There is only one reason why politicians want to tax the Internet

Some are saying that taxes on Internet use could arrive by this fall.

The Internet may have started with government funding, but it's long been something that's of and managed by the public domain.

There is only one reason why politicians would want to tax how you use the Internet: because they want to control how you use it and how much information you get from it.

People across the country are finally waking up to the charade that the "two party" fraud has been perpetrating on us for so long. People are starting to openly question the motives of their leaders. There is beginning to be considerable resistance to the idea that we must have things like the income tax. There are some politicians in the past few weeks who have witnessed the meteoric rise of Ron Paul to the forefront of the presidential race, and they realize that it couldn't have happened without people exchanging ideas over the Internet and coordinating with each other.

Ever read V for Vendetta, the original graphic novel? In the final part of the book, V makes total chaos break out after shutting down the government's ability to eavesdrop on everyone. The country starts tearing itself apart and Evey asks V if this is what he really wanted. V tells her no: that the current phase of violence and upheaval is Verwirrung: "The Land of Take-What-You-Want". But after this "comes an age of Ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order." V doesn't want total disorder. He simply wants people to assume authority and responsibility on their own without trusting very evil men to assume it for them.

That's the potential of the Internet, that we might finally start to see blossoming. Regular people are no longer trusting The Powers That Be. The ordinary man is coming to be revealed as just as wise and capable as... if not far more so than... the "elites" who continue to get elected to Washington year after year.

And the elites can't have that.

So they want to impose this tax. As a measure of control over the masses that they have exploited for so long. They are trying to take away the public stump and the town hall from us.

A tax on the Internet is a grievous blow for the cause of tyranny.

And the only people who would possibly want to impose this tax are true tyrants at heart.

By all means, an Internet tax should be opposed. And those who want it driven from office by the cruelest of whips.

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LOST last night: Ben = George W. Bush

Think about it...

George W. Bush claims to hear God, his followers believe him and are ready to go to war and kill on Bush's orders.

Ben claims to hear Jacob, his followers believe him and are ready to go to war and kill on Ben's orders.

Though lately, the followers of both are starting to question their leaders.

That one just kinda jumped out at me last night. I thought "Through the Looking Glass", the final Lost of the season, was in part a great parable about blindly following someone "with authority" without questioning that authority.

Ben also reminded me of Randall Flagg in the last good bit of The Stand, when he starts to lose control over his followers and everything starts to go wrong around him.

I guess it could also be said that Ben is much like Shift, the ape in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia. Shift claims to speak for Aslan and he tells the other Narnians that they can't see Aslan for themselves, that they have to trust Shift's word completely. Too many of them don't question it and it ultimately leads to disaster.

Man, I love Lost! This is why it's one of the very few shows I've ever kept up with: 'cuz it makes ya think about stuff.

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The newspaper clipping from last night's LOST

At the beginning of last night's Lost, Jack (was it just me or did he start looking more and more like Charles Manson as the episode progressed, especially later on with the denim jacket and heavy drugs) sees a newspaper article while flying on the plane. He tears it out and takes it with him and it's seen in most of the "flashbacks" that follow. As we know, it was a news story about someone's death: presumably this is the person in the casket. But who is it?

Well, someone (apparently this came from The Tail Section) got a real good high-def screenshot of one of the very few times that there was a decent enough close-up of the clipping. Here it is:

It looks like the name being referred to could be "Jeremy Bentham". Which as it turns out, with Lost's penchant for naming characters after real-world philosophers, is probably it. Who was Jeremy Bentham? From Wikipedia...

Jeremy Bentham (IPA: ['benθəm] or ['bentəm]) (February 15, 1748 O.S. (February 26, 1748 N.S.) – June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights who influenced the development of liberalism.

Bentham was one of the most influential utilitarians, partially through his writings but particularly through his students all around the world. These included his secretary and collaborator on the utilitarian school of philosophy James Mill, James Mill's son John Stuart Mill, and several political leaders (and Robert Owen, who later became a founder of socialism).

But check this out...

Among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. Although it was never built, the idea had an important influence upon later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of a whole raft of nineteenth-century 'disciplinary' institutions.

And what was the Panopticon prison supposed to be, exactly? Again from Wikipedia:

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

Sounds suspiciously like some of the stuff that's been going on with the Island.

Ever since last night I thought that the person in the casket was someone we already knew. But it looks like it's going to be someone we haven't seen yet. And my guess is they have a major connection to the purpose of the Island.

Methinks Lindelof and Cuse (the producers of Lost) have given us plenty to pursue and contemplate and fill up the Internets with crazy theories about between now and next winter!

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LOST: The morning after "Through the Looking Glass"

Lisa and I woke up and the first words out of her mouth were that "it's hard to sleep with something like THAT on your mind."

For the first time in a long time, it could honestly be said that television history was made last night.

I am not that much of a television person. Never have been. The number of shows that I've actively kept up with during my life could be numbered with my hands. And it took me awhile to "get into" Lost. I'm sorta like the Amish when it comes to TV: I have to fully trust it before I invest my time in it. But Lisa's mom kept saying how this was a really good show, so I gave it a shot.

And I've never been so glad that I did than I am after last night.

"Through the Looking Glass", the Lost Season 3 finale, is the most beautifully orchestrated and mind-blowing single episode of a television show that I've ever seen. My brain still hasn't stopped reeling from what we saw last night. Remember the twist ending that we saw in The Sixth Sense? Well, "Through the Looking Glass" was ten times that "HOLY (your choice of exclamation here)!!!" that we felt at the end of that movie. Ever since the return from the break in February Lost has consistently been some of the best fiction that I've seen in any medium. This final episode for Season 3 raised the bar across the board for everything, especially for TV (either network or "premium" channels like HBO). On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give "Through the Looking Glass" a 27.

There was only one thing that bugged me about "Through the Looking Glass". That was when Locke saw Walt (or whatever the heck that really was, since I'm sure the real Walt is still on the boat with Michael after last season's finale). Walt looked and sounded old enough to buy cigarettes. Guess that couldn't be helped: Malcolm David Kelley was, what, 10 years old when the pilot episode was shot? Looks like puberty kicked in bigtime since last season's finale. But since that obviously wasn't the real Walt, I guess this can be allowed to slide. If they ever do show the real Walt though, there'd better be a darned good explanation for his ultra-fast growth spurt (but this being Lost, anything could probably be made to sound like it makes sense :-).

The most powerful moment of the whole show (after that "JEEZ LOUISE!" shocker of a final scene) was the last time we saw Charlie. We literally had to hold back the tears. I don't think that could have been handled any more poignantly. And I'm trying as hard as I can to not be too "spoiler-ish" for anyone who hasn't had the good fortune of seeing this show yet.

Sayid showed us once again last night that he is the baddest mothe-"shut yo mouth" on TV right now (or ever). Did you see what he did to that guy... with his legs?!?

Of all the moments that Hurley has had, this was his biggest moment to shine. It's funny: last week I found myself wondering about whatever happened to the DHARMA van. The scene where Hurley charges the beach in it, pedal-to-the-metal with that look of "I'm coming to get YOU!" on his face... just awesome! I've said this before and I'll say it again: Hurley is the real leader of the Flight 815 survivors. He's gone way out of his way to provide for his friends, to give them a good time... and to stand by them when they need it most. What he did last night just affirmed it that much more.

Did anyone else get the craziest feeling that for all of Ben's lies and manipulations and orders to kill people... that maybe there really is something we don't know about yet that he's very much in fear of? After last night I still think Ben is one of the most hated TV characters ever... but now there's a weird sense of sincerity about him. Still didn't keep me from cheering when Jack beat the living snot out of him.

By the way, I loved how Ben is fast losing control over the Others. It's like the last bit of Stephen King's The Stand when things began going bad for Randall Flagg and no matter how hard he tries to control things, they keep spinning out of control.

If that's not Penny's boat... then who is it? The only thing I can think of is that it's DHARMA... but if DHARMA is still active, then they must already still know where the Island is, since they're still dropping groceries onto it. That's probably the biggest question that I can think of to take us into next season.

