely to take that as more than just rhetoric, you have to wonder. If left-wingers talked about shooting Bush, they rightfully would've been prosecuted. It's hard to imagine endlessly red-faced, violence-invoking rhetoric isn't going to lead to real trouble.

I dunno. Maybe it's just the up and down of politics as always (people have been shouting about politics as long as they've had larynxes, after all). Maybe the Internet, the Twittery and Facebookery and so forth just make everything that much louder and less avoidable. I try to tell my NZ friends that all Americans aren't like the Palinites -- that the Tea Party folk just are a very vocal, very loud fringe element that gets a lot more press than the number of people they actually represent. But maybe I've been out of America too long and the lunatics have actually taken over the asylum. Can anyone tell me?

Revenge of the spawn of the links

So the wife noted recently how we managed to have a relatively illness-free winter down under. Whereupon I, of course, immediately got struck down by Phlegmius, the God of Mucus. In the absence *snnork* of good health, I offer random links that amuse or intrigued me of late:

• Witness the worst celebrity wax figures ever. I love the President Obama one, who looks like an old Jim Nabors figure spray-painted black.

• Y'know, in the accolades and appreciations after the untimely death of Patrick Swayze I realised I had never seen his 1986 masterwork "Road House," in which he plays a zen bouncer who's like the Confucius of bar brawls. It is not quite as awesome as "Point Break," mainly because it doesn't costar Keanu "Whoa" Reeves, but it is still startlingly cool as a piece of '80s cheese and übermanly exuberance. Plus, throat-ripping! Pop Matters examined "the Tao of Dalton" a while back, and it makes for excellent Swayze-musing.

• I never really thought about it before, but I do dig sci-fi movie corridors! In praise of the sci-fi corridor.

• Whenever a handful of really famous people die it really, really annoys me when people talk about a "plague" of celebrity deaths or the whole "they come in threes" myth, as if famous people (and regular, non-famous plebians) didn't die every single day just because that's what people do. So I quite liked this NY Times article which looks at the real reason the media/online world seemed to constantly be freaking out about people dying this summer: The Summer of the Celebrity Deaths? Boomers realizing they're not immortal? Egad!

• I've mentioned before that Leonard Pitts is probably my favorite current newspaper columnist (close runners-up being the NY Times Maureen Dowd, who sometimes is too clever for her own good, and San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll, who sometimes is too twee for his own good). Pitts manages to bring a consistently thoughtful yet genuinely concerned tone to his left-of-center observations. Anyway, this piece by Pitts is superb as he looks at what he calls "the howl of the unhinged and the entitled" we keep hearing from the US lately: The 'Culture War' is real and scary.

• Man, I grew up reading Marvel's old Star Wars comics, but I have to admit, they could be pretty wonky tales sometimes. The 11 least necessary Star Wars comic book stories. A great list from the fab Topless Robot, but where is Jaxxon the giant green bunny rabbit, darn it?

• Here's the thing -- yeah, if you're wearing a yarmulke or a turban out or the like on the streets and get hassled for it, I can see the outrage. But if you insist on being a grown-up and going out in public dressed like a Jedi Knight and then want to sue over religious discrimination -- well, you're a dork. Jedi church founder 'emotionally humiliated.'

• Finally, because we all need more Lego art: A functional cello -- made out of Lego.

From 6000 miles away, it truly appears sometimes the US has gone a bit crazy

US. Rep. Barney Frank, I love you:

CNN: Barney Frank goes toe to toe at health care town hall

...While Rep. Frank attempted to respond to all questions, he gave up when one woman compared health care proposals favored by Frank and President Obama to policies of Nazi Germany.
"When you ask me that question, I'm going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked.
"You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis," he said, adding such behavior demonstrated the strength of First Amendment guarantees of what he called "contemptible" free speech.
"Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table," Frank said to the woman. "I have no interest in doing it."



...The "Hitler card" is the biggest cliche in the book for fanatics of ALL political leanings, a nuclear bomb of rhetoric when perhaps a mild slingshot would do. Can we all, left and right, just drop the bloody thing unless the person we're comparing to Hitler actually has planned genocide and global conquest?

