I'm with TBogg on this one

It's now a Thanksgiving tradition, sort of like WFUV's annual noontime playing of Alice's Restaurant:

This is a holiday classic just like A Charlie Brown Christmas but with death and blood and a skinny white chocolate mocha from Starbucks. -- TBogg

And yeah, I think Reich is right on the money too.

Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Everyone who thought people like me were crazy over the last eight years owe us a big honking apology. Because the Bush Administration, it turns out, really was as bad as we thought it was.

Sy Hersh:

After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’

Yup, you read that right. Assassination squads. Reporting to Dick Cheney. And he got away with it.

No fucking way in hell

No. Just no. Never. Ever, ever, ever:

The election of 2008 has been widely noted as the possible end of the Bush dynasty. But President Bush and the first lady have another candidate in mind to extend the brand: Bush's brother, Jeb.

During an interview in London with SkyNews, the Rupert Murdoch-owned satellite network, the correspondent asked: "We've had father and son in the White House. Is that the end or not?"

Bush responded: "Well, we've got another one out there who did a fabulous job as governor of Florida, and that's Jeb. But you know, you better ask him whether or not he's thinking of running. But he'd be a great president."

Laura Bush, who was also being interviewed, chimed in, calling public service "an unbelievable life" and saying that "one of the reasons George and his brother, Jeb, served in office is because they admired their father so much."

"So he's not the last Bush?" the reporter asked, referring to the president.

"Well, who knows," Laura Bush responded. "We'll see."

(TUESDAY UPDATE: Steve Rosenbaum thinks McCain won't make it to the convention and will drop out of consideration, whereupon the party will pick a nominee. If he's right, then this can be considered a trial balloon. Nothing to ensure that Captain Codpiece doesn't go to the Hague like having his brother in the White House.)

Bloodlust

I know Who Killed Me is a bust.

Captivity came and went.

And Hostel II, as they say in the business, "underperformed".

Can it be that the public is losing their taste for these vile movies? I don't know, let's see how Hatchet (premiering September 9) does.

As you probably guessed, I loathe horror movies, especially that diseased sub-genre known as "torture porn".

I never subjected myself to Cabin Fever, The Hills Have Eyes, Feast, Saw, High Tension or The Devil’s Rejects either. I won’t go to a movie theater to see any type of splatter flick, or rent one from Netflix.

Usually, when it comes to cinema, I try to be open-minded. I’ve enjoyed Dances With Wolves, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Singing In The Rain, Yojimbo, and Bananas. I don’t care how my local Blockbuster chooses to file these films on their shelves. Genres are meaningless to me. Either I like it or I don’t.

However, except for films by the brilliant and subversive David Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch), I despise the horror movie genre. Yes, I know I’m prejudiced. As with Cronenberg, there are exceptions. Se7en, for one, comes to mind. It’s unique, disturbing and powerful. Still, after I saw David Fincher’s brooding, gore-splattered thriller, I knew I never wanted to see it again.

Why? Well, because the majority of them remind me of bad pornography. And it doesn’t matter to me whether it’s a big-budget motion picture from a major studio by Eli Roth or an amateurish pile of shit finished in a weekend by a soon-to-be-forgotten hack, there’s a nasty but familiar subtext underneath that I recognize and I don’t like it. What horror movies and pornography have in common is in how much it hates us.

Pornography is misogynistic, clumsy, vulgar, simplistic, and mean-spirited, and doesn't pretend to be about anything else but sex. As long as you're willing to lower your expectations, leave subtlety and genuine human feelings behind and enter an ugly world of anonymous genitalia and meaningless orgasms, you'll never be disappointed.

In horror movies, these same principles apply, except you replace sex with violence. Blood 'n' Gore 'n' Guts is the fuel which runs this infernal machine. In Cronenberg’s oeuvre, there’s nuance and a rigorous intellectual philosophy behind the violence. But for everybody else, violence is all there is. The only artistic utensil to be found in their toolbox is an old hammer encrusted with dried blood and a few blonde hairs from a dead cheerleader.

And most of the time, other than the occasional token male becoming a screaming, bone-splintered lump of hamburger, it's always violence against women, isn't it? Just substitute scenes of women being gangbanged for scenes of women being stabbed and tortured to death. Women are objectified and turned into meat puppets that exist solely to be used as toys for naughty little boys with chainsaws.

Remember that repulsive scene in the beginning of High Tension when the homicidal psycho fellates himself with a women's disembodied head? And how much do you want to bet there were idiots--male, of course-- who probably laughed their asses off? Did they smoke a cigarette afterwards?

At least the guys who sell pornography pretend to try and keep children away. If they’re smart, the more reputable porno movie houses won’t let anyone in without checking their I.D. For those X-rated sites online there‘s parental control software you can use like Net Nanny. Blockbuster Video doesn’t have “adult” DVDs available at their stores, and the ones that do keep them in a separate section.

On the other hand, since horror movies are usually rated “PG” and playing at your local cineplex, they’re wholesome mainstream entertainment the entire family can enjoy. And yes, I swear to God, while I stood in line I’ve seen families wheeling in their baby carriages to see Wolf Creek. I want to punch the parents in the head.

These movies scare the hell out of me. They’re nightmares that don’t go away when you wake up but instead follow you the rest of the day. And what frightens me the most is knowing that there are people who will watch Feast and react as though it’s a sitcom. Worse, there are others in the audience who’ll be turned on by it.

So, was it good, huh baby?

Did you come?