Plot outline: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who’s a witness in protective custody, lets loose a crate full of deadly snakes.

What’s hilarious is that the film was originally pegged with the lifeless title of Flight 121, but Jackson himself lobbied for the current name (and won).

“Snakes on a muthafuckin’ plane!”

This is another crony appointment… another yes-person who strokes Bush’s ego like a newborn kitten. David Frum fills in the blanks:

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

Sweet Jesus. Hold on while I vomit.We have a winner here!

A Daily Kos writer offered some more substantive motives for why Bush would pick such a blatantly inappropriate person:

1.) She’s an intellectual lightweight, easily influenced. Putting her on the Court with two purportedly “brilliant” Conservatives - Scalia and Roberts - makes her a lockstep vote with them. She may not qualify ideologically as a Right-Wing Conservative, but she can be counted on to vote that way.

2.) She’s his legal fixer, someone who knows where all the bodies are buried. She’s accustomed to saving him from sticky legal situations - vide the National Guard records cleansing. She can be counted on to protect him at all costs - and he is going to need the Supreme Court to protect him.

The Supreme Court is going to have to rule on whether a sitting President can be indicted when there is no House Judiciary Committee willing to vote for impeachment. The Supreme Court is going to have to issue a raft of rulings on issues stemming from the Fitzgerald indictments, the DeLay case, the entire mess of worms on K Street and in the Congress.

Bush is no longer thinking about his “legacy”. He’s thinking about remaining a free man. This choice tells us that they know that they are guilty and are facing very serious legal consequences. Miers may be all that can keep Bush out of jail, perhaps for treason.

Just finished watching Once Upon a Time in the West. Brilliant, moving, and involving from start to finish… and this is coming from a guy who is very picky about Westerns! I could go on and on about the plot and artistic merits but that’s what the Fistful of Leone website is for. In the meantime, dig the picture of Claudia Cardinale, who plays the female lead. God bless the Italians for giving the world such beautiful women!

Here’s the online trailer for Creep, an intense & disturbing new British/German co-production. One of few good horror movies I’ve seen in the past several years!

What is an Interesting Motherf***er? According to the page:

Interesting Motherf***ers are the artists, musicians, authors, filmmakers, actors and assorted creative types whose eccentricity forced them to stray from the path of normal humans and follow their own twisted visions. They are the freaks, the geeks and the cult icons of pop entertainment.

My personal favorites: Bernie Casey, Sho Kosugi, Kate Bush, and Tom Savini.

Windows is broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates.

Full article here.

I’ve said it before about this debacle, and I’ll say it again now: Longhorn is to Microsoft as Copland was to Apple.

Episode 1 - Gary Busey
Episode 2 - Bill Cosby
Episode 3 - Samuel L. Jackson/Christopher Walken

One of the pivotal heart-wrenching moments in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath came when Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, broke down during a live interview with Tim Russert as he recalled the tragic drowning of an employee’s invalid mother.

Since then, the story of willful abandonment at St. Rita’s Nursing Home has gained national attention… but with it came some small factual errors in regard to Broussard’s outburst.

Russert got a chance to interview Broussard again today, and decided to call him on these discrepancies, as if it actually matters that Broussard got his dates wrong during an emotional shipwreck.

Broussard handled these innuendos from a worthless turd like Russert in the only possible manner: right back in your face, buddy. Check out the video link for more.

Allegedly this guy is linked with Howard Stern. You’ve been warned.

Galloway was called before the Senate in an unprecedented testimonial on his alleged involvement with the Hussein regime. You can watch the entire proceedings here. It is perhaps the first time in our history that a foreign statesman has bitchslapped our corrupt Senate right on the chamber floor.

Conservatives attack Galloway as an appeaser and supporter of Saddam Hussein, while failing to note that the documents “implicating” him were forgeries distributed after the war. It’s also important to point out that no one on either side of the Atlantic has bothered to bring Galloway to trial (because there is absolutely no evidence against him). Galloway’s unmitigated victory in a libel suit on the same topic is further proof in his favor.

You start off being the liberal mouthpiece of one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever seen on the subject of war. You say you’ve got your own liberal reasons for doing so, and you end up an apologist and a mouthpiece for those miserable, malevolent incompetents who couldn’t even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane.

That’s where it ends. That’s where it ends. You end up a mouthpiece and an apologist for the Bush family whose matriarch, you want to talk about racism? What about Barbara Bush? What about Barbara Bush who took a look at the poor, huddled, masses in the Astrodome and told us they’d never had it so good? Who told us they were better off than they’d ever been. Underprivileged people, now in an Astrodome, the only problem with whom she said was that so many of them wanted to stay in Texas. You know, Hitchens, you’re a court jester. You’re a court jester.

Not at Camelot, like other ridiculous other former liberals before you, but at the court of the Bourbon Bushes. Barbara Bush, the Marie Antoinette of modern-day American politics.

Advantage: Galloway. Hitchens, while a master of polite and eloquent rhetoric, offered nothing but the usual neo-con grab bag of talking points. Galloway nailed him repeatedly on his hypocritical stances.

View the entire video here. Keep in mind this debate is two hours long; set aside time for it. It’s well worth the watch.

The government’s disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to “convey a positive image” about the government’s response for victims.

Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

- The phone lines cut by FEMA in Orleans Parish.
- Refusal of foreign aid workers and money.

- Refusal of water deliveries from local Wal-marts.

- Refusal to moblize ships on the coast that were ready to assist.

The list goes on and on. I will dare to say it: what happened here was, to a certain extent, deliberate. It was a passive eugenics operation directed at the poor. Nothing else, other than amazing coincidence or stunning incompetence, explains it.

Moreso, if it was merely a matter of incompetence, why hasn’t Bush reprimanded and fired a whole list of people responsible under him, including Chertoff and Brown? Think about it.