I've already said my piece on the health care "debate" on this well-commented post, so I won't go there again, but really -- why are the 1% of nutjobs getting 99% of the coverage? Shouters beat talkers, I guess.

Socialized medicine: Good for what ails you

Once again, America is trying to revamp its disastrously weak and expensive health care system. I wonder if they'll succeed, but judging from how often phrases like "socialized medicine" are being thrown about, I have my doubts. President Obama's plan is probably not perfect, and could certainly be fine-tuned and will cost money to get going, but really, the objections of most of the Republicans and others seems to be based on playing politics rather than principle. It's an Obama plan, so it's a bad idea. It's downright un-American to let the government pay for some of your sick care, darn it! Repeat the old arguments ad infinitum, and forget about the growing cracks in America's economy that can be directly traced to a collapsing health care system.

All I know is that I've lived in America with its health care system and under New Zealand with its commie-loving red "socialised medicine," and I sure know which I prefer. Neither system is perfect, but in America, my family constantly had to prepare ourselves for how much basic medical care was going to run us. We had to set aside thousands of dollars just to have a baby, knowing the costs would exceed deductibles. Every single time I had a medical procedure - and I've had a few - you could guarantee it would spend months winding its way through a labyrinthine insurance maze, where each claim would randomly be approved or not depending on the mood of the insurer.

Back in 1999, I had an emergency appendectomy. Bad scene, vomiting, dizziness, et cetera. At the doctor's office I was in a pretty bad state, and my friend Irwin was going to drive me 20 miles up the road to the hospital. But the doctors saw how bad I was and decided it would be better to get an ambulance ride (my first and only ambulance ride, and I was too out of it to enjoy!). Months later, my insurance told me they wouldn't cover the $400 ambulance ride, as it wasn't medically necessary. This despite the fact that the doctors at the clinic REFUSED to have someone drive me to the hospital. Should I have walked? The Orwellian inanity of that one simple claim sums up to me what's bankrupt, morally and financially, about US healthcare.

By contrast, all the medical care we've had in New Zealand has been pretty great. Doctors' visits are nearly free (we pay a token sum at our doctor who's in the fancier part of Auckland, but he's unusual -- most GPs are basically free). I get referrals to hospitals for major care if needed; just today, I got an appointment for a hearing test with some problems I've been having with one ear. Won't cost me a cent. Now, sometimes you do have to wait a while for referrals and there are other flaws with the system, but still, I know which I like more. Our taxes are no higher than they were in the US with state/federal/Social Security and insurance payments, and I'd much rather pay taxes for sure government service rather than dob in for an insurance payment that may or may not result in coverage eventually depending on corporate whims.

I wish Obama luck. I think trying to rush anything so big through in a few weeks is a bad idea, but he's fighting the good fight so far by not just letting the idea die like the Clintons did back in the 1990s. But the problem in America is that far too many powerful interests are opposed to reforming health care out of greed, or laziness, or simple partisan point-scoring, banal slogans winning over substantial debate any time. It's a shame, and one of the things that reminds me why I live overseas now.

What a maverick!

How do you show leadership potential and your suitability for the presidency in 2012? Well, by quitting in the middle of your term, for no apparent reason.

The Sarah Palin roadshow -- you can't make this stuff up anymore. Reminds me a bit of John McCain "suspending" his campaign to deal with the economic crisis, because politicians surely can't be expected to deal with more than one thing at once. Big gestures, empty substance. I found it hard to believe I'd find a politician more loathsome than Bush Jr, but wow, Palin's naked cynicism and pandering knows no bounds, does it? One would hope she does run against Obama, just to see him wipe the floor with her.

Every time I think the current state of the Republican Party in the US can't get any more comical, they manage to top themselves. The Dems are hardly perfect, but honestly -- it's just getting absurd on the red team.

Happy Fourth of July, all y'all.

So long and thanks for all the mess

I don't hate George W. Bush, really.

