I don't care if a pundit has a bias. Hell, Al Giordano reminds you of how uber-leftist he is every other paragraph. I do care if a pundit has a bias but pretends that they don't. And Politico is easily the worst offender in the modern newsosphere.
Thursday
The Senile Old Lady does the math, and notices that Thursday will mark 40 days since the murder and martyring of Neda.
It was those 40-day mourning periods that were the backbone of the 1979 revolution. They fed on themselves; more demonstrations meant more martyrs, and more public displays of grief. The Khameini/Ahmadinejad regime has done everything they can to try and short-circuit that cycle from starting again, but the fact that we even know Neda's name indicates how unsuccessful those efforts were.
It's still just a matter of time until the regime falls, but the clock will start ticking faster on Thursday.
More TIFF
More Special Presentations were announced today, and this batch is a bit more interesting than the last one:
Werner Herzog has inexplicably made a sequel to (and/or re-make of... it's hard to tell) Bad Lieutenant, this one set in New Orleans and with Nic Cage instead of Harvey Keitel. There is a very good chance that this will be the funniest movie of the entire festival.
We get Michael Moore's latest, because Moore always brings his movies to TIFF. This one's about capitalism. Boo capitalism!
A Serious Man, the new film from the Coens, gets its world premiere. Shockingly, it's a period comedy, which would be a radical change of pace for the Coens. Yes, that was sarcasm.
Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut with a roller derby comedy starring Ellen Page. I predict this will be the toughest ticket to get of the entire festival.
Busted!
John Stewart just (well, in a pre-taped interview) got Bill Kristol to admit that the government can run "first-class" health care, at least when it comes to providing health care to the military. So much for that "government health care would a priori suck" meme.
In Kristol's defense, it must be tough to keep track of all the bullsh!t contradictory talking points that the right wing has cobbled together to try and scuttle health care reform.
Woof
Michael Vick's been re-instated, which begs the question: who gonna give him a job?
He might not be available to play until Week 6, which at least gives him a chance to get acclimated to the offense of whatever team signs him but assures that he won't be signed to start (not that anyone would be crazy enough to start him, with the obvious exception of Al Davis, who's crazy enough to do anything.)
The best fit, though, would be for a club jumping on the Wildcat bandwagon to sign him for that formation. Vick was always more dangerous as a runner than as a passer anyway, but version 2.0 of the NFL Wildcat requires someone who can throw the ball, not just scramble with it. So... who's planning to run the Wildcat, and who needs someone with Vick's skill set to run it?
Miami drafted Pat White specifically for that role, so they're out. Jerry Jones seems to have learned his lesson about reclamation projects, and the Cowboys have Felix Jones anyway. Chicago said they were going to add it in to some extent, but the Cutler trade probably scrapped that notion. Can't see them emphasizing the Wildcat much. The Eagles brought in LeSean McCoy, who ran it at Pitt. The Chargers have Tomlinson. Tennesse might use it to get Vince Young involved in the offense again. Baltimore has Troy Smith. Heck, even Oakland has McFadden, another Arkansas Wildcat vet. And Atlanta... uhh, no.
The best fit for Vick would be a team who has an established starter at QB, so there's no question of Vick competing for that role, and who plans to add in some Wildcat plays but doesn't really have anyone on the roster who can really execute it. That seems to leave three main options:
St. Louis - the Rams tried the Wildcat a bit with Steven Jackson taking the snaps, but don't have anyone to really be a duel run/pass threat. And Bulger's backup right now is Kyle Boller, with Brock Berlin as the #3. Neither are exactly indispensible.
New England - now this is an interesting idea. The Patriots got torched by the Wildcat the first time they faced Miami last season, and while they stifled it in the rematch that embarrassment got Bill Belichick's wheels spinning. With Matt Cassel earning the big bucks in KC, Brady doesn't have an established backup, and Belichick isn't afraid of looking like a genius by giving talented ballplayers another chance (see: Moss, Randy).
Cleveland - the Browns used Josh Cribbs in their Wildcat last season, who's all run/no pass, and while it would seem they have a glut at QB what they have are two #1's in Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson. If one finally gets dealt, Vick could make sense as the veteran backup/Wildcat specialist. Plus, Bill Simmons would die of some rare aneurysm/hard-on combination if Vick played his home games in the Dog Pound, so really it would be a win-win for everyone.
(Cross-posted to RotoSynthesis).
UPDATE: I've been reminded by my good friend Stevie Robot that Cribbs was a college QB, even though the Browns didn't have him throw much last season in the Wildcat (Cribbs was just 1-for-4 on passing attempts). That likely rules out Cleveland as a Vick landing spot.
Testify!
Couldn't agree with Radley more. The Gates incident has little to do with race, and much to do with a police officer feeling entitled to arrest someone because they annoyed him and showed him up in front of his fellow officers.
Balko's further point about conservative genuflection to power is also spot-on:
This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply.
Again, take another look at that ridiculous anti-health care reform ad I put up below. The weedy little bow-tied bureaucrat is an arch-villain, menacing innocent doctors and patients with his clipboard.
Give that same weedy little man a gun and a badge from the FBH (Federal Bureau of Health) and suddenly he'd become Elliot Ness, hunting down insurance cheats and cleaning up the dark underbelly of the health care system.
I Went There
If you'll notice near the bottom of the list of This Month's Travesties, you'll see that I have now sung a certain song by a certain iconic Jersey rock band that I never thought I would do at karaoke in a million billion years.
Again, I can only blame my tendency to ask cute bar staff what they want to hear me sing.
The worst part is, I actually sang it well even though my voice was still shredded from doing Aenima at the Kickass Karaoke 10th Anniversary party the night before.
Goddess help me, I may even sing it again. Unironically.
Pew Poll Indicates People Think Sky is Blue
A Pew poll out today shows the bleedin' obvious, that Obama is more popular and more trusted around the world* than Dubya was.
Kevin Drum makes the point that the poll is a concrete reflection of Obama's "soft power". But, to be fair to Bush, "soft power" was never a weapon at his disposal because nobody around the world liked or respected him anyway.
Really, what choice did his neo-con puppetmasters have but to have him play the bully? It was the only role Bush could credibly play.
* - Israel is apparently the only country on the planet that trusted Bush to do the "right thing" more than Obama, albeit barely.
The Adult in the Room
Obama popped in front of the WH press corps just now, prior to the usual Gibbs-run briefing, to try and defuse the Gates thing.
He spoke calmly about how Sgt. Crowley seemed like a very good man, and a very good police officer, and how he regrets that his initial response to the Gates question at his health care reform press conference contributed to stirring the pot on the media coverage of the incident. He even related how he and Crowley, in their phone conversation, joked about Crowley asking the president for help getting the press off his lawn.
It was a necessary, and smart, and mature move. But here's the thing.
What Obama said at the press conference was absolutely correct.
Crowley arresting Gates on his porch, after being satisfied that Gates belonged in the home and that nothing much was going on, was utterly stupid.
That's not a statement on Crowley's motives (although for the record I think he was motivated by the desire not to be shown up by a civilian in front of his fellow officers.) It's simply a statement of fact. There was no good reason for the arrest. The public interest was not served by the arrest.
It was just plain dumb.
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