Wikipedia vs. Conservapedia

Slacktivist has an interesting post comparing Wikipedia with the new “Conservipedia,” which purports to be a conservative alternative to the Wiki.
The argument from the right is that the Wikipedia is “too liberal,” which means that it actually includes liberal views and opinions along with conservative ones. This is identical to the authoritarian right’s criticisms of the mainstream media. They are “too liberal” compared to Fox News and the Mooney Times precisely because they are not completely exclusionary and one-sided all the time.
Needless to say the “Conservipedia” is a joke as Slacktivist makes clear when you compare its entries with the better informed and more comprehensive Wiki.

AFI Top 100 updated

The American Film Institute has updated its list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already. It seems like just a few years ago that they came out with their first list.
If you go to the website linked above you can download their Top 100 list with a comparison to the 1997 list. You can also download the official ballot with all 400 nominated films that were used to make up the Top 100 list.
Below is the new AFI list followed by my Top 100 list if I had voted using their official ballot. My list, of course, reflects my own personal viewing tastes as well as being restricted to movies that I have actually seen. Also, their list is in rank order while mine is just alphabetical.

The AFI List
1 CITIZEN KANE
2 GODFATHER, THE
3 CASABLANCA
4 RAGING BULL
5 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
6 GONE WITH THE WIND
7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
8 SCHINDLER'S LIST
9 VERTIGO
10 WIZARD OF OZ, THE
11 CITY LIGHTS
12 SEARCHERS, THE
13 STAR WARS
14 PSYCHO
15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
16 SUNSET BLVD.
17 GRADUATE, THE
18 GENERAL, THE
19 ON THE WATERFRONT
20 IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
21 CHINATOWN
22 SOME LIKE IT HOT
23 GRAPES OF WRATH, THE
24 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
25 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
26 MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
27 HIGH NOON
28 ALL ABOUT EVE
29 DOUBLE INDEMNITY
30 APOCALYPSE NOW
31 MALTESE FALCON, THE
32 GODFATHER PART II, THE
33 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
34 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
35 ANNIE HALL
36 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE
37 BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE
38 TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, THE
39 DR. STRANGELOVE
40 SOUND OF MUSIC, THE
41 KING KONG
42 BONNIE AND CLYDE
43 MIDNIGHT COWBOY
44 PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE
45 SHANE
46 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
47 STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A
48 REAR WINDOW
49 INTOLERANCE
50 LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE
51 WEST SIDE STORY
52 TAXI DRIVER
53 DEER HUNTER, THE
54 M*A*S*H
55 NORTH BY NORTHWEST
56 JAWS
57 ROCKY
58 GOLD RUSH, THE
59 NASHVILLE
60 DUCK SOUP
61 SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS
62 AMERICAN GRAFFITI
63 CABARET
64 NETWORK
65 AFRICAN QUEEN, THE
66 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
67 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
68 UNFORGIVEN
69 TOOTSIE
70 CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A
71 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
72 SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE
73 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
74 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE
75 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
76 FORREST GUMP
77 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
78 MODERN TIMES
79 WILD BUNCH, THE
80 APARTMENT, THE
81 SPARTACUS
82 SUNRISE
83 TITANIC
84 EASY RIDER
85 NIGHT AT THE OPERA, A
86 PLATOON
87 12 ANGRY MEN
88 BRINGING UP BABY
89 SIXTH SENSE, THE
90 SWING TIME
91 SOPHIE'S CHOICE
92 GOODFELLAS
93 FRENCH CONNECTION, THE
94 PULP FICTION
95 LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE
96 DO THE RIGHT THING
97 BLADE RUNNER
98 YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
99 TOY STORY
100 BEN-HUR