I am fundamentally optimistic about people, and even at 37 years old I still find myself surprised when they live down to your expectations. So it was with Bush -- I didn't vote for him, didn't think much of the smug daddy's boy, but after all the agony of recounts, etc., I was willing to give him a shot. It's kind of hard now to remember that somewhat more idyllic pre-9/11 world, but what I recall of the 2000 election was real disappointment -- Al Gore is a terrific man and would have been a terrific president, I believe, but he was a lousy, slow-reacting candidate, much like John Kerry. Bush out-folksed them. I was disappointed, but I wasn't horrified. Another mediocre Bush like his dad. How bad could it be?

I certainly couldn't have imagined how poor Bush would be. Even though I moved away from America more than 2 years ago, I've had to live with the quasi-burden of being linked with Bush many a time -- one man once started berating me about "my" President, as if we hung out together at the BBQ or something. Having lived overseas, I can totally affirm the impression that Bush has radically hurt America's image overseas. He's confirmed the worst suspicions many have and made them forget about the all the fine, trailblazing things about America.

Despite all the reasons I've got, though, I've always found it hard to hate Bush. I feel sorry for him more than anything, for the damage he's caused and the willful blindness that's led us into it. I wouldn't call him stupid, either – merely stubborn, incurious and ideological to the extreme. Maureen Dowd had a fine line in her Bush kiss-off column in The New York Times: "W. was immune to doubt and afraid of it. Obama is delighted by doubt."

Some of it wasn't Bush's fault -- I have never believed all the 9/11 government conspiracy theories -- but it was his consequence. Great presidents have almost always risen to the crises given them -- Lincoln, Roosevelt -- while the ones regarded as the worst have looked history in the eye and failed. There's a reason few people remember who James Buchanan, Warren Harding or Franklin Pierce were. Bush took things like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the economic climate and made them all worse through inaction, miscalculation or outright incompetence. His legacy will be echoing for a long time.

I don't hate him, though. I hate what he's done and how he's made people think my country isn't as good as place as it really is, as it really can be. Contrary to what some folks think, liberal expatriates can and do love America too. Barack Obama's got the weight of a million expectations on him starting tomorrow, but y'know, even if he doesn't deliver, at least the adulation and optimism he's unleashed has had a kind of cleansing effect. Is it over the top, the Obama hyperbole? Well, sure, but at least it's washed the taste of the last 8 years out.

Please. Just. Go. Away.

"I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher said. “You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘well, look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

I'd try to write something but this buffoon's blathering really just kind of demands slackjawed silence. Or maybe a quote from Harlan Ellison is a better rejoinder:

"We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing."

You don't get the "whole story" without some form of media, whether it's a book, a TV or a podcast. This is what a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter will get you -- a species so divorced from the concept of freedom of speech that they see it as an option rather than a necessity.

Doubleplusgood unpolitics

George Orwell is one of my writing idols (and although he's been dead nearly 60 years, he's a brand-new blogger at the nifty Orwell Diaries, which I must plug). And I have to wonder what the man would make of the 2008 presidential race so far, and specially the Republican campaign which seems steeped in Newspeak jargon straight out of "1984."

I know I'm coming from a rather biased pro-Obama perspective, but still, the dazzling verbal juggling of the Republicans shocks me. In their world, it's as if their party HASN'T been in control of the White House for the last 8 years; where a man who's voted with the president the vast majority of the time can actually make a grab for the notion of change. That it's offensive to raise any questions about the qualifications of Sarah Palin because she's a woman and because some fringe lefties have been hitting her below the belt, as if the right wing hadn't been systematically going after Hillary Clinton in equally nasty, sexist ways for years. That after exploding the surplus Bill Clinton left behind, and spending money by the zillions on Iraq, that Republicans can STILL feverishly claim they're about fiscal conservation. That McCain will cut pork-barrel spending with a running mate who sucked at the government teat in Alaska to the tune of millions of dollars.

