Guest blogging at In the Pink Texas again.

Guest blogging at In the Pink Texas again: A Fine Piece of Astronaut.

Two tales of terror…

Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006)

Crap. Pure crap. I didn’t see the “twist” coming and I didn’t care. This was a real shame since Saw was such a fine example of the no-budget psych thriller.

Saw II was good, but Saw III was a waste of time. Its point is to make the audience cringe in disgust, but the fear never gets inside you. We went to bed laughing, but not in the same way that the brilliant Scream films make a person laugh while gettin’ skeert.

Saw should have been cut off (ouch!) after the second one. Oh, well. Ch-Ching.

An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006)

Al Gore should have been our president. The sad thing is that had he been the man who narrates An Inconvenient Truth, - passionate and funny - he might have.

I read the book a few months ago (here’s the link to that post), and most of my thoughts about the subject haven’t changed and since the movie hews pretty close to the book, there’s not much point in reiterating except to say that this is something we should all be concerned about.

The film version is gripping and disturbing, at times both heartbreaking and wickedly funny. Everything a good horror flick should be. Watching it, I couldn’t help but think about the Saw films in which “Jigsaw” places his victims in traps designed to make them face their own sins and crimes, each victim forced to face his or her own inconvenient truth. Escape is meant to be excruciatingly painful, but always possible. His victims, however, are rarely able to muster the strength of will to inflict the necessary pain on themselves to escape before it’s too late.

An Inconvenient Truth explains the workings of the trap we’re in and offers a way to escape, though Gore is much for comforting than “Jigsaw’s” mechanical puppet head. The question is, do we want to save ourselves badly enough?

Jigsaw’s infamous question, “Do you want to play a game?” has already been asked.

There’s been talk about letting bloggers report from the floor of the Texas lege, an issue that’s coming up in other states as well, which has sparked some interesting posts about whether or not bloggers ought to be considered journalists and granted similar access. I followed the online discussion from Off the Kuff to “Are bloggers real journalists?” on Texas Politics, a mainstream media blog. The post noted that many journalists were taking up blogging and referred to the phenomenon in which old media co-opts new media.

I left a comment under the clever alias of JB (the name my good twin once went by but that’s a post for another time) wondering if journalists should be considered real bloggers. I pondered the wealth of smart ass comments along the lines of mainstream media blogs being nothing but the Green Day of the blogosphere. I thought about how mainstream media bloggers probably get paid to blog, can openly blog at work, still can’t say whatever they want, don’t have to build their readerships from scratch. I wondered if they could post pictures of their pets or throw bling into their sidebars, etc etc.

Seriously (sort of) though, it’s an interesting question. The most exciting thing about blogs, the ones that compete with news organizations anyway, is that they are truly independent voices, beholden to no corporate masters. I’m sure that this is what scares so many people, but I consider that the blogs’ greatest asset.

There seem to be some who think that only journalists have credibility, but the fact is, blogs live and die by their credibility and personal standards in a world that can be far less forgiving than one in which the medium is supported by monthly subscriptions and high dollar ad revenue.

I generally don’t read blogs affiliated with major news organizations. When I want news, I go to newspapers. When I want commentary, analysis, advocacy or humor, I go first to blogs - independent blogs - written by passionate, funny, interesting people who are often working for free (that last is probably the seed that will one day kill off the notion of professional columnists as much as I like my Leonard Pitts and George Will).

The personal and independent voices that are the bulk of online media have a heart-beating-to-that-iron-string quality that seems more honest and also more American (in a Ralph Waldo Emerson sort of way) than corporate blogging. So, to tackle the original question: are bloggers journalists? Yeah, some of them. Are journalists bloggers? Not so much. They strike me as journalists who blog, which is good thing. They should.

Regarding the bigger issue, that of access, this is a no-brainer. The mainstream media under-covers state legislatures. Why not let bloggers fill the void, and why not let those bloggers be people who are willing to bet their personal reputations on the worthiness of what they produce be it commentary, news, analysis, satire or any combination of the above? Blogs represent not just a new technological platform for writing, but a new style that doesn’t necessarily follow the exact traditions of journalism but still informs us about our political process.

With journalists blogging and bloggers journalisting, we all benefit from the increased light shone on our politics.

All of us except perhaps our politicians, but then that’s kind of the point too.

I finally finished reading Thomas Ricks’ thoroughly depressing Fiasco. It’s a well documented and engagingly written account of the disaster in Iraq. It is also a tale of self-inflicted wounds in which those who make the choices are never the ones who feel the pain.

Since I first started reading Fiasco, the Democrats have taken back congress, Rumsfeld - one of the many villains in this sorry episode of our history - has been deservedly sacked with full honors, and Saddam Hussein executed. It’s not enough, though. We’re still stuck in this mess of our own choosing.

Ricks documents the rush to war in Washington and then the poor planning for the occupation. Much is made of the fact that strategic decisions were regularly made based on data summarized in that great shortcut to thinking PowerPoint, which while useful is probably not expansive enough a tool for developing war strategy and foreign policy.

Much of Fiasco is based on interviews with military commanders at all levels in the chain of command and what emerges is a portrait of the Iraq situation from the ground up. There appears to be much anger within the military regarding the way the Army and Marine Corps were thrown into this situation without proper training in and support for occupation and counterinsurgency.

Throughout the book, Ricks documents instances in which military commanders operate in the most counterproductive ways, flouting established methods for dealing with counterinsurgency. There are bright spots, where cooler heads and wiser generals operate in relative harmony with the local Iraqi population, but time and again these units that post records of reduced insurgent activity and very little abuse are rotated home and replaced by those with heavier hands.