Mike’s List
1. The Adventures of Robin Hood
2. The African Queen
3. Airplane!
4. All the President’s Men
5. Amadeus
6. An American in Paris
7. Annie Hall
8. Apollo 13
9. Back to the Future
10. Bambi
11. Ben-Hur
12. The Birds
13. Blazing Saddles
14. Born on the Fourth of July
15. Braveheart
16. The Breakfast Club
17. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
18. Casablanca
19. Chariots of Fire
20. Citizen Kane
21. A Clockwork Orange
22. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
23. Cool Hand Luke
24. Die Hard
25. Dirty Harry
26. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
27. Duck Soup
28. The Empire Strikes Back
29. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
30. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
31. Finding Nemo
32. The French Connection
33. The General
34. Ghostbusters
35. Giant
36. The Godfather
37. The Godfather Part II
38. Going My Way
39. The Gold Rush
40. Goldfinger
41. Gone With the Wind
42. The Graduate
43. Grease
44. The Great Escape
45. Groundhog Day
46. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
47. High Noon
48. It’s a Wonderful Life
49. Jerry Maguire
50. Jurassic Park
51. The King and I
52. L.A. Confidential
53. Lawrence of Arabia
54. The Lion King
55. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
56. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
57. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
58. M*A*S*H
59. The Maltese Falcon
60. Mary Poppins
61. The Matrix
62. Meet Me in St. Louis
63. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
64. North By Northwest
65. On the Waterfront
66. The Outlaw Josey Wales
67. Patton
68. The Philadelphia Story
69. Pinocchio
70. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
71. Planet of the Apes
72. Platoon
73. Pulp Fiction
74. The Quiet Man
75. Raiders of the Lost Ark
76. The Road to Morocco
77. Rocky
78. Schindler’s List
79. The Searchers
80. Sense and Sensibility
81. The Shining
82. Singin’ in the Rain
83. Some Like it Hot
84. The Sound of Music
85. Spider Man 2
86. Stagecoach
87. Star Wars
88. The Sting
89. Taxi Driver
90. The Ten Commandments
91. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
92. This is Spinal Tap
93. To Kill a Mockingbird
94. Toy Story
95. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
96. 2001: A Space Odyssey
97. Unforgiven
98. Vertigo
99. Witness
100. The Wizard of Oz

Summer vacations

Excuse the lack of blogging this week. It's not that there is nothing I want to write about. It's just that I have no time. I'm covering for two other people at work this week while they are on vacation. I hope to be back soon.

Champions, again!

This photo sums up the Cavs series nicely, I think. Tim Duncan stuffing the ball back in LeBron James’ face in Game 1. That’s when you had the first inkling that it would be a sweep.
I do want to add, however, that I am not a LeBron basher. I went into this series kind of down on LeBron because I thought he was too arrogant, cocky and immature. But after seeing how he handled himself throughout the series, my respect for him has gone up. I think he definitely has what it takes to be a super-duper-star in the NBA.
I’m very happy that the Spurs swept the series. I didn’t want it to go to a Game 5. And we have Manu Ginobili to thank for that. In the fourth quarter last night it turned into the Manu show - with some support from Duncan, naturally. But without Manu’s effort at the end I think the Cavs might have slipped the noose and forced another game. Besides hitting all of his free throws, which were crucial, Manu made two exceptional drives to the basket and hit a big 3-pointer. But the play I liked the best was an assist. Manu had the ball at the top of the key, beyond the 3-point line when he suddenly gave a head fake and then fired a bullet pass right through the heart of the Cavs defense to Fabricio Oberto who had just inched away from his defender and was standing under the basket. Oberto made the easy basket and drew a foul for a 3-point play. Brilliant!
Tony Parker was of course great through the first three quarters and richly deserved his MVP trophy while Tim was just happy to get ring No. 4.
Are they a Dynasty? Damn straight! The Spurs are the most successful sports franchise of the past decade. The core of their team is locked up - assuming Duncan re-ups in ‘08 - through at least 2010. I can’t see the Spurs making any major adjustments over the off season. Duncan, Parker and Ginobili are all superstars. Bruce Bowen is hands-down the best defender in the NBA. Oberto has stepped up to be a valuable addition as a center who fits well with the rest of the team - he practically has a mindmeld going with Manu.
Robert Horry says he wants to play one more year and get his 8th championship ring. Michael Finley has some more good years in him and Brent Barry rounds out one of the best benches in the league with a roster full of 3-point aces. Even Francisco Elson and Jaques Vaughn have held their own as subs who can step in to give the stars a break. The only player on the team who seems to be expendable at this point is probably Beno Udrih.
I think the Spurs will be back next year whether the national media likes it or not. And this business of not giving the Spurs the R-E-S-P-E-C-T that they deserve is starting to make them look rather silly.

MVP prediction

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Tony Parker will be the NBA Championship Series MVP, especially if he outscores Tim Duncan in Game 4. So far, Parker has been the high-point scorer, including last night when he was having an off night. Duncan has been consistent, but Parker has overshadowed him in every game so far.
As for Bruce Bowen, I think he deserves a special award for the defensive hex he has put on LeBron James. The problem with being an excellent defensive player is that most people only notice when you screw-up. Otherwise, all your work is just expected.
Last night’s game was a real struggle for the Spurs. Nothing was going in. Poor Manu didn’t score a single basket the entire game until he hit a few free throws in the final seconds. Fortunately, Bowen and Brent Barry stepped up to nail four and three three-pointers, respectively, to make up for Manu’s sputtering offense. Still, that only kept the team just barely ahead of the Cavs, who fortunately were struggling even worse than the Spurs to make their shots. All in all it was an ugly game, but a sweet victory nonetheless.

Beatles influences

It’s the 40th anniversary of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” album and the accolades keep coming.
My introduction to the Beatles came in the mid-80s in college when I picked up a two-album collection called Rock 'n' Roll Music.
It was an awesome compilation put together by George Martin himself. I was literally blown away. I recorded the double-album onto a compact disc and played it in my car until the tape was literally worn out. To this day, “Twist and Shout” is probably my favorite all-time Beatles recording. My first Beatles album I purchased after that was “Abbey Road” followed by “The White Album.” By the time I finally got around to getting “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” it didn’t have the same impact it might have if I had bought it first.
But I had also been exposed to Sgt. Pepper’s years earlier in the form of the critically-panned movie that starred Peter Frampton and the Bee-Gees. I thought the movie was great (I was 12 at the time) and had no clue that all the music was by the same band.
The Express-News had an editorial in today’s paper commemorating the anniversary and in it they note that The Beatle’s musical foundation was based on “Elvis, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley.” Elvis and Chuck Berry, sure. They even recorded a version of Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” But Bo Diddley? What about Little Richard whose falsetto “woooooooo” was constantly immitated by Paul? And what about Buddy Holly? If we are going to talk about musical influences, you have to mention the kid from Lubbock, Texas. Paul has said many times that they chose the name Beatles (Silver Beetles initially) because they wanted to be like Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

Chiggers

I had to laugh at this Nacho Guarche cartoon the other day. Considering the infestation of chiggers we are dealing with here this spring, his suggestion of replacing the Spurs’ coyote mascot with a chigger actually has some merit.
Chiggers are nasty little bugs that live in the tall grass and undergrowth and leave little red welts wherever they bite. My wife and little boy are especially susceptible to them.
I’ve been spraying pesticides and clearing brush in our back area, but it only seems to have put a dent in them so far. But I’m planning a major “surge” this week and I’m confident that my backyard will soon be liberated from these parasitic pests.

A positive Spurs column

After reading the New York Times’ front page slobbery kiss-up to LeBron James that barely even mentions the San Antonio Spurs, I was pleasantly surprised to find this excellent column in the Washington Post:

Duncan's Exclusive Company

Now that LeBron James has become ABC's savior of the NBA Finals -- and LeBron says he is honored to be compared to Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson and Gandhi -- we interrupt this homeroom crush for some genuine education.

The San Antonio Spurs are going to school Cleveland and win their fourth title, in six games or fewer, because they have the best player on the floor in the series. Tim Duncan, despite getting less love than jury duty, is maybe the largest difference-maker since Jordan....

When the Spurs are finished polishing off Cleveland, Duncan will not only eclipse Bird's three rings, he will join Magic and Michael as the only leading men with more than three championships with the same franchise since Bill Russell. Four decades after Russell, Duncan would join a class of three....

The perception of Duncan mirrored his team; he was coming off a season in which his body was breaking down and there simply were too many quick, young big men to rise over.

As usual, his detractors missed the importance of Duncan. His game has never been about explosiveness; it's about efficiency. His degree of difficulty has nothing to do with hang time and more to do with angles and trajectory, all the skill-level amenities missing from contemporary front-court players...

Drama is at a premium for Duncan, too; he's had the same coach, Gregg Popovich, his entire career. Often expressionless and unemotional since his days at Wake Forest, where the Duke student section referred to him as "Spock," there is a monotony to the way Duncan plays and carries himself that doesn't resonate in a culture run by celebrity.

He gets penalized for consistently playing and living between the lines while so many of his look-at-me peers obliterate the boundaries and become more popular for it. Polarization sells; professionalism is so '90s....