That John McCain is a maverick, gosh darn it, pullin' on his gun belts and comin' to the town he's worked in comfortably for 30 years to clean it up. That he's a maverick even though all indications are he bowed to the string-pullers and didn't choose Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as veep because they wanted a REAL conservative. Conventions in general are more about pageantry than substance, but McCain's non-speech was a pinnacle in hypocrisy. Following acidic, typical talk-radio style liberal-bashing speeches by Sarah Palin, Rudy Guiliani and others, McCain had the nerve to get up there and talk about the kinder, gentler non-partisan government he'd lead. It's enough to make the head spin. Doublethink.

The Republicans are masters at Newspeak and the idea that if you repeat something wrong often enough, it turns true. McCain's a maverick, veteran John Kerry less of a war hero than Bush, and have you heard Barack Obama might be a Muslim? All I know is, if the American people are dim enough to swallow this for a third time, they get what they deserve. Doubleplusgood unpolitics.

The Easter Bunny's coming to your house

'Tis Easter weekend, and New Zealand pretty much shuts down completely the entire time. Me too, I've got five of six days off, so we're off to the beach to enjoy a last hint of late summer. And Wilco comes to town Sunday! Huzzah!

• The Mountain Goats aren't coming to New Zealand or Australia next month due to medical reasons. Ticket refund time. Fudge. Get well soon, John Darnielle. Sadness, and hoping for a reschedule soon.

• Elvis Costello's plans for his new album manage to baffle, confuse and irritate me all at the same time. Hey, I may be stuck in 1999, but I like CDs, darn it!

• I discovered Dr. K's nifty blog, and he's running an all Planet Of The Apes week, which is, like, the most awesome thing ever. Ongoing discussion of the grand nihilism of "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes," the darkest darn ape movie of all time and a flick that warped my young mind irreparably. Nuclear holocaust for everyone!

• Barack Obama writes and delivers a truly great speech trying to actually talk intelligently about a minor controversy. Right wingers work overtime to try and whittle, mangle and recast it in such a way that it ain't that no more. Whether you agree with the man or not, you've got to be pretty unforgiving not to concede that the man is thoughtful in a way we usually don't see in politics. He wrote his own speech, which you know shouldn't really be that big a deal but actually sadly is considering how rarely this happens in presidential politics these days. (I highly recommend Obama's two books, one stirring memoir, one more policy focused for all those who keep repeating the party line that he has no ideas.)

• Watched groovy "Eastern Promises." Don't mess with the Russian mafia. They will cut. you. up. And Viggo Mortensten naked can still beat the crap out of any man alive. I love the David Cronenberg even if this wasn't quite his top work, still a good yarn.

• Quote of the day that nearly made me spit coffee on the MacBook, from one of my favorite newspaper columnists, San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll: "I've never been a fan of St. Patrick's Day; it seems to me that celebrating being Irish by drinking is like celebrating being black by picking cotton."

Super duper Tuesday

...I know, more American politics! What can I say -- it's a pretty fascinating year for us presidential politics junkies, and the biggest primary election day in history -- a de facto early national election, almost -- is fascinating to observe. My vote for Mr. Obama is already in the hands of California registrars, but I don't have a clue how it will all shake down. It's a numbers game now, for the first time in a couple decades. I like it. I like that we don't have a "preordained" nominee from either party for once, and that there's a bit of a tussle going on over ideas and the future of my homeland. McCain seems to have it more sewn up on the GOP side, although the conservatives are still giving him hell. Obama and Clinton, it's hard to tell. Clinton definitely has the bigger name, but the thing about Obama seems to be the more the average voter learns about him, the better he does.

There's a lot of terrible campaign writing out there (honestly, if I hear one more commentator remark on Clinton showing a hint of emotion as veiled criticism, I'll yank his byline myself). But there's good too, and here's just a bit I've seen today I like:

The always enjoyable Independent on the return of John McCain.

A great expose of the world of "Hillary Haters," the folks that take their dislike to bizarre, pathological extremes.

A nice piece by one of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon, on why he's voting Obama.

And to cap it all off, the man himself in a great excerpt from his fine book "The Audacity of Hope." Read Barack Obama's words.

And here's a little YouTube. This blog is officially politically biased! (In case anyone had doubts.)



And of course, if you're in one of the Super Tuesday states today, for the luvva god, VOTE!

