The Hot Blog Archive for October, 2008

Just For The Record…

I seem to have, somehow, set off a reaction around some parts of town with my “I Broke A Sweat Today” entry of a few days ago.
MCN is going fine, thanks. I don

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Apparently, George Romero Is With Nader


And Patty Lupone could have a new hit song…

MCN Critics Round-Up – Halloween '08

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FINALLY… The Presidential Dance-Off

Images…

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At the Hollywood Roosevelt, celebrating the opening of AFI Fest
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Some people think they are hiding Bolt, but here is an appearance by McCain and Obama in their Bolt halloween costumes
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I got dragged to women’s roller derby in L.A. last weekend… and ended up having a lot of fun. And who was in the stands with us (and I wouldn’t get all celeb-weird by taking his photo)… Walter Koenig. Go figure.
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There is an outdoor campaign for booze around town these days featuring a black man, a hispanic woman, and an asian woman, apparently drunk and ready for a 3-way… but on this corner, the billboard got ripped up by the wind and a former ad underneath seemed to drag the ad’s subtext to the surface.

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Robo-Polled

Rasmussen

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And One More Faked "Tightening" Poll

It’s as though the different rep-leaning pollsters are trading off on who will take the bullet for using their poll to lie about the race each day. It really is becoming fascinating.
Andrew Sullivan kicks around today’s Fox News poll with Barack Obama now leading John McCain by 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, down from 49 to 40 last week.
Wow.
Until you look under the hood…
Last week’s poll was of 401 Democrats, 345 Republicans, 148 Independents
This week’s poll was of 379 Democrats, 364 Republicans, 146 Independents
894

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Another Truly Insane Ad

It’s only stupid until you get to the last 17 seconds… and then the McCain campiaign goes out of their f-ing minds.

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Anti-Semetic Vs Anti-Zionist

As a jew, I find it profoundly disturbing that anyone uses “anti-Semitic” as a phrase referring to anyone who is anti-Israel.
I just want to make this point.
I am Semitic. And I am a general supporter of Israel. I believe that the sympathy for the Palestinian cause with a near-exclusive focus on Israeli behavior misses the mark. It is more complex than that.
However, it is my personal belief that since Meir Kahane’s extremely conservation and Jewish-protectionist views became a dominant force in Israeli politics in the 80s, that Israel has not acted as a straight-forward democracy. Since Kahane, a number of important Israeli leaders have died in the pursuit of turning the country back towards its best self.
I am sympathetic to the feeling of desperation inside Israel that by population, Israel would stop being a jewish state in the near future had they not changed the rules of what was once a pure(r) democracy. My generation and the next didn’t live through the jewish holocaust and do not carry the same fear of “never forget” and being a tribe without a homeland. We live in a world full of biases, including anti-semitism, and we do not see our oppression as being that much more important than the oppression of others. I see that as progress. Some see it as being short-sighted… that we should continue, as a culture, to fear the hatred that has been so much a part of our history.
So it is not an easy issue.
Still… having even severe anti-Israel views is not the same as being an anti-Semite. And listening to the views of severe anti-Israel views without leaving a room or throwing a drink in someone

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BYOB – Apolitical

Yeah… we’re almost there.
No… I’m not going to stop just because we’re close.
Yeah… by the end of next week, you will see the last political post in here for a long while.

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Eugene Jarecki's Devestating First-Hand Account Of McCain & Salter

Jarecki tells the story of how he ended up in the middle of McCain’s shift from anti-Bush to Bush-friendly… it’s not pretty.
Here is the clip from the film –

And here is a key passage, though it is all worth reading. Mark Salter is McCain’s right hand, then as now:
“Salter… declared to me that I was “making it look like John McCain was critical of the Vice-President,” and that “Vice-President Cheney has nothing to do with Halliburton,” I realized that what he was objecting to was not that McCain might appeared too close to Cheney but rather not close enough. Mr. Salter demanded that I send him a transcript of the Senator’s interview, not just the parts that appear in the film. Since none of the film’s more than twenty other interviewees had been provided such a thing, and since I valued the film’s independence from political pressure, I told Mr. Salter I would seek advice from other journalists and get back to him.
Salter next resorted to threats, saying that, unless I complied, he would smear my name in the media and exert pressure on the film’s principal funder never to work with me again. I said I thought the BBC would be unlikely to welcome such pressure from an irate chief of staff to a senator. Salter then changed gears, appealing to my sense of fairness. “When Senator McCain sat down to talk to you,” he explained, “he thought he was talking to a television crew from the BBC.”
Read the whole story here.

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Another Republican Makes The Case (By Mistake) For Obama

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Sarah Palin Explains Herself

Since she was brought into this election, I have heard about Sarah Palin being an “energy expert.” But I do not recall hearing a single detail of any kind from her about energy… only the broadest jingoistic word play. So I was very interested – still willing to think she could be an expert on sometihng, other than self-promotion – when I saw the Wall Street Journal had “Excerpts: Sarah Palin on Policy”
Here is a part (and here is the link):
On the GOP ticket’s energy policy goals:
“We’re going to talk about finally ending 30 years of failed energy policy in this nation. We have gone without an energy policy in America and finally a perfect time where the price of a barrel of oil is down right now. It’s only half of what it was. Now is our opportunity to invest in alternative sources of energy but a new technology to allow our conventional sources of energy to be tapped and to flow in hungry markets, all with the goal of becoming less reliant on foreign sources of energy.
So, with my experiences in Alaska, coming from the huge energy-producing state and as the former regulator of our oil and gas industry and chair of the nation’s interstate oil and gas conservation commission, this is one of the missions that I cannot wait to get to work on. We do have the commitment to setting our nation firmly on the path towards energy independence…”
* * *
On why she’s focusing on energy at this point in the campaign:
“This is when American voters are really paying attention to the issues, which is so important, and very thankful for the opportunity to be able to specifically talk about what it is that America has had opportunity in the past to do but again, has not seen to have had the political will to buck some of the good ol’ boy system that has controlled the energy resources in this nation. That’s what I’ve had to do up in Alaska, to break up an oil industry monopoly that…. had been controlling much of the nation’s energy supplies. Breaking that up and putting the people first, the owners of the resource first.

Now, honestly, not trying to be a smart ass here…
Did she say a single thing other than “energy independence” and “take on the oil companies”? Is the a SINGLE idea in here about how to do any of it?
Has she ever suggested anything specifc other than “Drill, Baby, Drill”?
I’m reallly not kidding. I am deeply confused that the energy expert has not offered up a single actual idea in all this time, media filter or not.

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Quote/Counterquote

“I truly believe that the wisdom of the people will be revealed on (election) day.”
Sarah Palin
“I agree.”
David Poland

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Anti-Obama Ad So Dumb It's Pro-Obama

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The Hot Blog

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon