Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

What a fantastic movie.  One of the top three most satisfying movies I can think of, the other two being Lives of Others and Patlabor 2.  It was an action movie who’s actions scene were driven by the plot and not the other way around.  It never felt the need to be flashy, but it never felt slow.

There is a plot twist, but the plot doesn’t revolve on it like it did in the Sixth Sense.  It could have been left it out completely, and I would have still felt it was a great movie.  In a lot of movies, plot twists almost seem to be attempts by the writers to fool the audience or make the script appear more clever than it actually is, and frequently the twist is foreshadowed a mile away.  That’s not the case in The Book of Eli – the twist is there purely for the enjoyment of the audience.  I don’t think I’ve come across something like that before.

Keeping in that line of thought, what happens to Denzel Washington’s character at the end feels right, but, again, something very different could have happened and it still would have been fine with me – it’s not what happens to his character that matters but what his character did.

I’m really glad I saw this movie in while it was in the theater.  Blockbuster movies, I feel, don’t really need the immersion that a theater provides.  Loud explosions and flashing lights – there’s simply too much happening to keep track of at once.  But hearing the sand blow across the road as Washington walks across the wasteland – the stillness draws you in.

Beyond the technical merits of the movie, what really drew me in were the themes of the movie.  I’ve always been more interested in what a movie is trying to say than anything else.  And what this movie is saying is interesting and refreshing.  Warning, some spoilers follow:

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Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that he fully expects that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be found guilty and executed in an interview over the weekend.  This is a sentiment that I’ve heard a couple times coming from the White House.  It has always bugged me, as it sounds suspiciously like the Obama administration is conducting a show trial.  That isn’t to say I feel that they’re railroading KSM or that KSM is anything other than guilty, but rather that the Obama administration and their supporters are going down a very dangerous path without fully considering the implications of pursing this policy.

Neo-conservatives have always objected to criminal trials for terrorists, but I feel as though their position is terribly misunderstood by the liberals that oppose them.  I get the impression that there is the impression amongst the left that the neo-conservative position taken by the early Bush administration and Republicans is borne out of a simplistic, ultra-nationalistic desire to “get ‘em” and “punish the wrongdoers”.  In fact (and if you ever watch the Daily Show interviews with Cliff May and John Yoo, one can get a sense of the depth of consideration given to the problem), there are real problems of how to deal with terrorists in a legal and procedural way in such that it does not compromise our moral standing but also does not compromise the integrity of the Geneva Conventions.

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Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

When it comes to political pundits, I choose my battles over who to get worked up over.  People like Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity wear their partisanship on their sleeves, and it becomes obvious as to what their biases are pretty quickly.  I’m not going to complain that DailyKos is too liberal or that the WeeklyStandard is too conservative.  If you are watching or reading them, you know what you are getting.  Becoming indignant over what they say doesn’t serve much purpose because their audiences already know they’re getting spin or don’t care.

Whom I do get upset over are people like Joe Klein.  He’s a “reporter” and a “respected journalist”.  He’s well known in political circles, but not, I suspect, by the public at large.  He writes for Time Magazine, and is a frequent guest on This Week and other serious political talk shows.  As such he is exposed frequently to the populace at large, and has the ability to drive the discussion on political and policy topics.  The credentials he brings to any discussion give him immediate clout, but don’t belie his ideological leanings, or just how wacko the guy is.  So when he says something outrageous, that is something I rant about.

Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills.

. . .

So, two thoughts:

1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.

2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.

It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.

Do I think a “magical” $60 a month is nice?  Sure.  Do I think it actually solves anything?  No, and neither, it seems, does Klein.  So why is he so dismissive of the argument that adding $288 billion to the deficit, when we’ve managed to add several trillion over the last two years, is probably a bad idea?  Because he’s a partisan and an arrogant elite without a sense of hubris (except to point out the flaw in others).

I “get” the idea behind the stimulus.  At it’s basic core, it’s Keynesian economics.  That doesn’t mean that I agree with it, or that I think that even within the framework of Keynesian economics it would work, but I at least understand the intellectual ground from whence it sprang.  It’d be nice if Klein at least gave those of us in opposition to it the same courtesy and at least conceded that we aren’t just a bunch of ignorant hicks that take our marching orders from Roger Ailes.  Of course, I get the feeling that Klein isn’t too upset at the idea that we’re ignorant hicks, but that we aren’t taking our marching orders from *him*.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

I meant to write about this last week, but the Supreme Court corrected itself when it ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to eviscerate the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, as it should have done earlier in the decade when the law was first passed.

What surprised me was the reaction of the left to the ruling.  I’ve rarely seen such widespread knee-jerk anger over something before.  I pop over the The Progressive and am greeted with a call to amend the Constitution.  DailyKos is ranting about it too.  Something about corporations not being people or some such.  Which, of course, entirely misses the point.  It’s as if when you say the word “corporation”, all they see is Pepsi, GE and Halliburton, and miss fact that the NRA, the ACLU, the New York Times and both Republican and Democratic parties are all incorporated.

Corporations act like individuals for legal purposes, which has it’s pluses and minuses, but in this case is generally irrelevant.  The point of the matter is that corporations are collections of individuals organized towards a common goal.  In that sense, the ability of these organizations to express their opinions on the issues and politicians in an election seems to me to be pretty fundamental to a healthy civic society.  That’s why the ACLU filed an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs seeking to overturn the ban on corporate spending.