LeBron James reinvigorates the "Next Michael" debate after a sterling week of basketball. Meanwhile, if anyone wanted to look long and hard, Tim Duncan belongs at the top of that class more than Kobe, more than Dwyane Wade and certainly more than LeBron. More than any of them, he's won at a higher level.

Damn straight. Tim Duncan is a better ballplayer than James, who, to be fair, is still far too young and immature to make a good comparison. Duncan is just not as flashy. He is not the kind of player who is ever going to do a 360-degree spin, behind-the-head dunk. If Duncan has a clear shot at the basket, he is going to very carefully push the ball into the basket - very efficient, not very exciting. Duncan doesn’t play to the crowd, he plays to win.

Maverick McCain

Why isn’t John McCain doing better in the Republican primary race? I predicted earlier this year that McCain would be the GOP nominee in 2008. He has the most experience; solid name recognition; he’s the closest thing to a Reaganite conservative in the race; he is firmly in the “pro-life” camp on abortion; he is an ardent defender and apologist for the War in Iraq; etc, etc.
So how is it that he now finds himself lagging behind the liberal former Mayor of New York and the used-to-be-liberal former Governor of Massachussetts?
Is it because of his reality-based position on the immigration issue? I thought it was quite admirable that he stood up to the bullying of the other GOP candidates to defend the compromise legislation now in Congress. None of the other candidates have a realistic approach to the issue. All they can do is mouth idealistic pieties and pretend like this would somehow make the whole problem go away.
I suppose the immigration issue is the best indication as to why McCain is not doing well. His willingness to break away from the lock-step formation of the party faithful on issues such as immigration, gun control, campaign finance reform and the environment has given him the “Maverick” label which is would be an advantage in a national campaign, but is actually a disadvantage in a primary race.
But is this really enough to overshadow McCain’s solid conservative positions on other issues? According to his Wikipedia entry, McCain has “a strong pro-life voting record, a strong free trade voting record (including a 100% rating from the Cato Institute), wanting private social security accounts, being against socialized health care, supporting school vouchers, supporting the death penalty, supporting mandatory sentencing, and supporting welfare reform.”
All in all, a miserable record by my standpoint, but apparently not pure enough to suit the party faithful. So how is it that they would instead turn to a guy who is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, etc. etc. as the alternative?
I’m flummoxed. I just don’t understand these people.

Senate succession

I have to agree with Matthew Yglesias that the Wyoming law on U.S. Senate succession is fair.
The sudden death of Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., might have given Democrats an opportunity to expand their razor-thin majority in the Senate, but state rules in Wyoming require that the governor, a Democrat, appoint a replacement from the same party as the prior office holder.
Other states should consider adopting this kind of rule.

Jefferson indicted

As I suspected, the reason Democrats didn’t immediatly jump up and denounce Rep. William Jefferson after his indictment and demand that he be stripped of his committee assignments was so that he could do so on his own.
Hopefully, Jefferson will now have the decency to resign from Congress and not drag his constituents and his party through a protracted fight. In the meantime, everyone should remember that when former Speaker Tom DeLay was indicted the Republican response was to award him a choice seat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Bush's surge

Bush’s surge in Iraq is cleary not working and even the Wall Street Journal can see the writing on the wall.

Can the Iraq 'Surge' Be Salvaged?

When the Bush administration decided to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, the strategy rested on an unspoken trade-off: U.S. troops would risk greater casualties to tamp down violence and buy the Baghdad government time to make the political compromises needed to reconcile the country's warring factions.
But a resurgence of sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. troops, coupled with little to no progress on crucial Iraqi political goals, is already spurring discussion about whether the current strategy can succeed.

Unpatriotic

In another thread at All Things Conservative my old friend Mark Harden has been having a grand old time calling me a “dumbass” and “unpatriotic” because I had the temerity to challenge Bill’s assertion that the sudden dismissal of terrorism charges against a 20-year-old Gitmo detainee (Age 15 at the time of his incarceration) is somehow supposed to be a sterling example of our “fairness.”
I asked how it was fair that this kid was left to rot at Guantanamo for 5 years before ever being brought up for a trial, only to have all the charges thrown out on a technicality.
Either way you look at the case it is a travesty. If the kid did nothing wrong, it’s a travesty that he spent the past five years at Gitmo. If he is truly a threat to the United States, then it is a travesty that they can’t seem to get their act together and bring charges against him.
And the last thing anyone would say about this case is that it is a sterling example of U.S. jurisprudence and “fairness.” But I’m apparently unpatriotic for saying that.