Now as for "that thing". You know what I'm talking about if you watched it last night. Lost is notorious for setting things up so that you have to watch an episode more than once, sometimes two or three times even. I think that last night's episode is going to be the most dissected and analyzed and hypothesized two hours of television. I keep thinking about how all that time people were calling Jack a "hero", and it seemed like they were referring to what happened with the car crash. Except it turns out that they called him a hero for something else entirely. And then that final scene where the car pulls up and Jack talks with a certain someone: as I said right after the show, that scene made the synapses in my brain misfire while trying to figure out just what the heck was going on. And then Lisa tells me. If she hadn't figured it out I would have probably been wrestling with that all night (or at least until I read about it online). That one was hands-down one of the biggest shockers in either a TV show or a movie... or a book for that matter (I really hope that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will have a shocker just half as sad and pure loco as what Lost was last night).

So... who's in the casket? Four or five people come to mind. One in particular. But like I said, I'm trying hard not to be too spoiler-ish.

Man, if I were a drinking man, I would have needed some serious hard liquor after last night's Lost. That was definitely better television that we deserve.

Amazing. Just bloody amazing. Now we have to wait until next January (at the earliest) to see how and where... and when... this story progresses from here.

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Moments after LOST Season 3 finale ...

Stunned.

I need to say, so that everyone will know, that Lisa was the first here to figure out what was really happening in that last scene. When... that person... got out of the car, that completely threw me for a loop, 'cuz that made NO sense at all. It wasn't until the very final seconds that Lisa told me what was going on and everything just "clicked" into place.

It's been a long day and I need to hit the sack. I'm going to post more about this tomorrow. But I couldn't end tonight without giving Lisa credit for being the first here to understand what we were actually seeing.

That might have been the finest two hours of televised fiction that I've ever seen. And most of this past season of Lost was already, in my opinion, some of the finest storytelling I'd seen in this medium.

Just... amazing.

By the way, Hurley totally ruled in this episode!

More tomorrow. After it's sunk in.

This is gonna be one long torturous wait until next winter.

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STAR WARS: TALES OF THE NEW REPUBLIC

Check this cryptic page out for some amazing Star Wars artwork. We already knew that Lucasfilm was producing a Clone Wars animated series and that there was supposed to be a second animated project: is this it? The page says "Stop by this Friday to find out more". Since Star Wars Celebration IV is just getting started in Los Angeles and that Friday is the 30th anniversary of the first film, there's no doubt that all kinds of saga wackiness could be erupting over the next few days.

Anyhoo, judging by this and the other pics on that site, me like!

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We're ready to party with DHARMA food!

UPDATE 05/27/2008: You want these DHARMA Initiative food labels for yourself? Well thanks to file-hosting site MediaFire you can now download the ones that we used for this Lost party last year, along with several others that I've found since then. Just click the link and start your download. Enjoy your DHARMA food! :-)

Lost - Dharma food labels.zip (3.6 MB)

Yes, you too can have a pantry filled with DHARMA Initiative products, just like the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 on Lost!

There is a box of DHARMA Crisps...

DHARMA Peanut Butter...

And the always-popular DHARMA Cola...

(WARNING: These are HUGE image files. All the better to note the detail :-)
If we ever need them, we can also have DHARMA Baked Beans, DHARMA Mayonnaise, DHARMA Tuna, DHARMA Salt, DHARMA Chocolate... and DHARMA Beer! Who knows, maybe we can even scrounge up some DHARMA Ranch Dressing (with a shelf life of 7 years at room temperature).

So I guess we're finally ready for tonight's Lost season finale... what you think? :-)

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Legalized dictatorship: Bush clears way for unprecedented seizure of power

George W. Bush is the worst President in American history. As I've said many times before: it will be decades before we have completely cleaned up the mess that this evil man and his cronies have done to this country.

Some will claim that for me to say that is not becoming a true Christian. If only Germany had been inundated with such insincere Christians in the years leading up to 1938.

The fact that I am probably in a government database somewhere as a "dissident" and a "troublemaker" for what I've posted here should be enough to make anyone pause.

