Yay for movies!

Here’s a couple-a quick things about movies:

Burn After Reading was so great! I have been deeply disappointed by the last few Coen Brothers movies, and I sighed heavily as I slid this disc into the machine. But hey wow! The script is funny, the characters are batty, the plot semi-hangs together and there’s enough schadenfreude to go around for all but the bitterest of hags. The Coens found a completely different side of Brad Pitt than I’ve ever seen before, and they almost did the same thing with George Clooney. Plus, you get Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich for FREE! Bonus actors that you love! OMG ORDER NOW!

Tilda Swinton is so good as an ice queen, I just might have to rent Michael Clayton again… Shoot, I might need to rent Orlando again, too. I remember loving that movie… but I can’t quite remember why.

But tonight I also want to tell you that you should probably drop everything and run to see The Wrestler. Yes, you might have heard that Mickey Rourke is starring in it. And you might know that Darren Aronofsky directed it (the Pi and Requiem for a Dream guy). But you don’t need to know anything else! Just go!

If you put a gun to my head and said, “Uncle Vinny, you must choose between a madman destroying the last remaining copy of  Let the Right One In or The Wrestler“, I would cry a streamlet of bitter tears at the loss… both must be preserved! If you see copies on sale, please buy them and put them in a time capsule. The art historians of the future will thank you.

One non-movie tidbit:
As you know, Barack Obama is our president now! And he’s staying up ’til 2am Washington DC time to get to a lot of different inaugural balls. And then he’s waking up early and FIXING THE WORLD. If he can do that, you and I can do whatever lame, trivial and/or marginally irritating things we gotta do tomorrow, nicht? I knew you’d see it my way!

A non-Obama tidbit:
What philosophy book would recommend to a man who has not read anything but Joseph Campbell,   Jehovah’s Witnesses literature and Nietzsche for the last 7 years? This is a serious question! I actually know someone like this, and I’m trying to think of an antidote. It’s freaking me out, the guy needs an intervention.

Thank you for reading! If you like, you should click the mystery hyperlink.

Season’s Greetings from Uncle Vinny!

Over the weekend I busied myself making a festive window display, as you can see below. Usually I’m not too keen on holiday decorations, but sometimes I get an idea that needs to be Borne Out. I think this came to me Wednesday night in a dream…

What if it said 2009 in my window, in colored lights, but where…

duuuude…

ok, like… the zero was, like, a peace symbol, annnnnd…

…the other zero was a heart!?

Peace and love, man, y’know?

Peace and Love 2009

I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high for 2009, but part of me thinks it could be memorable in a lot of good ways. If Obama does nothing but pass and implement some kind of wider health care bill, semi-stabilize the economy and prevent the federal government from collapsing, I’ll be thrilled.

Anyway, I hope you have a great Sinterklaas, Zamenhof Day, Eid, or whatever the heck crazy excuses you kids use to skip work these days.

Sunday morning tidbits

• The best drinking fountain in Seattle, so far as I know — and what I don’t know in this town ain’t worth knowin’ — is at the Top Pot Donut location on 5th. A wide, cold, tasty, burbling stream of fantastic water that will get you in the mood for your donut and coffee. Seriously, go visit and tell me I’m wrong.
• As I was darning my socks(*) this morning, I got to thinking that it should be obvious now that no Just God is seeing to the affairs of our Great Nation. How do I know this? Because we are neither evil enough to have deserved the punishment of 8 years of George W. Bush, nor are we good enough to deserve 4 years of our new constitutional law-professor and awesome family-man Barack Obama.

• Finally, another poll, prompted by the discussion at Daranee’s place about how often certain items should be laundered. In the old days, I did laundry only when I absolutely had to, so that was about every 3 weeks or so. I’d wear every shirt in the closet, all the socks and underwear, pants I would wear over and over, etc. If I could justify taking a pair of socks out of the hamper and wearing them again, I would… you get the picture.  But now I do laundry once a week, and that includes my sheets and pillowcases! Whoa, daddy! You don’t even want to know how rarely I washed my sheets in my youth. Which brings us to our poll: How often do you wash the sheets on your bed?

(*) Family secret about the easiest way to darn socks. Sit down on the edge of the bed with the sock in front of you and the sewing kit to your left. Put your right hand up into the sock, put the tip of your finger through the hole, and wiggle it while frowning slightly. Now say “DARN!” and throw the sock away.

Nice job, America!

