It's Friday.

I was going to post the G.W. Bush Superbowl ad that was rejected by ABC, but the site that posted it was told to remove it for legal reasons. So, here's a little weekend entertainment of poorly drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines entitled: spamusement.

Pre-1776 Mentality

Sorry for the layoff, if anyone's out there, but I have yet to get reacquainted with doing things other than staring at my computer. Hopefully, I'll have adjusted by Monday. I'll figure it out. Meanwhile, here's a sitting US Senator posting on DailyKos:

I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on. It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?

Russ Feingold ladies and gentlemen, Senator Russ Feingold.

Uniter or Divider

Just a quick note: CNN just showed the results of a poll that asked the question, "Is President Bush a uniter or a divider?"

Uniter: 41%
Divider: 54%

That is all.

Oscars 2006

The 2006 Oscar Nominations are out today, and in what has been a yearly event since 1994 when, "Forrest Gump" beat out both "Shawshank Redemption" and "Pulp Fiction;" I have made a list of who will win and who should win the Academy's Oscar in each of the major catagories (because, no one really cares who wins for sound design or documentary short, unless they are in the catagory themselves). So here goes:

Best Motion Picture of the Year

Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Munich

Should win: Brokeback Mountain. Believe the hype. It is that good. And no, people won't question your sexuality if you go and see it.
Will win: Brokeback or Munich (You can never count out Speilberg.) I was going to insert a joke here about whether there are more Jewish people or homosexuals in Hollywood, but I will leave that one alone.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Nominees:
Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote
Terrence Howard for Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line
David Strathairn for Good Night, and Good Luck.

Should win: Any of the five are well deserving and each gave a wonderful performance in their respective film. The one who's work carried the film on his back however, was Hoffman in "Capote." Unlike the other four films, when we look back on "Capote" in 10 years, the only thing we will remember about it that Philip Seymore Hoffman blew the doors off of it.
Will win: Ledger is too young, Phoenix wasn't good enough, Howard played a rapper/pimp, Stratharin is a dark horse, but in end, I believe it will be Hoffman with the well deserved trophy in his hands, after being snubbed for a nomination as Brandt in "The Big Lebowski."

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Nominees:
Judi Dench for Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman for Transamerica
Keira Knightley for Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron for North Country
Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line

Should Win: Anyone who saw Reese Witherspoon in "Walk The Line" knows that she nailed June Carter better then we could have ever imagined and stole the film from Joaquin Phoenix. She may not be the most seasoned, but her performance was the most dynamic and the singing should put her over the top.
Will Win: I think Witherspoon has this one too. However, we can't cut out a lifetime acheivement award best actress Oscar for Dench, nor the power of a "Desperate Housewife" playing an unattractive woman in Huffman.

Supporting Actor and Actress, Director, Documentary, and Screenplays soon to follow...

Jump Into Some Porn

This just in from the Associated Press:

RALEIGH, N.C. - Army officials are investigating allegations that members of the celebrated 82nd Airborne Division appear on a gay pornography Web site, a spokeswoman said Friday.
Authorities at Fort Bragg have begun an inquiry into whether the paratroopers' actions violated the military conduct code.
Division spokeswoman Maj. Amy Hannah declined to say how many paratroopers are involved or identify their unit within the division. A defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said up to seven soldiers are involved.
Hannah said soldiers questioned will be allowed to seek legal assistance, but she declined to say if any one had been charged.
"Once the investigation is complete, the chain of command will take appropriate action," Hannah said.
The military-themed Web site does not appear to make any direct reference to the 82nd Airborne or Fort Bragg. The registered owner of the Web site's domain name lists an address in Fayetteville, the city that adjoins Fort Bragg.
E-mails to the registered owner were returned Friday as undeliverable, and the phone number listed on the domain-name registration is no longer in service.
The Web site includes a disclaimer, asking users to agree that they are not agents of the U.S. government, Department of Defense, members of law enforcement or reporters.
Martha Rudd, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said soldiers accused of homosexual activity might be removed from their units, although she did not have specific information about the investigation of the 82nd. When asked if the soldiers involved had been moved out of barracks, Hannah declined to comment.
"We are concerned about the privacy and rights of each trooper involved and that they are treated with dignity and respect," Hannah said.
Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy states that "homosexual orientation alone is not a bar to service, but homosexual conduct is incompatible with military service."
"We define homosexual conduct as homosexual acts or verbal or nonverbal communication that a member is homosexual," Vician said.
The 82nd Airborne is one of the most celebrated units in the military. Its 15,000 troops are trained to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours.
Soldiers from the division have served extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan, and several thousand troops remain overseas.

I don't want to get into the military's don't ask/don't tell policy and its ridiculousness. I just want to imagine for a second, what it would be like if we lived in a world were these same "investigators" were sent into GITMO and Iraq to look into the prisoner abuse scandals, or focused the same attention on hazing at the Citadel and the sexual assault and sexual discrimination claims at the Air Force Academy. Nah...Gay porn is way more of a factor in their ability to make the world safe for "freedom."

Another Monday Morning Speech

Today marks another famous person's birthday, another giant of American history, a man (again) who altered the history of the nation and the world. Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as the country was mired in the despair and suffering of the Great Depression, which at the time had no end in sight. He changed the very nature of the federal government during his lengthy stay in office. War was on the horizon, with an unmistakable enemy to all humanity and civilization gathering power. At his death, that war was all but over. This morning's speech was delivered by FDR in September of 1932 to the Commwealth Club, before his election to the Presidency.

I want to speak not of politics but of government. I want to speak not of parties, but of universal principles. They are not political, except in that larger sense in which a great American once expressed a definition of politics, that nothing in all of human life is foreign to the science of politics

...

A glance at the situation today only too clearly indicates that equality of opportunity as we have know it no longer exists. Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our last frontier has long since been reached, and there is practically no more free land. More than half of our people do not live on the farms or on lands and cannot derive a living by cultivating their own property. There is no safety valve in the from of a Western prairie to which those thrown out of work by the Eastern economic machines can go for a new start. We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people.

Our system of constantly rising tariffs has at last reacted against us to the point of closing our Canadian frontier on the north, our European markets on the east, many of our Latin American markets to the south, and a goodly proportion of our Pacific markets on the west, through the retaliatory tariffs of those countries. It has forced many of our great industrial institutions who exported their surplus production to such countries, to establish plants in such countries within the tariff walls. This has resulted in the reduction of the operation of their American plants, and opportunity for employment.

...

Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of business in the United States. It showed that our economic life was dominated by some six hundred odd corporations who controlled two-thirds of American industry. Ten million small business men divided the other third. More striking still, it appeared that if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.

Clearly, all this calls for a re-appraisal of values. A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, and organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. The day of the great promoter or the financial Titan, to whom we granted anything if only he would build, or develop, is over. Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of under consumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people. The day of enlightened administration has come.

...

Faith in America, faith in our tradition of personal responsibility, faith in our institutions, faith in ourselves demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract. We shall fulfill them, as we fulfilled the obligation of the apparent Utopia which Jefferson imagined for us in 1776, and which Jefferson, Roosevelt and Wilson sought to bring to realization. We must do so, lest a rising tide of misery engendered by our common failure, engulf us all. But failure is not an American habit; and in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.