Here's the story from Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily. This is certainly the first I'm hearing about this...

Bush makes power grab

Posted: May 23, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator.

That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency.

The directive loosely defines "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

WND Exclusive Commentary Bush makes power grab
Posted: May 23, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator.

That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency.

The directive loosely defines "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

When the president determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the president can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an "enduring constitutional government."

Translated into layman's terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.

Ironically, the directive sees no contradiction in the assumption of dictatorial powers by the president with the goal of maintaining constitutional continuity through an emergency...

All it takes is for President Bush to declare a "national emergency", and he goes from being The Decider to being The Dictator.

Think it can't happen here?

Is anyone willing to bet good money with me that it won't?

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"Through the Looking Glass": Tonight's LOST last until 2008!

The story thus far...

-Naomi, the woman who parachuted onto the Island, works for a company that Penny hired to look for Desmond. She's told the Flight 815 survivors that the ship her helicopter launched from is about 80 kilometers away.

- Ben and the Others are planning an attack on the 815ers' camp in an attempt to kidnap Sun... along with any other women who could possibly become pregnant.

- Cooper is dead.

- Ben took Locke to see Jacob, and Jacob spoke two words to Locke.

- Juliet has turned traitor against Ben and told Jack about the pending attack.

- Jack has enlisted Danielle's help in order to, as Jack puts it, "blow 'em (the Others) all to Hell."

- Alex sent Karl rushing to the camp to warn them that the Others are coming right now!

- Sayid is working on contacting Naomi's ship via radio... if the Others' jamming can be deactivated.

- Jack is about to lead most of the camp away from the beach and toward the radio tower (which hasn't been seen yet) ...

- ... while Sayid, Jin, Bernard and possibly a few others will wait for the Others to arrive so they can set off the explosives.

- The last time anyone saw Locke, he had taken a bullet to the gut from Ben's gun and he was lying in a pit filled with the skeletons of the DHARMA Initiative people.

- Charlie has decided that he won't run away from his fate any longer, and knowing that he will probably not live to tell the tale, has entered the Looking Glass station ...

- ... where without warning, two well-armed women have stopped him from pushing the button that will end the jamming.

- Desmond is unconscious.

- Claire is worried.

- Aaron is crying.

- Sawyer is angry.

- Kate is horny.

- Hurley is hungry.

- Nikki and Paulo are still dead.

- Mikhail still needs some Q-Tips and is probably going to get his butt kicked again.

Tonight's Lost, titled "Through the Looking Glass", is the long-awaited Season 3 finale: the one that's said to be the "game-changer" episode that alters everything we've come to know about this story.

I know that reportedly humongous spoilers have been leaked onto the 'net during the past two weeks or so. Whatever those are, I know absolutely nothing about them. When I first heard about the leaks, I gave up every Lost website that I know of cold-turkey. My wife and I have invested way too much time in this show leading up to this episode to have the surprises ruined for us. So whatever is going to happen, I won't know anything until tonight. We are going to discover this together, the way it's supposed to be discovered.

How much do I love this show? I'm thinking of printing up some DHARMA food labels to put on snack boxes and soft drink bottles for tonight's episode... and I've never done anything that crazy for a TV show before.

Enjoy "Through the Looking Glass", friends, 'cuz this will be the last Lost until at least January 2008!

As always, look for my reaction following the show.

EDIT 8:20 a.m. EST: I've heard that tonight's Lost is supposed to be one of the most outrageous season finales ever.

"Even more outrageous than 'The Moldavian Massacre'?!?"

Here it is, the classic final moments of the 1985 season finale of Dynasty...

Let's see how tonight's Lost stacks up against that!

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Okay so... my thoughts about ON THE LOT?

So Lisa and I watched On The Lot, now about four months after we saw that promo back in January and her telling me that I should have a go at it. So with only a month before deadline I went and made Schrodinger's Bedroom. Obviously the entry round was as far as I got (nope, not so much as a callback for an interview), but it was a fun lil' film to make and I'm glad for the opportunity.

Now, as for what we finally saw on television last night...