For all the ups and downs we’ve had as a country, even in my blink of a lifetime, tonight was a real high point. Watching Barack Obama’s speech tonight, I felt so happy that we’re a meritocracy again. Given a choice between two candidates at the beginning of what will probably be a tough 4 years, we chose the one best prepared to listen, make good decisions, inspire others and work his butt off to make us a More Perfect Union.

Yes We Can

I don’t know what the next 100 years holds for us, but it’s terrific to have a President ask us to think ahead that far. It’s a great night to be an American.

Remember health care?

Good little lord fauntleroy, but this has been a fluffy month in politics! Remember how I quit reading the news for a month? Well, it was awesome… I did a lot of other fun and interesting things with my time, and when I started reading blogs ‘n’ such again I was stunned at how trivial everything was that I’d missed. I vowed to read fewer blogs, read fewer fluffy articles in newspapers, and generally be a More Civilized Person.

Well, that lasted a few weeks, and then I slipped back into “dumb mode” where I mindlessly click on any stupid thing that Andrew Sullivan posts… really, that guy is the worst. I should vow never to go there again… BUT HE’S LIKE PRINGLES! Once you pop, you can’t stop.

Anywho, I’m telling you all this because I found something you should read: A set of four quite concise and readable articles about McCain’s and Obama’s health care plans. “Oh wow!”, you say, “I’d forgotten that this election was about issues!” I know, I know, I feel the same way. But if for some reason you hadn’t heard how radically different the two candidates are on health care, please go check those links out.

In case you’re too busy, here’s McCain:

McCain’s health care plan would increase taxes on employer based health insurance and price 20 million plus Americans out of the coverage they currently rely on. In return, he’d give them a tax credit that is not indexed to health costs, and will become worthless as the years pass. He’d push them into the individual market, where higher administrative costs and underwriting practices mean that if individuals try to purchase the exact policy offered by their employers, they will pay $2,000 more per year. In addition, the sick can be turned away, and the state regulations that ensure some minimum level of benefits will be dismantled. All this will cost us $1.3 trillion over 10 years, and set the rules so that more of the expense falls on the sick and less rests on the healthy.

And here’s Obama:

- Learning. One-third of medical costs go for services at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Fifty billion dollars will jump-start the long-overdue information revolution in health care to identify the best providers, treatments and patient management strategies.

- Rewarding. Doctors and hospitals today are paid for performing procedures, not for helping patients. Insurers make money by dumping sick patients, not by keeping people healthy. Mr. Obama proposes to base Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and doctors on patient outcomes (lower cholesterol readings, made and kept follow-up appointments) in a coordinated effort to focus the entire payment system around better health, not just more care.

- Pooling. The Obama plan would give individuals and small firms the option of joining large insurance pools. With large patient pools, a few people incurring high medical costs will not topple the entire system, so insurers would no longer need to waste time, money and resources weeding out the healthy from the sick, and businesses and individuals would no longer have to subject themselves to that costly and stressful process.

- Preventing. In today’s health-care market, less than one dollar in 25 goes for prevention, even though preventive services — regular screenings and healthy lifestyle information — are among the most cost-effective medical services around. Guaranteeing access to preventive services will improve health and in many cases save money.

- Covering. Controlling long-run health-care costs requires removing the hidden expenses of the uninsured. The reforms described above will lower premiums by $2,500 for the typical family, allowing millions previously priced out of the market to afford insurance.

And here’s a photo of some cute lemurs:

Lemurs are stackable!

Obama interviewed by Bill O’Reilly

O’Reilly is 55% demonic, 44% wrong and 1% a breath of fresh air. I usually can’t stand watching clips of him, but I had to make an exception for his interview with Obama, and it’s pretty interesting. It’s a pretty hostile discussion, but Obama holds his own fairly well. One of the nice things about O’Reilly is that he’s direct… he doesn’t beat around the bush, and he doesn’t have time for anyone else doing it either. Obama’s personality is more thoughtful, so expressing nuance under these circumstances is a pretty tough.

Can you imagine John McCain sitting down for a similar interview with Al Franken (or Noam Chomsky!)? Apparently Sarah Palin is going to be interviewed by People magazine in the next few days… that probably won’t be too confrontational.

This is actually part one of four, the next three will come out next week.

EDIT: “Math is hard!”