30 Days of Bloggery: One More Years

...So it's just about a year now till George W. Bush leaves office, a notion which fills an awful lot of folks worldwide with a calm, pleasing vibe. I'm no fan of the man, didn't vote for him twice, and yet even I'm astonished at what a bungle his presidency has become, to the point where Republican candidates are actively running away from his blessing. I pictured him being a kind of amiable dunce when he grabbed away the White House, figuring he'd do little harm, be a "uniter not a divider" as he laughably claimed in 2000.

Instead, of course, he's been a dangerous failure. Somehow the terrible events of 9/11 changed him utterly, turning him into a man disdainful of anything save his own unalterable moral compass, surrounded by yes men and sycophants and immune to the way his reaction to 9/11 inflamed a very flammable world even more. Bush seems to lack strategy -- while I disagreed with presidents like Nixon or Reagan, they seemed still to see the big picture sometimes, in dealings with China or the USSR, in a way Bush hasn't.

I'm a student of presidential history, and leaving my personal politics aside, it's hard not to imagine Bush landing in the lower tier of presidents with such luminaries as Harding, Grant and Buchanan. What unites all these men is that they faced a critical moment in history -- reconstruction, say, for Grant, or the Civil War blooming for Buchanan -- and they blew it. Whereas the "greats" -- Lincoln, Kennedy, FDR -- faced those moments are seen as triumphing. It's not entirely unlikely Bush could move up in opinion 20, 30 years from now -- look at how Reagan's stock rose since he left office -- but that means history is going to have to move in an entirely different direction than it's been trending. It's hard to imagine how the invasion of Iraq could be seen as having a "good side." But hey, that's just my view. In the meantime I along with many others are counting down till 2009, when President Clinton II/McCain/Obama or whomever takes office.

30 Days of Bloggery: Rocking the Vote

It's weird indeed to watch the 2008 presidential elections unfold from overseas. I'm still registered to vote in California, and will be making my opinion count, but I'm kind of out of the fray. The Iowa caucuses have always struck me as a bizarre and outmoded tradition that get far more ink than it should - a few thousand people in an odd ritual getting a mighty big say in choosing presidential nominees. If I were in charge I'd rotate the caucuses and primaries every four years so a true cross-section of America gets its vote, but America is mighty attached to its traditions so that won't happen anytime soon.

Anyway, I've been following this rather wide-open 2008 race and mulling over the candidates. I'm pretty much left of center, and when it comes to the issues, in every presidential election I've voted in since 1992 I've gone for the Dems. But picking a president, silly as it may be, is as much about personality as it is about platforms. Here's my totally unscientific, gut-feeling and admittedly idiosyncratic take on the major players.

Republicans
Mike Huckabee scares the bejeezus out of me (pun intended), frankly. He's a media-savvy version of Pat Robertson, basically, and the kind of zombie-eyed faith-propelled conservative I've always felt would be a disaster as president. He's managed to play his cuddly side up for the cameras but I find Huckabee dangerously ignorant and unqualified. It looks like he's already hitting a backlash with his bizarre "I'm pulling this ad because I have honor but I'm going to show it to all you media folks in a press conference" move. I imagine he's just a flavor-of-the-month, and he's likely to flame out hard and fast even if he does well in Iowa.

The only candidate worse than Huckabee would be Rudy Giuliani, who's been riding 9/11 so hard he makes George W. Bush look like a patchouli-smelling hippie. (I absolutely love Joe Biden's comment about him: "there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: A noun and a verb and 9/11.") His hard-ass style may impress the yokels, but it worries me deeply that we might elect a man who's even less flexible than Bush about the realities of the world, and I find it vaguely repulsive he's running so hard on the good deeds of 9/11. He's more socially liberal than some Republicans, true, but there's something kinda dangerous about the man I can't put my finger on. I don't trust him.

Mitt Romney is a man with nice hair in a suit to me, and I hear he's a Mormon. That's about all I know about him. Yet if pressed I'd say he might well be the nominee for the Republicans. Just a feeling I've got.