Where this show is weak is that it, like most other "reality television" series, already seems to be built around combativeness among the contestants. In that regard I have to wonder how much of a "talent" competition this really is. I do believe that where my own entry failed was the 45-second intro: I definitely wanted to show where I'm coming from and talk about what inspired me to make a movie about Schrodinger's Cat and a little about the hurdles to overcome in making a film on such a tight deadline. Unfortunately, I now see that I should have spent all that time talking about "me me me"... and I'm not that kind of person very much. If I got to be on the show, I absolutely wanted to take Reidsville with me... but to realistically have a shot at the show, it had to just be "me" going. So if I enter again next time, my intro video has to completely reflect my personality (maybe I should have used some clips from my school board commercials...?).

Anyway, I think that the intro videos were what sold most - if not all - of the contestants we saw last night. This being "reality" television, a suitable environment for lots of cutthroat action needs to be created. So a lot of different personality types have been assembled for this show. The talent factor seems to be a distant second, just judging by some of the presentations that were made during "The Pitch" round. In case you missed it, the 50 semi-finalists were randomly given one of five "log lines" and from that, each contestant had to create a pitch for a movie. They had 24 hours to come up with one. I was coming up with ideas like crazy in just a few minutes - the mouse and the priest were two that I really had some fun notions for - and those seemed to be a lot better than what we saw on this show last night. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard, within 24 hours, to come up with a killer idea from just a scrap of suggestion. And I don't want to "name names" here but some of them were just ridiculous. There was one presentation in particular that was particularly painful to watch... and that's all I'm going to say.

Some people have noted since the show ran last night that all of the "older" contestants were eliminated after the first round. Frankly, this bothers me. I hope that happened on the merit of their pitch alone. All the same: a film-maker isn't really coming into his or her own until, I believe anyway, their mid to late thirties. The 36 that are left seem to be well below that. Thirty to forty years is long enough for a film-maker to not only learn the basics of the craft and run with it, but also to accumulate knowledge and ideas from which to draw creativity. And there shouldn't be an "upper limit" to a film-maker's age, either. Heck, if it's going to sell tickets, I don't care if the film-maker is 8, 28, or 80 years old.

It was only after the pitches and the first eliminations were made that I thought On The Lot really got interesting. The 36 that were left were allowed to split up into groups of 3 - teaming up with whoever they chose to be with - and given the theme of "out of time"... from which they have 24 hours to make a 2 and a half minute film. Again, it seems like the contestants were chosen for how much combativeness could be generated because no matter which combo of contestants that we saw, it's pretty clear that there's going to be some ill feelings one way or another. How often is it that three directors are forced together to make one movie, anyway? Yeah I know, there's the issue of time availability, but in real life this just does not happen on a routine basis. Last night's premiere ended with two teams of film-makers finding that they've chosen the same section of railroad yard to shoot a scene, with each group demanding the other get out of camera shot. What happens next? Tune in Thursday night...

I hope that the highlight of this show is going to be film-making, and the talents of the individuals involved, instead of whatever theatrics can be engineered on the part of the producers. I'm not really that big a fan of reality shows like Survivor (Rudy and Rupert are the only contestants from that show that I can think of... so that should tell ya how up-to-speed I am on that lil' Mark Burnett series) but I want to be interested in On The Lot because it is about film-making. If the show makes that its centerpiece, then I think that I can be a faithful viewer for the rest of the summer. If not, then this is going to get real old, real fast... and the sense that I'm getting from a lot of other people this morning is that they're feeling the same thing, too. We've seen "reality" television already. We know what to expect. It's like Hollywood in general: we've seen the same bloody stuff so many times that we know it by heart and we're positively bored bonkers with it. On The Lot is an opportunity to give not just prime-time TV but the film industry something it's sorely lacking: fresh new blood and ideas...

...if that's what the producers at Fox want.

It's their choice, but not really.

