Every day now for the past five years I have been subjecting myself to the comic strip "Alley Oop". Why, I am not sure because it has to be one of the stupidest comic strips ever written. Maybe it was better years ago when the original authors were still alive, but the current yahoos that write the strip have no logical consistency whatsoever, and still I can't resist reading it everyday.
Alley Oop is about a caveman who has become the willing accomplice of a group of current day time travelers led by a Dr. Wonmung. The Doc has lately lost what little brains he ever had because he apparently
does not know how to repair his damaged time machine that he built. So a few months back he turned to the want ads to find someone who could fix it for him - and who shows up but one of his nephews from the future traveling back in a future time machine. Now if Wonmung was unable to keep his own time machine operational, how did his descendants advance the process and even have the technology in the future? Can't they see the fallacy here? Apparently not. Oh well, tomorrow Oop will probably do something so utterly stupid that I will forget about the other problems in the storyline.

I don't know if Gov. Howard Dean will be in the race long enough for me to vote for him, but for now I have to say he is my favorite for the Democratic Presidential nomination. In this speech at Drake University Dean outlines a position on the Iraq situation that is the best I have seen so far.
I'm still concerned that Dean won't be able to raise enough money to be a viable contender and I will probably end up supporting Sen. John Kerry as the practical alternative. But while we are this far out from the primaries, I can let my idealistic side outweigh my practical side.
The New Republic talks about Dean's surprising strength in Iowa.

"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" passed the $330 million mark in domestic gross this weekend passing up "Forrest Gump" for the No. 7 spot on the All-Time list (not adjusted for inflation). I doubt that it will catch up to "Jurassic Park" with $353 million before it wraps up its theatrical run shortly after the Academy Awards show on March 23.
Here is the complete list.