Banished

It seems I’ve been banished from my perch as one of the liberal punching bags over at All Things Conservative. I was in a bit of a snit the other night when Bill threw up one of those inane posts questioning whether Hillary Clinton has had plastic surgery recently. I sniped that it was a sexist thing to obsess about and noted that it never seemed to be a big issue that Ronald Reagan dyed his hair black for eight years. Well, Bill took that as a personal attack and went ballistic calling me “pathetic” and claiming that I always say something insulting whenever I post a comment over there.

Mike, you get pissed off at just about everything I write. You do so because you are either an angry, sad person, or you just want to rock the boat. It's getting old.
So you can take your sexist comment and shove it. How dare you sling that kind of insult at me.

He went on to conclude that “We don't HAVE to hear from YOU on EVERY single post.”

So I have to interpret that as a “you’re not welcome around here anymore, take your ball and go home” comment. And it is Bill’s blog so I will respect his wishes.

In the meantime, I suppose I should spend more time posting on my own blog.

The Conservative media

I’ve recently been reading David Brock’s book The Republican Noise Machine which presents a thorough history of how the rightwing came to totally dominate the news media today, all while pretending to be struggling against an all-powerful (and non-existent) elite liberal power structure.
I guess that I am just used to the strange dichotomy of conservative domination of the media while they continue to harp about the “liberal media,” but when it gets spelled out in such detail as in Brock’s book it starts to make your head spin.

Here is a little test. Go to Google and type in Conservative columnists. The first item to pop up will be a link to Townhall.com which features a collection of no fewer than 60 conservative columnists in a single convenient location.
Now do the same thing with Liberal columnists and the first thing you see is a link to a site called BoycottLiberalism.com which presents a list of the Top 25 liberal columnists in America. They apparently had to struggle to come up with 25 names for their list since almost half of them are not columnists in the traditional sense at all.

1 Frank Rich - NY Times
2 Maureen Dowd - NY Times
3 Paul Krugman - NY Times
4 Seymour M. Hersh - The New Yorker
5 Nicholas Kristof - NY Times
6 Eleanor Clift - Newsweek
7 Helen Thomas
8 Bill Moyers - Wide Angle (PBS)
9 David Corn - The Nation
10 Jesse Jackson - Chicago Sun Times
11 Noam Chomsky - Khaleej Times
12 Michael Kinsley - Washington Post
13 Bill Press - MSNBC / Sirus Radio
14 David Broder - Washington Post
15 Julianne Malveaux - USA Today
16 Molly Ivans - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
17 Ronald Brownstein - LA Times
18 E.J. Dionne - Washington Post
19 Juan Williams - NPR
20 Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe
21 Joe Conason - New York Observe
22 Walter Cronkite - NPR
23 Susan Estrich - Creators Syndicate
24 Robert Sheer - (formally LA Times)
25 Arianna Huffington -

Seymour Hersh, for instance, is an investigative journalist and not a columnist and he is only published infrequently in the New Yorker, not weekly or even monthly. Likewise, NPR and PBS folks like Bill Moyers and Juan Williams don’t have regular print columns. Molly Ivins passed away recently. Robert Sheer got canned by the LA Times. Walter Cronkite stopped writing his column after an all-too brief run. I’m not sure that Jesse Jackson still writes a column and as for Noam Chomsky, I don’t know what the Khaleej Times is supposed to be, but he is certainly not published regularly in any forum that most Americans would be able to find.

The truth is as I said long ago, the voices of the left are continuing to grow fewer and weaker and conservative domination of the media continues to grow unabated. And we will continue to hear conservatives whine about the “Liberal media” until the day that theirs are the only voices that are ever heard.