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ON THE LOT premieres on Fox tonight

On The Lot, the new reality show from Mark Burnett (Survivor and a few other programs) and Steven Spielberg (some movie guy) premieres on Fox tonight at 9 p.m. EST, right after American Idol. This is that "American Idol for filmmakers" show, where aspiring filmmakers have to make one movie a week and in Idol fashion, they get judged by a celebrity panel of judges before going to the American public to be voted on. The last one standing at the end of the summer gets a $1 million contract to work at DreamWorks.

Here are the 50 semi-finalists that came out of a field of over 12,000 entrants. I will not be one of those on the show tonight, although my entry Schrodinger's Bedroom seems to have been enjoyed by quite a lot of people (it had over ten thousand views before a website snafu required it to be re-uploaded, you can also watch it here on YouTube). Even so, I'm going to be watching this with a lot of interest over this coming summer. And who knows: I might already have an idea or two for an entry for next year's show :-)

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THE GOLDEN COMPASS trailer arrives

I have no idea what this is supposed to be. It looks like The Chronicles of Narnia meets The Dark Tower meets the Bolshevik Revolution. Maybe someone can explain it and tell me if it's something worth keeping an eye on. In the meantime mash down here to watch The Golden Compass trailer in Quicktime.

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Keanu Reeves as Dr. Manhattan?!?

In an exclusive report that is sure to drop jaws all over the place, Ain't It Cool News is claiming to be the first outlet with news about casting for the upcoming Watchmen movie adaptation (I keep tellin' yas, it's not gonna work as a 2-3 hour movie). According to the story, Jude Law is probably gonna be playing Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias... which isn't something I was expecting to hear, but I could see that working.

Oh yeah, and Keanu Reeves as Dr. Manhattan.

Ummmmm... saywhu...??

If you've never read Watchmen, the image on the right is what Dr. Manhattan looks like. So if you can imagine Keanu Reeves as a bald, blue, naked, God-like being...

...which I can't...

On the other hand, I think Reeves did an outstanding job handling the material of the Matrix movies, and Watchmen is on that same level of "thinking man's" entertainment that those films were. Reeves as Dr. Manhattan might make a lot more people stand up and take notice at this project... if it can manage to stay faithful to the book (which is gonna be hard, but after seeing 300 I think that if anyone can pull the impossible off with Watchmen, it'll be Zack Snyder).

And now that I think of it, Reeves seems like an excellent choice to play Jon Osterman, before he becomes Manhattan (read the book if you want to know what happens that turns him nigh-omnipotent). But this is still gonna have to be handled delicately: we should not have people pointing at the screen and laughing at bald blue naked Keanu Reeves, right?

Now, anyone wanna take a stab at who is gonna play Rorschach?

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Carter was the most ineffective, but Bush IS the worst ever

You've probably heard already about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter calling George W. Bush "the worst in history".

Y'know, Carter really was the most inept and ineffective president America has had in the past 50 years. His entire presidency could well be summed-up by the word "malaise".

But even more than Carter, the worst was easily Lyndon B. Johnson: a man who's damage to this country has still yet to be fully calculated. Where Johnson trumped Carter was having the most corrupt presidency up 'til his time. Say what you will of Carter: I've never thought that he did have anything but the best of intentions at heart, however much he bungled those intentions. Barry Goldwater was right: Carter should have kept his head down once he was out of office, and he would have gone down in the history books as one of the better ones. Too bad Carter didn't listen. But there was never anything redeemable about Lyndon Johnson's term: the man bloated government and firmly put the military-industrial complex in a position to exploit the taxpayers to its hearts content... to say nothing of the quagmire that was Vietnam.

That's how I've long seen it: Lyndon Johnson as the worst in American history, followed by Carter... who I was reluctant to peg as a bad one but I really had no choice.

Then along comes George W. Bush.

I don't know if America will ever recover from the damage that this very evil man has inflicted upon her. Carter and Johnson (and Clinton for that matter) combined could not have been as detrimental to this country as Bush II has been.

Let's look at the accomplishments of The Great Decider...