If I voted for a Republican, it'd probably be John McCain, who I admire greatly on a personal level for surviving being a POW for five years, and for a willingness to admit his mind changes. He's got firm principles even if I don't agree with a lot of them, and I admit his reputation as a bit of a maverick is appealing to me. I'd be "happy" if he were the nominee but think the fringe conservatives will never let it happen.

Democrats
If the Republicans tend to be balding white guys in suits, I find there's a lot of talent in the Dems race that hasn't even gotten a chance to shine - Joe Biden, for instance - but it's really down to Clinton, Edwards and Obama. I think it's actually a very good field of candidates even if they're all a bit flawed.

I like John Edwards quite a lot and think he could be an effective president. I admire his populist tactics even if it's just a campaign strategy (few people are even talking about poverty in the U.S.). Perhaps this former lawyer can come off a bit slick, but I admired his 2004 campaign and feel he could be a very good president. If Obama and Clinton slaughter each other, he could well be a consensus nominee.

As for Hillary Clinton – well, I'm OK if she's elected president, but quite frankly, I have intangible reservations about her. I haven't really got a sense as to WHY she wants to be president, and while I was a big fan of Bill, I don't think name recognition alone is enough to choose her. I'm wary of the presidency becoming a dynasty of Bushes and Clintons, too. If she's the nominee, I'll vote for her I imagine, and I will be pleased America finally joins places like New Zealand in having elected a female leader. I think she'd make a fine president but I worry her tendency to play the middle-of-the-road means we'd just get someone afraid to make major changes.

Which leaves me with Barack Obama, who's the horse I'm most likely to back in 2008. Sure, he's young and relatively inexperienced, but I have to say some of our best presidents have been ones who've come on board with less experience (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton) than the lifetime Washingtonians. I really enjoyed his autobiography "Dreams From My Father" and thought I saw a man in those pages of solid principle yet a flexible nature, which is kind of what I like in a president. Someone who's willing to admit he doesn't know everything and yet possesses a kind of confident power. I admit it's not the most scientific way to pick a president, but I'm a reading kind of fellow, and at the moment when I ship my ballot back to California I'm likely to tick off Obama and hope for the best.

At least Norway has some sense

Way to go, Al Gore! I had a gut feeling the former VP and would-be President was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and I'm pleased to see it happened. Global warming has hit the "tipping point" as an issue in the past year or so – and it's far more obvious if you live overseas rather than in America, where FOX News and the denial machine still continues to hold an undue amount of influence. I don't know what will happen in the long run, if we're headed to disaster or mere inconvenience, but I do know the whole "head in the sand" thing isn't working. And it's great to see Al Gore's message - which he's been pounding away at for more than 15 years - is gaining traction.

I've long admired Al Gore even when he became unfashionable. I've "met" him twice - once in 1992, right before his selection as Clinton's VP, when he was on a book-signing tour in Mississippi, and then again in a huge crowd when I saw him and Bubba speak in 1996. The 1992 encounter was pretty amazing, because it was the first time I'd been in a small room with a force of personality like Gore. Anyone who makes it in politics on a national scale, be they Democrat or Republican, has to have a bit of charisma, and I just remember Gore's voice booming through the room and sheer way he rode a crowd of 50 people or so. I'd never seen anything like that in person and was quite amazed.

I maintain that Al Gore (and John Kerry) would've been above-average presidents but were dismal campaigners. Every time I've seen Gore solo, or read interviews or seen him onscreen, I've been dazzled by the man's intelligence and curiosity. I could write an entire treatise on how I think Americans hate feeling like someone is smarter than them and how being a well-learned, intellectually questing figure simply ain't cool -- but y'know, it's been done. Sure, Gore can take on a lecturing tone, can seem arrogant, and lacks Bill Clinton's masterful touch of being really, really smart but really down-home at the same time. But I think Gore as a public figure is going to have a far longer shelf-life than the man who narrowly squeaked into the Oval Office instead of him. I have far more respect for him than I do most politicians.

Sadly of course this is all seen through the insipid political filter that's taken over American life, where everything is "left" or "right", black or white. Anyway. Congrats, Al.