John McCain understands his party

It’s sad and predictable that the RNC people are going nuts over Sarahcuda as she gives her convention speech. It’s full of fomentation against liberal elites who look down on small-town mayors and humble Christian soccer moms that just wanna serve their country by suddenly becoming the Vice President of the United States.

They take such a dim view of government and governing, that to them a soccer mom/taxi driver/blogger is just as qualified — hell, more qualified — than Al Gore to plan and execute public policy. College training, deep thought and curiosity just interfere with the sacred wisdom of The Gut. The less you know, the more  you love Jesus, the more likely you are to rule justly.

The Republican Party could certainly use a house-cleaning: bring in more genuine small-government folks, more effective managers, more scientifically informed people, more libertarians, and bump out the culture-warriors, the lobbyists and the paleocons… but based on what’s happening in St. Paul tonight I can’t see that happening anytime soon. They are reveling in their choice of a VP that is proud to have spent very little time thinking about foreign affairs, who thinks climate change is barely related to human activities, and whose record of special interest money-grubbing should be embarrassing as hell.

Ignorance as a badge of honor; I don’t think Barack Obama will change that American tendency overnight, but I do hope people will grow to love him because of his thoughtfulness, his intelligence, etc… but I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen several MLK-Obama cartoons lately, such as this one by Tom Toles:

At the risk of being a killjoy: Having someone like Obama elected president is only one of many steps on the way towards realizing MLK’s dream. We can definitely be thrilled that it’s even a possibility that a Caucasian-African-American would be elected president in 2008, but we have so far to go towards real equality of opportunity for boys and girls of any skin color and economic background. MLK’s vision was about more than just getting someone non-white into the White House. Basic healthcare for all Americans is a start, but we have to actually get it done; addressing climate change is a great platform plank, but we have to actually get it done; preparing all children for kindergarten is a great equalizer, but it hasn’t happened yet. Obama’s priorities in office remain to be seen… the dream is realized when we’re making a difference for real people.

Veepstakes fantasy-blogging

I posted earlier about the GOP veepstakes race, and I’m still guessing it’ll be Lieberman, Huckabee or Jindal. But lately I’ve been really stumped as to who Obama will/should pick for his running mate, and dreading the thought that he might pick Hillary Clinton or someone banally malicious from her circle like Evan Bayh.

Today it hit me that Al Gore would be my fantasy pick. Why not? Obama could promise him that he could spend most of his time on global warming. People are much more sympathetic to Gore as time has passed and he’s won all the prizes ‘n’ such. Plus, it would reassure a lot of people who are worried about Obama’s experience level.

In other news, I read today that Obama is quickly moving to reshape the DNC to match at least one of his campaign promises: no more campaign donations from national lobbyists. This is a great first step, but probably more of an matter of appearances than anything. It’s not retroactive, and not too many future donations would be rejected anyway. I love his moves towards greater transparency and accountability in politics and government, however. There was news somewhere today that McCain was signing on to the Obama/Coburn bill that would require better reporting on government spending; I love to see this kind of bipartisanship.

Gah, I’ve been very policy-oriented lately. Fluff and nonsense coming soon, I promise.

My prediction for November 2008

Predictions in politics are dumb, but pundits and junkies like me always seem to make them anyway. So tonight, after the primary campaign is (finally!) over, I feel like making a couple of wild-ass guesses:

1. Barack Obama will win the presidency in November
2. Hillary Clinton won’t be his running mate.
3. John McCain will lose in a “landslide”, loosely defined.

To be honest, I think 1 and 3 depend a bit on #2 at this point. Obama faces a pretty thorny political challenge in how to deal with Clinton and her supporters. He and his team did pretty well with the nomination process, I hope they have as good a plan for choosing a VP.

Your face is not our problem

Just a quick note regarding this:

Several close friends and supporters of Hillary Clinton tell CNN they are pushing for a “graceful exit strategy” that would allow the Clinton and Obama camps to come together, and for the New York senator to save face should she fail to become the nominee.

It was pretty clear two months ago that HRC would not be the nominee barring a catastrophe in BHO’s campaign. She’s stayed in it for a variety of reasons, but she was taking a tremendous risk to her “face” and her place in history by rolling the dice for as many times as she’s rolled them. She lost, and quite possibly damaged the party and BHO’s presidential prospects in the bargain…and now she’s looking for a bailout?

I don’t believe she’s the strongest possible choice for VP, period. The Obama campaign should certainly help her find a graceful exit from the race, but awarding (or even offering) her the VP slot should not be part of that exit.