Comic survey results

The Express-News finally ran a story the other day about the comics survey it conducted several months ago.
The good news is that Zits topped the list and Luann ranked in the top 10 along with Garfield and Baby Blues. Pickles also slipped into the top 10 wich was filled out with a bunch of old standards like Family Circus, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hi & Lois, and Hagar the Horrible.
Garfield was the top choice of the 18 and younger crowd while Zits won the votes of folks between 18 and 54. Family Circus won in the 55 and up category.
The losers, those that ranked in the bottom 10, included Bizarro, Cathy, Dilbert, Tumbleweeds, the Amazing Spider Man, Prince Valiant and all of the political comics including Doonesbury, Nacho Guarche, Mallard Fillmore and Prickly City.
This wasn’t entirely fair, however, since many of these comics have the distinct disadvantage of not being in the daily comics section. Dilbert, for example, was banished years ago to the wastelands of the E-N Business pages and most comics readers probably assume that Scott Adams must have retired along with Bill Watterson and Gary Larson. Tumbleweeds and Prince Valiant are both Sunday only comics that don’t appear in the daily section. Neither do Doonesbury, Nacho and Mallard, which are all found on the Op-Ed pages.
So the biggest losers would have to be the daily comic section strips that hit the bottom including Bizarro, Cathy, Amazing Spider Man and Prickly City.
I can’t explain why Bizarro would be ranked so low. I think it is a pretty good strip and probably comes closest to touching that magic spot once occupied by The Far Side (although it is still a good distance away, I will admit). Cathy was once one of my favorite strips back in the 1980s when it first came out. But sometime in the 1990s it started to become tiresome and repetitive and I lost interest. However, being tiresome and repetitive is pretty much status quo on the comics page these days (See Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Hagar the Horrible, etc.) so that doesn’t explain why it would end up in the bottom section. The Amazing Spider Man is just awful. It is obviously written by complete morons who come up with stupid plots and stupider dialogue. But it is also the strip that my three-year-old son insists that I read to him everytime he sees me with the paper, so maybe that is the target age range they are shooting for.
Finally, there is Prickly City and I have to say that its bottom ranking is very well deserved. It is horribly drawn and consistently offensive with the sole purpose of spreading rightwing propaganda. It is, however, slightly better than Mallard Fillmore.

The Madness of King George

It’s going to get worse

That’s was President Bush’s message today during his press conference.

President Bush warned Americans to expect "heavy fighting" this summer during a critical time in his war strategy.
Answering reporters' questions at a White House news conference, Bush said the developments would occur once U.S. military reinforcements are in place in mid-June.
"We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties," Bush said.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Bush is planning for a second surge later this fall.

So, to summarize, things are going very badly in Iraq. The first surge is not working. Bush is warning that we will see more casualties throughout the summer. And they may be planning a second surge on top of the first one by the end of the year.

Is Bush crazy!?! Up until now I have questioned Bush’s competence and judgment, but not his sanity. But this is truly demented if he is planning to push ahead with his war and send even more troops in the face of the highest level of opposition to the war ever recorded.

Top 100 Actors

Here is the list of my Top 100 Favorite Actors along with a representative movie that underscores why I like them. I'm working on a list of Top 100 Actresses that I will post later. I pulled this together pretty quickly so I may have some additions and deletions later on. You can quibble that it’s not necessarily the best actors by any means (Tim Conway is included but not Laurence Olivier, for example), but they are the ones that I personally like the best to date. In alphabetical order:

Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run)
Fred Astaire (Royal Wedding)
Kevin Bacon (Stir of Echoes)
Alec Baldwin (The Shadow)
Antonio Banderas (Mask of Zorro)
Orlando Bloom (Lord of the Rings)
Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca)
Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch)
Marlon Brando (The Godfather)
Yul Brynner (The King and I)
George Burns (Oh, God)
Nicolas Cage (National Treasure)
James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy)
Jim Carrey (The Mask)
John Cleese (A Fish Called Wanda)
George Clooney (Oh Brother Where Art Thou)
Sean Connery (From Russia With Love)
Tim Conway (Apple Dumpling Gang)
Gary Cooper (High Noon)
Kevin Costner (JFK)
Bing Crosby (Going My Way)
Russell Crowe (The Insider)
Tom Cruise (Born on the Fourth of July)
Billy Crystal (Running Scared)
John Cusack (Grosse Pointe Blank)
Matt Damon (Bourne Identity)
Robert DeNiro (Taxi Driver)
Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can)
Kirk Douglas (Spartacus)
Robert Duvall (The Paper)
Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry)
Erroll Flynn (The Adventures of Robin Hood)
Henry Fonda (The Oxbow Incident)
Harrison Ford (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
Michael J. Fox (Back to the Future)
Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby)
Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind)
Richard Gere (First Knight)
Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon)
Cary Grant (Arsenic and Old Lace)
Hugh Grant (Knotting Hill)
Gene Hackman (The French Connection)
Tom Hanks (Apollo 13)
Charlton Heston (The Ten Commandments)
Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate)
Bob Hope (The Princess and the Pirate)
Hugh Jackman (X-Men)
Samuel Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive)
Danny Kaye (The Jester)
Gene Kelly (An American In Paris)
Val Kilmer (Willow)
Kevin Kline (January Man)
Don Knotts (The Incredible Mr. Limpet)
Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot)
Peter Lorre (Maltese Falcon)
Ewan MacGregor (Star Wars)
Steve Martin (All of Me)
Lee Marvin (Dirty Dozen)
Ian MacKellen (Lord of the Rings)
Steve McQueen (The Great Escape)
Viggo Mortensen (Hidalgo)
Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop)
Liam Neeson (Rob Roy)
Paul Newman (The Sting)
Jack Nicholson (As Good As It Gets)
Al Pacino (Author, Author)
Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird)
Sean Penn (Sweet and Lowdown)
Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line)
Brad Pitt (Twelve Monkeys)
Richard Pryor (Stir Crazy)
Anthony Quinn (The Guns of Navarone)
Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid)
Kenau Reeves (The Matrix)
Burt Reynolds (Hooper)
Kurt Russell (Tombstone)
Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther)
William Shatner (Star Trek)
Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Total Recall)
Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump)
Will Smith (Men in Black)
Wesley Snipes (Blade)
Kevin Spacey (L.A. Confidential)
James Spader (Stargate)
Sylvester Stallone (Rambo)
Jimmy Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life)
Donald Sutherland (MASH)
John Travolta (Primary Colors)
Dick Van Dyke (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
Eli Wallach (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)
Denzel Washington (Crimson Tide)
John Wayne (True Grit)
Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
Gene Wilder (Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
Robin Williams (Good Morning Vietnam)
Bruce Willis (Die Hard)

A Spurs appreciation

I'm really, really hooked on the San Antonio Spurs. They are one of the best basketball teams ever and it is thrilling to watch them play. So it really amazes me that they seem to be constantly dissed by the rest of the nation as either boring or now, in a bizarre flip-flop, as a team of thugs and cheaters.
I guess when you have a reputation as "good guys" for as long as the Spurs have had, it doesn't take much for people to latch onto to turn that around quickly. It reminds me of the political hype from presidential campaigns where sweeping judgments and stereotypes of candidates are based on flimsy and sometimes false evidence. But all it takes is for the charge to get repeated enough times and it sticks.
The Spurs remind me a lot of the 1998-2000 New York Yankees team I loved so much. They don't rely on a superstar to pull them through every game. Instead, they just play great as a team.
What is so great about the Spurs team is that they have so much depth off of their bench. The team is naturally built around their superstar Tim Duncan. But they also have two other superstars in Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili who can carry the team if Duncan is having an off night.
In addition, they have perhaps the best defensive player in the league in Bruce Bowen and then to top it off they have a whole bench full of key role players like Elston Howard and Fabarico Oberto to provide picks and blocks.
But their secret weapon is the fact that they have no fewer than five guys who are absolutely deadly from the 3-point range: Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, Brent Barry and, of course, Manu Ginobili. When they start hitting their three-point shots, it doesn't take long for a close game to turn into a 12-15 point blowout.

The Spurs just finished off the Phoenix Suns, who were probably the best team they will face in the playoffs. That means unless they fall apart and/or someone gets very lucky, they have a clear shot from here on out for their fourth NBA title.

Iraq vs. Texas

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story the other day about a dispute between the Iraqi government and a Texas company hired to build an electric utility plant south of Baghdad. The plant is currently shuttered and unused with gleaming new equipment just collecting dust.
The Texas company, Southeast Texas Industrial Services Inc., ran into lots of problems trying to fulfill the $283 million contract beginning with security issues. The construction site was the target of multiple insurgent attacks and the Iraqi government failed to provide effective security. In addition, the Iraqi government was constantly behind in making payments for the project almost from the beginning. Finally, when the Texas company was forced to spend millions providing their own private security in order to get the work done they were accused of cheating when they tried to pass those costs on to the Iraqi government.
But what I found most interesting about the story was the role of the Bush administration via their representatives at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Who do you suppose they sided with in this dispute? The Iraqi government, of course. They accused the Texas company of being “unreliable” and “incompetent.” How’s that for an ironic twist. Of course, they can’t side against their puppet regime in Baghdad and any extra money that must be ponied up is ultimately going to come out of U.S. coffers in the end. So it is really no surprise that they would give the American company the back side of their hand in this dispute.