Now McCain is flip-flopping on judges

McCain in a Town Hall today "I will not impose a litmus test on any nominee."

McCain in 2000: "Somewhat surprisingly, McCain had the support of Gary Bauer, the social conservative, who had dropped out of the race by that time. 'I wanted a commitment from either George Bush or John McCain that if elected he would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court,' Bauer told me. 'Bush said he had no litmus test, and his judges would be strict constructionists. But McCain, in private, assured me he would appoint pro-life judges.'" [New Yorker, 5/30/05]

McCain 2007. McCain said, "I do not support Roe v. Wade. I think it should be overturned." [New York Times, 2/24/07] Read the rest of this post...

Can you still have a community if everybody likes you?

Minnesota Daily:

The face of the gay community worldwide may be changing, according to a University researcher's recently released study.

Epidemiology professor Simon Rosser said he learned that "while the gay population is stable or increasing," in all but the world's largest cities, "the size of the physical gay community appears to be contracting."

This means the number of gay bars, clubs and bookstores appears to be thinning or becoming more mainstream.

Rosser credits it to a changing culture.

"What we think is happening is that, in the '60s, '70s, '80s, gay men came together out of a sense of oppression, a desire to meet similar others," he said. "Now, some of the reasons that brought them together are very different."

Rosser cited the Internet as a possible reason for the change in the community.

"There comes an economic tipping point where the bars and clubs are all reporting they're somewhat quieter than before the rise of the Internet," he said.

Is it just the Internet, or is America going post-gay, as a friend of mine surmises? My best guess as to his definition of post-gay is that it's the gay version of going metrosexual. You're so comfortable with people of the other sexual orientation, and yourself, that for all intents and purposes you might well as be one of the other guys.

Is it becoming so easy to be gay in so many places in America that many younger gays no longer feel the need to go to a gay bar, or any other majority-gay-clientele environment, in order to feel accepted? Read the rest of this post...

Why Battlestar Galactica still kind of sucks

I know nothing about making TV shows. But I know a lot about watching them, and I definitely know a lot about writing. And every time I read an interview with Battlestar Galactica's executive producer, Ron Moore, I want to wring his neck.

As you guys may or may not remember, a lot of the top blogs are Sci-Fi fans. And every Friday we'd all do a blog post about Sci-Fi Friday on the Sci-Fi channel. Not anymore. Sci-Fi took what was one of the best shows ever, Battlestar Galactica, and pretty much destroyed it. Now, friends in the industry tell me that it could easily be the studio heads who are destroying the show - demanding the writers add this and that stupid idea to the script, etc. But as I've noted before, when you read interviews with the executive producer of the show, they're kind of scary. Moore doesn't seem to believe in plots. It's almost as if he thinks he's writing a soap. Every day brings a new twist in the story inspired by a burrito and an antacid the night before. Read my other post to get the full flavor of how he writes the show - pretty much anything goes, and it shows. Here's a recent interview with Moore:

For Moore, writing the series finale was more than a little difficult: “I was getting caught up in the wrong plot in my head, and I was getting annoyed with myself, and with my writers, and life in general, and my children, and cats.... I was in the shower and just sort of had this epiphany that I was concentrating on the wrong thing, it’s really not about the plot, it’s about the characters. I came back into the writer’s room the next day and wrote ‘It’s the characters, stupid’ up on the board.”

It's not about the plot? Uh, maybe if you're writing "Waiting for Godot." We learned in my last post about this topic how Moore, out of the blue, would make major changes in the show's plot on a whim, and then have to rewrite the entire season. The problem is, it showed. The plot didn't hold together, the dialogue didn't ring true.

One of the show's recurring themes has been the conflict between the Cylon monotheism and humanity's polytheism. When asked if this was planned from the start, Moore said, "When I wrote the miniseries, the first draft didn't really have much to do with religion. There was actually only one line -- I just had [Number Six] say 'God is love.' I thought it was an interesting thing for a robot to say. I didn't really know what it meant. I didn't really have a context for it. I just thought it was cool."

At least the way I was taught to write, you don't write things that sound good and mean nothing. Everything - every thing - you write should be there for a reason. And sounding good isn't a good reason.

Whatever. I loved this show. And in a very real way, good TV shows are like family, or pets. They dig their way into your routine, your life, so that you're angry, and feel a sense of loss, when they're gone.

Yeah, the show is better this season than it has been the last two. But it's still not back up to snuff, back to what it was in Season One. The problem now is that I just don't trust Moore any more. I know his shtick. The plot doesn't matter to this guy. It can change on a whim, and, in a way that isn't consistent with what transpired before. The shows just isn't real anymore. And that's probably the greatest sin you can commit in any kind of fiction, be it writing or acting - taking the reader out of the moment. Once you do that, it's over. Read the rest of this post...

