Seeing (the film) "Red): Hollywood Takes Aim at Dick Cheney

Red may just be the first in a series of films that takes aim at former Vice President Dick Cheney, though playfully done. The first layer of the plot concerns a former CIA operative, Frank Moses, who has been put on an execution list ordered by the Vice President. At a deeper level the film expresses our collective angst concerning Cheney. The film's rhizome extends into the underlying betrayal the public intuits Cheney had of the CIA. As Moses leads his former peers in a mission to "out" the VP (who allegedly engaged in atrocities in Guatemala before becoming VP), they discover the real villain behind the executions: a defense contractor. Thus, the film turns from Cheney to a second angst inspiring legacy of the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Cheney era: the rise and power of the military-industrial power, especially the recent threat of groups such as the former company called Blackwater.

The VP in the film ends up not quite so villainous as he points the finger at the defense industry. The real Dick Cheney, or so the film seems to (Lucuna) infer, remains Retired and Extremely Dangerous.

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Is the Earth Drying Up?

"Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration would increase with global warming...But in 1998, this significant increase in evapotranspiration - about 0.3 inches (7 millimeters) of water per year - slowed dramatically or stopped...Because the data only goes back for a few decades, the researchers say they can't be certain whether the change is part of the natural variability of climate or part of a longer-lasting global change...If that's the case, the consequences could be serious." (Learn more)

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Iraq Civilian Deaths tops 100,000 - Time for Repentance?

It's fairly certain that the civilian death toll in Iraq has now topped 100,000 people (here). Unfortunately, back in the US of A there isn't any sense of national mourning. Wouldn't it be the time for the nation to admit it's tragic mistake as an act of national repentance?

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The Zombie Tea Party

Not long ago Former President Clinton warned that "the Tea Party is a Corporate Front." He's probably right in the fact that it did not begin as a wild grass roots organization, sprung from the democratic soil. Instead, it started as a GMO product, spun in some dark cigar filled room as a movement designed to play on the collective White angst of a Black man as president.

Although it pretends to offer new ideas, some of it's ideological roots can be traced back to the Grinch who's been trying to steal Christmas, Newt Gingrich. Throw into the witches brew a mixture of Ayn Rand, nostalgia for Reagan, White Power, gun loving, fear of other, fundamentalist Christian (with a little Mormon thrown in) and you may come close to the brew they're serving. (Tea Party recipe for economics)

The funny thing is that they claim to be offering a new solution to the current crises facing America. In fact, it's the same old - deregulation of everything but the moral landscape.

When a company goes into Chapter 11 and stores remain open it becomes a zombie. Selling off its wares, it begins to feed on revenues from healthy stores, taking them towards bankruptcy. In the same way, the cup they are offering is bankrupt. The current global financial crises is a result of deregulation and runaway capitalist greed. Putting new clothes on a cadaver, and pumping it full of adrenaline, won't bring it back to life. It'll only turn it into a flesh eating zombie. - Beware!