- Biggest growth of government in American history

- Most spending in American history

- Almost thirty-five hundred American soldiers and other service personnel and countless thousands of civilians dead in the most meaningless, ill-conceived conflict the United States has ever engaged in (this figure only counts those mortally wounded in Iraq, not those who were injured and died elsewhere)

- The PATRIOT Act

- Destruction of Habeas Corpus

- Nominating Harriet Miers for Supreme Court

- No Child Left Behind

- Cutting pay and supplies to American military personnel

- Rampant cronyism that puts the Ulysses Grant administration to shame

- Most secretive administration in American history (EVERYTHING can be made a "classified top secret" on Bush's watch)

- Active suppression of dissidents and others who disagree with him

- "Free-speech zones"

- "No-bid" contracts given to companies like Halliburton... which clearly constitute a "conflict of interest" considering their connections to Vice President Cheney and others

- Presided over loss of most American jobs since the Great Depression

- The New Freedoms Initiative, which mandates mental health screening and possible medication - against parents wishes - for every schoolchild in America (I say again: I will shoot the bastard that tries to medicate my child against my will)

- Lying about the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq... and still trying to cover up that lie

- Domestic spying on Americans without warrants

- F***ING-UP THE BORDERS BY ALLOWING MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS TO STAMPEDE INTO AMERICA

- "Signing statements" intended to circumvent Congress and the Constitution

- The Department of Homeland Security (that one sounded Nazi from the start)

- Giving communist China a greater foothold on the American economy than ever before (and now we're paying for it: see the recent mess with poisoned pet food)

I decided to end there, if for no other reason than because I would be up all night adding to this list and still wouldn't have anything nearly a comprehensive a list as it could be.

George W. Bush is the worst President in American history... and no thin veneer of feigned Christianity is going to make it any better.

Yes, by all means let's condemn Carter for meandering mess he spun America into during his four years in office. But if we are going to be fair about it, we'd darn well better be able to face up to the fact that the current president has been far, far worse.

I never thought I'd live to see the day that somebody would outdo Carter and Johnson... and even Clinton. But, there ya go. Heck, I've heard from too many people that compared to George W. Bush, Bill Clinton was a saint. Go figure...

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What kind of Star Wars fan are you?

There's a great article at NorthJersey.com about Star Wars fans and the many varieties that they come in. I think it's safe to say that I'm strongly Charismatic:

These are the folks for whom it's not enough to watch "Star Wars" -- they need to live it. So they make costumes, dress up as Lucas characters and join worldwide groups like the 501st Legion (they impersonate most "Star Wars" bad guys) and the Rebel Legion (the good guys).

Let's see: I've made a Star Wars fan film, based my first political ad on Star Wars, have a movie-quality Jedi costume and I'm a member of the Rebel Legion... yup, when it comes to the religion of Star Wars I'm definitely of the speaking-in-tongues variety :-)

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Review of SHREK THE THIRD

Shrek the Third made me so drowsy with boredom that I had to take a long nap when I got home. And it still dulls my mind to think about it.

This movie is so lousy that I'm not even going to waste the time to give it a full review, like I usually do whenever writing about a movie here. I don't want to spend another moment of my life meditating upon it. But, I feel like there's a moral obligation to warn you, Constant Reader, about it... so for sake of that alone I'm going to give you my bare minimum thoughts about it.

The first third of the movie isn't pretty bad. There were some rather funny bits to it, even. But it's not long into Shrek's search for Arthur that this movie becomes tedious and lame and completely inert of the wit that made Shrek and Shrek 2 so good. Whatever magic made the first two movies work, is not here.

Something that I couldn't help noticing: the theater was packed with young children. Shrek the Third was too boring for them too. Whereas the first two Shrek movies I saw kids glued to their seats, this time most of them were fidgeting and antsy and obviously not interested. Rarely did they laugh. The grown-ups certainly didn't laugh much.

I am discerning a pattern here: a movie becomes a huge blockbuster, which demands a sequel. And the producers of the original still have some creative juice to tap into. At that point the motive is all about building on what was established in the first. Then the sequel makes even more money. And then it's no longer about the spirit of the film. The producers make the transition from artists to artisans... and mass-media artisans at that. That's why with rare exception, the third movie in a film series usually sucks to no end: because there's no more interest in making it about the movie.