Ford management tells union more cuts coming...for unions

It was not much more than a year ago that Ford said the turnaround was going well and no more cuts would be necessary. That's about the time when they paid their new CEO over $39 million for four months of work. Nice. So now they're asking for everyone else to tighten their belts? Sounds like the executive board has quite a few spare belts they could hand out.

So to summarize, the clueless management team that brought the company to where it is today, relying heavily on gas-guzzlers and automobiles that nobody wants is now telling the workers that because management failed, it's the unions that have a problem. No word on how many million Ford CEO Mulally is going to give up since times are tough. Read the rest of this post...

McCain goes wobbly on AMT repeal

The somewhat, kinda, but not really, formerly Straight Talk Express who is now the Let Me See Who I'm Talkin' To Today but I can't quite remember what I said yesterday Express. If only he could remember who he's talking to today and what he said before. It's as if the entire digital era has escaped him and it probably has. Can someone please get him some warm milk and a comfy chair because he can't remember, again.

"I will also propose ... a phase-out of the Alternative Minimum Tax," McCain said in a speech on June 10.

That's a modification of his promise last fall, when he said, "I am committed to repealing this tax before millions of American families are forced to devote even more of their hard earned money to paying for the spending largesse in Washington."

Parts of the McCain campaign Web site still say his position is to repeal the AMT, and that's the language one of his advisers used on CNN's "Situation Room" as late as this week.

Read the rest of this post...

Yet another reason I like Obama

I'd love to see John McCain riding a bike. (More from the LA Times blog. Oh, and this is Urkel.)

Read the rest of this post...

Bush: Screw the polar bears, dig for oil

But remember, he loves nature and the great out doors.

Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to harass the polar bear.

Read the rest of this post...

Today's papers on Russert

NY Times: Tim Russert, 58, a TV Fixture as NBC’s Face of Politics, Dies

More NYT: National Politicians Sought Out the Crucial ‘Russert Test’

AP: Russert and his Sunday morning grilling

Washington Post: Journalist Revitalized Washington Talk Shows

E&P;: When Russert Testified Against 'Scooter' Libby

Joel Achenbach at the Post

A Death in the Family, Wash Post

Dan Balz: On Tim Russert

Entertainment Weekly: Remembering Tim Russert

David Broder: The Many Gifts of Tim Russert

Minneapolis Star Tribune: An unforgettable lesson from the sheriff of TV news

USNews: Tim Russert, 1950-2008: Gone Much Too Soon

WSJ: Tim Russert Set Standards

The NewsHour on Russert

CBSNews.com: Political Journalism Loses A Legend

Hartford Courant: Tim Russert, 1950-2008

Los Angeles Times: An Irish gusto for politics leavened with civility

The Hollywood Reporter: Tim Russert, NBC political analyst, dies

TIME: Appreciation: Tim Russert, 1950-2008

CNN: Newsman Tim Russert dies at 58

A local Utah reporter remembers Russert Read the rest of this post...

Unpopular Bush meets with unpopular Sarkozy

Sounds great. Two highly unpopular Presidents meet with one being gone from politics in a matter of months and the other looking like a one-and-done. Yep, US-France relations are rock solid now.

The truth is nobody cares about Bush because he's gone soon and the Sarkozy is moving up in the polling but it's going to take time before people forget his catastrophic first year. Obama continues to get a lot of press here and people are definitely waking up to our never-ending campaign. Yesterday I was greeted by my dentist who with a smile said "Obama is ahead!" though I think that's because he wanted to cheer me up before the drilling started. (It didn't work.) Read the rest of this post...

Ireland rejects EU, oh no what will they do now?

Just a wild stab in the dark here but I'm guessing that the EU will figure out a way to get around this vote just as they did when France and the Netherlands rejected the beast. The EU is a great idea but these constitutions, agreements, whatever they want to call them today are all crap. Nothing makes sense to anyone, political leaders never connect with voters to address real fears (a story that's not unique to the EU) and when the EU doesn't get the answer they want, they just ignore votes and try to jury-rig the system to get the result then want. If the EU thought more about these issues they would have a lot more success but listening to voters not part of the program. Read the rest of this post...

And now for something a little lighter

This video is kind of PG-13 at best. But it's hysterical, and I think we may have posted it before. I just ran across it again. Seemed we could use a smile tonight, after the day's news.

Read the rest of this post...