I like him, but I don't like like him

I found my hits spiking this morning and realized that yours truly is the #6 top Google hit for the search phrase "Obama ode lusty." This -- something to do with a risque Internet video made by a fan -- apparently is a big global news story (yep, the media standards in my profession continue to be quite high; I guess there was a break in the spell of Paris Hilton coverage).

Anyway, for the record, while I admire Mr. Obama's policies, we are just friends. Lusty friends.

MOVIES: 'An Inconvenient Truth'

MOVIES: 'An Inconvenient Truth'

Oh Al Gore, I miss you. Watching "An Inconvenient Truth" the other day, I have to admit I felt a little sadness – in an alternate world, this guy'd be our president right now, instead of Dubya. Sigh. But so it goes.

In his new documentary on the perils of global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore has a message everyone on the planet should hear – Democrat, Republican, non-voter, American, foreigner, whatever you are. The human, funny warm Al Gore, the one so sadly missing during his presidential campaign, is your guide to a manmade horror story – that still has an optimistic perspective.

Quite simply, “An Inconvenient Truth” is the most important movie I’ve seen this year. Which makes it more the pity that there were only a dozen or so people at the show I attended, while a few doors down the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie fills out to the aisles.

I know most folks view movies as a chance to escape from it all, but that’s not all they can or should be. “An Inconvenient Truth” is a movie that wants to wake you up, break you out of your apathy and the “if I don’t see it, it’s not happening mentality.” And it’s all done in an entertaining, relaxed fashion.

Check out “Pirates” and the like and have fun, of course, but if you’re at all concerned about the world you live in, and that your kids and grandkids will inherit, you owe it to yourself to see “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Essentially, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a filmed version of a lecture on global warming Gore has delivered hundreds of times around the world. It looks at the causes of warming, presents dozens of hard facts showing the problem is very real indeed, and then offers some hope of solution. Gore has a simple eloquence on screen, and presents himself far better here than he ever did during a political campaign. He’s a smart guy, but rarely overbearing, and there’s more than a little quiet thoughtful grace and poetry to some of his statements.

Director David Guggenheim nicely juxtaposes excerpts from Gore’s lectures with off-the-cuff interviews with the man around his Carthage, Tenn., home. Gore touches on the motivations behind his crusade – family crises, political losses – and shows how he decided it was time to use his time to make a difference.
Gore himself says he considers global warming to be a moral issue, rather than a political one. But some folks have politics so ingrained in their blood that anything heard from someone of “the other party” is going to close their ears.

Yet as Gore points out repeatedly, there’s no reason it has to be a choice between the economy or environment – both can co-exist, and as global warming persists, the economy will be harmed no matter what.

Occasionally, “An Inconvenient Truth” does bog down a bit in hard science. It’s difficult not to make the movie feel a bit like the college lecture it basically is. But generally Gore dumbs down the technical talk enough to make it palatable for everyone.

A dramatic series of events showing what could happen to the coastlines of some of the world’s major cities if sea levels rise is the best use of terrifying special effects I’ve seen in a long time – because unlike much of what we see in Hollywood, this has a decent chance of happening if something isn’t done.

“You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it,” Gore says at one point, quoting Upton Sinclair. It’s as good an answer as any to the obstinate refusal to note the obvious in some corners of Washington.

“An Inconvenient Truth” makes for a pretty convincing argument that there’s something really bad going on in our world today. It’s a question of whether the political will can be found to make a difference about it before it’s too late.

Have I mentioned yet how much the American health insurance system SUCKS, and how very glad I will be to move to a country this October that actually has a system that makes a little more sense?

Yes, I just spent 15 minutes on hold trying to get a claims representative to tell me why the minor surgery I had in January still hasn't been processed yet... And still never got anyone on the phone. It's how it always is – you spend more hours working the phone trying to get the insurer to actually pay up anything than you spent at the doctor's. You see, this would've been settled in April or so if the insurer didn't send the check TO THE WRONG ADDRESS. Which means we'll likely never get this settled before we move.

I love my country. I hate its health care "system."