I remember about two years ago hearing that DreamWorks had plans to make a third and fourth installment to the Shrek series. They should stop now. I know that Shrek the Third will undoubtedly make at least $200 million at the box office, but even so: it should be unconscionable to press forward with another entry.

I really don't like having to say this about Shrek the Third. The first two movies were so wonderful, especially the first (there's a really funny story about when we saw that one in the theater that I might share here if anyone asks for it). I was hoping for so much more with this third movie. But I hate to say this: I was more disappointed with Shrek the Third than I was with X-Men: The Last Stand last year. And that's saying something.

That's all I'm going to say about Shrek the Third. I didn't like it one bit. It definitely won't get any space on my DVD shelf. I never want to see it again. At least not until we have children of our own and they beg to watch it and then I'll have to sit through it with them.

They'll probably hate it too.

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Is this Ledger's Joker from THE DARK KNIGHT?

About 36 hours ago on Friday night I posted about some of the developments that came out this past week about The Dark Knight: next year's sequel to 2005's Batman Begins. One of the things I posted was that great "Harvey Dent for District Attorney" graphic. And I closed out the post by saying "Now if only a really good picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker could turn up somewhere..."

I had no idea this was coming. Honest, folks. It was a crazy coincidence...

...'cuz this past day or so the publicity gang for The Dark Knight has been doing something very, very crafty. Yesterday another website turned up at ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. When that page loaded, this is what you got:

And after a few seconds, that graphic started "peeling away" pixel by pixel, like so:

The page has fill-in forms where you enter your e-mail address and have to also manually enter-in a code that's on the screen. I did that, and received this e-mail from ""tragicpast@ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com" a few moments later:

I always say, you never know what a man is truly made of until you peel the skin off his face one piece at a time. Here is your chance to help:
http://www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com/submitpixel_flash.aspx?
uid=f5b45fc9470a45bd8152dcf37822fdb5

X=1
Y=445

If you follow the link you get to the "peeled-away" graphic, but this one shows you which pixel it was that I'm responsible for uncovering (it so happens that it's right on the left-hand edge). That's how it's been going since yesterday: everyone has been using their e-mail addresses to remove one pixel from the picture, slowly revealing whatever lies beneath one individual dot at a time.

It hasn't been completely uncovered yet, but Moriarty at Ain't It Cool News has apparently come into possession of the complete image, or a good simulacrum of it anyway. What's it look like? Here it is:

So... is this really Heath Ledger as how he'll look like as the Joker in The Dark Knight?

If it is... man, I'm really split on this. It's totally not like anything I was expecting. I didn't think it would be like Jack Nicholson's Joker from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. "Less prosthetics" was my belief, but still the traditional Joker "smile" for the most part. What I was most expecting was for Ledger's Joker to look like Conrad Veidt's appearance in 1928's The Man Who Laughs (right), which was the biggest thing that influenced Bob Kane's original design for the Joker. Look at that pic on the right, and tell me that wouldn't work for a modern audience in a serious film treatment of Batman. That certainly looks realistic enough. Heck, it looks no more out-of-place in a real-life setting than Phil Spector's hair usually has during his murder trial lately.

So that's what I was subconsciously thinking we would see. And not a lesioned clone of the Crow.

But then I remember that when the first pics of Willem DaFoe's Green Goblin came out during Spider-Man's production, and I thought that there was no way that would fly either. And then the actual movie comes out and I totally bought into that Green Goblin, and it made me realize that if they had gone with the traditional comic book look for Goblin then it wouldn't have been as convincing. And that comic books and movies really are two quite different mediums to tell the same story: a wise artist is going to have to take that into account. And then I remember the very, very first appearance of the Joker in Batman #1 in 1940:

Looks pretty darned close. It's enough to make me hold off judgment from completely dissing it at this point. I do kinda like it... it's just not "Joker" like I've always been used to. Which I think is going to be the problem for most people.

But if they give him shocking dark green hair and yellow teeth and a purple-enough suit... along with a homicidal sense of humor... then I'll accept this Joker wholeheartedly. The 'tude is everything!

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