There are some bright spots – Marine General James Mattis and Army General David Petraeus who both seem to grasp the nature of the task at hand. Just today, Petraeus was placed in charge of all troops in Iraq. It may not matter much, though.

The situation as Ricks paints it is bleak, and it is one that will surely haunt this nation for many years.

Last week, I sat in a focus group for a company that wants to install systems that will use renewable energy in homes. The idea goes beyond solar panels to include wind and geothermal where possible. When the moderator asked us to rank the reasons we might be willing to consider renewable energy everyone chose cost savings first. Only two of us chose environmental protection first.

I like saving money, but I couldn’t help but wonder why more people don’t consider preserving a healthy and liveable world for future generations to be more of a moral issue, and quite frankly, the most important one there is. This is something I’d like to hear one of the so-called ‘values voters’ explain to me. I often read about the issues that drive these people to the polls and it’s rarely conservation.

There are some in the evangelical community (which seems to think it owns values and morals, but never mind) who would like to add environmental protection to the mix of values issues, but the leaders of the movement see it as a wedge issue to divide their base. Do they care about anything other than short term power?

Don’t answer that.

In 100 years, it seems unlikely that anyone other than scholars will care how we structured our families, whether or not we let gay people marry, what schools taught kids about evolution, or even whether or not abortion was legal. I suspect, though, that they will curse us for every methane spewing landfill, toxic waste dump, dead reef, poisoned aquifer, dead forest, overfished sea, desertified landscape, silt-blocked river, lost glacier, styrofoam cup and plastic water bottle that we leave for them to enjoy.

A few days after the focus group, I read Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and was struck by how often he refers to environmental protection as a moral imperative. I couldn’t agree more, but I wonder how long it will be before we look at politicians and demand to see their environmental ideas before we make the decision about their values. What kind of people ask about candidates’ positions on gay marriage before asking about ocean policy ideas?

Can you have values if you don’t value the well-being of future generations?

Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, is a well put together overview of the dangers posed by global climate change. He documents the ways in which human activity has increased air temperatures and altered the chemistry of the Earth’s oceans as well as the political situation that perpetuates a status quo unwilling to acknowledge the consequences of inaction.

It’s hard for me to say how convincing the book is; I was convinced a long time ago so Gore is kind of preaching to the choir here. Among other things, I read Discover and National Geographic regularly, both of which have done a nice job of exploring global climate issues over the years.

What makes the book intriguing - and why I bought it - is the illustrations. It’s one thing to read about disappearing glaciers; it’s quite another to see photographs taken from the same spot (in some cases only thirty years apart) that show gigantic glaciers in one image and then no glacier in the other. The book relies heavily on this kind of visual evidence that tends to be very effective.

Interspersed throughout the book Gore includes autobiographical excursions that describe the personal experiences that have led him to undertake this crusade that he repeatedly states is a moral issue. As remarkable as the subject matter is Gore’s passion for it. It’s stunning that this man was painted as an emotionless robot with whacky ideas especially when you look at his imminently practical and profitable market-based solutions to this growing problem.

Gore’s book (I haven’t seen the movie) presents the causes and consequences of global climate change in easy-to-read and understand non-technical language accompanied by effective and often beautiful illustrations. An Inconvenient Truth would be a solid introduction or overview on the subject for those who, perhaps have not given the issue much thought.

I’m talking, of course, about the people who find nothing odd about days like today when the temperatures reach into the mid-nineties. In October. Nope, nothing to worry about here.

The Republican control of the US government has netted us nothing better than a war of choice managed by incompetents, out of control debt, disregard for terror threats, increased terrorism, subservience to private business interests and their crooked lobbyists, gutting of environmental protections, attacks on constitutional rights and civil liberties, suppression of science, lies, cover-ups, wars of choice, torture, secret prisons, you name it.

This week the whole bag of poo that is GOP dominance has been lit on fire by ex-Representative Mark Foley’s email and the subsequent cover-up by Republican house leaders.

I don’t trust the Democratic party any more than I trust the Republicans, but in an environment in which politicians place the interests of party above the interests of the country, the best we can hope for is divided government. Only voting for Democratic candidates will do that. Only that will bring the oversight, the checks and balances, and the accountability that we so desperately need.

Let’s hope this bag of poo continues to burn on the doorstep of every Republican candidate for national office.

Perhaps their fingers were crossed:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Note that the primary job of each member of Congress is to support and defend the constitution. It’s not just a piece of paper. It is what keeps us safe. It is what keeps us strong.

Allowing the Republican party to trample the constitution for short term political gain - to cast away the very values that have made this country endure - ought to be enough to provoke the outrage of this entire country, but then no one thinks that they will be the ones getting hauled off to Gitmo with no recourse to the law.

Republicans in congress say this detainee bill is necessary so that the president can keep us safe, but that’s not their job. Their job is to keep the Constitution safe from assault, primarily from within. Tyrannical government comes in baby steps, imposed from within more often than from without. The framers of the Constitution knew that, but they assumed that those in Congress would actually be interested in the longterm welfare of the republic not in their short term political careers.

The US Congress and the President are doing what Al Qaeda could never do: attack the Constitution, which is really the only thing that can destroy the country. I never imagined we’d ever argue about how much torture is really ‘torture.’ I never imagined that we’d allow so much unchecked power to go to the executive. I never imagined we’d pave the way to disappear people.

Those things are supposed to happen in other countries. We are supposed to stand for something better, something higher.

I remember shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said that we would have to crawl down into the sewer to fight these rats.

How low are we going to go?

Newsweek covers for this week from around the world can tell us a lot:

All over the world, Newsweek’s cover story is about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

In America, the cover story is a trivial bit about Annie Leibovitz.

Talk about using pretty pictures to hide ugly reality.