The National Review has a pretty good defense of the ruling.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Reconciliation is an obscure Senate rule established in the 1970’s under what is known as the “Byrd Rule” to allow for the bypassing of filibusters in certain circumstances.  Democrats have started to process to use the rule to pass the House version of national health care (H.R. 3200).  National Review interviewed Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis) to get a little bit of background:

“The reconciliation process was designed for the budget and to help reduce deficits and debt. Now it’s being used to create new entitlement programs. . . .”

“[B]oth sides will have an argument with the Senate parliamentarian about the Byrd rule, which says that parts of a bill can be eliminated if they do not directly reduce the deficit. It also says that you can’t bring incidental things into the bill. It’s like going to court.”

“Then the Democratic-appointed parliamentarian comes down with a ruling, saying whether this provision is in or out of the bill. It will look at subsidies, too,” says Ryan. “The question will be whether community rating — where health-insurance companies are mandated to provide coverage — is a direct-spending policy. The argument will revolve around these policies, and their need to go into effect, or not, and their fiscal outcomes.”

“A few years ago, we tried to pass medical-liability reform, which is always filibustered in the Senate,” recalls Ryan. “We said that if we stick it in reconciliation, we can pass it, since tort reform, according to the CBO, will reduce the federal government’s health-care costs. The parliamentarian said no, saying it was not a money-saving policy. We lost that one. We’ve also tried to stick ANWR [drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] in reconciliation before, arguing that it was a revenue-raising provision. We got it in there, but it didn’t work.”

“Using reconciliation is an art form, not a science,” says Ryan. Republicans “will have a lot of room to fight.”

“Using the tort-reform precedent from our own experience a few years ago, Republicans will be able to argue that a lot of the junk the Democrats want can’t go in the bill,” says Ryan. “That’s where Republican leaders like Senator Jon Kyl will be able to make some major arguments against the use of reconciliation.”

I suspect we’re going to be seeing a lot of abuse of this rule in the future, and a lot of discussion about whether or not to eliminate it.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

There is a program tonight on PBS titled “The Power of the Poor”, presented by Peruvian Economist Hernando de Soto (yes, just like the explorer).  I’ve been a big fan of de Soto ever since college, when I read his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.

His basic contention is that the fundamental difference between cronically destitute nations and prosperous ones is the ability of the common people to own and leverage property.  He did a study, examining several very prosperous area, such as Hong Kong (pre-handover) and the US against places such as Egypt, to determine the number of bureaucratic steps needed to create a legal business.  In the US and Hong Kong, it was only a handful of steps – in poor nations it would frequently take over a hundred, some not legal, in order to start a small business.   De Soto’s contention is that the chief result of this inability to legally own businesses and property is that these nations have locked up a great deal of wealth that the poor would otherwise be able to leverage – it’s impossible to get a loan to expand or improve your business or property if you can’t get a loan because the bank can’t see evidence that you actually own anything.

De Soto understands how capitalism works at a very low level, and how it benefits the poor, far better than the talking heads you see on nightly news programs.  I really look forward to watching the program.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The submission deadline for candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize is February 1st. That means Obama was nominated only weeks after becoming President.

Who can say, in all honesty, that Obama is even remotely more deserving of the award than Morgan Tsvangirai, a man who had is skull split open and repeatedly beaten by government thugs for peacefully opposing the corrupt and disastrous Mugabe regime?  A man, who just last year, without violent revolt or armed resistance, became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe?

The Nobel Peace Prize is a farce.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

More stuff bubbled to memory:

• Intended to get to Natural History Museum around 6.  Assumed it was going to be open because their website listed activities until 8pm, but it wasn’t.  Completely closed up.
• Salvaged the situation by going to Chinatown, which had been tentatively scheduled for the next day.
• Mostly followed the advice of Kat, who suggested we walk up and down Mott Street.
• Lots of weird fruits all over the place.
• Ended up eating at a very popular Chinese takeout/sitdown place.
• It was very popular with the locals.
• It’s menu didn’t resemble Americanized Chinese too much.
• Prices were cheap, and portions were reasonable.  That meant no wasted food and no leftovers.
• I ordered beef and bitter melon.
• I’d read about bitter melon in Steven Levy’s Hacker, and the anecdote stuck in my head:
  

  Chinese food was a system, too, and the hacker curiosity was applied to that system as assiduously as to a new LISP compiler. Samson had been an aficionado from his first experience on a TMRC outing to Joy Pong’s on Central Square, and by the early sixties he had actually learned enough Chinese characters to read menus and order obscure dishes. Gosper took to the cuisine with even greater vigor; he would prowl Chinatown looking for restaurants open after midnight, and one night he found a tiny little cellar place own by a small family. It was fairly dull food, but he noticed some Chinese people eating fantastic-looking dishes. So he figured he’d take Samson back there.They went back loaded with Chinese dictionaries, and demanded a Chinese menu. The chef, a Mr. Wong, reluctantly complied, and Gosper, Samson, and the others pored over the menu as if it were an instruction set for a new machine. Samson supplied the translations, which were positively revelatory. What was called “Beef with Tomato” on the English menu had a literal meaning of Barbarian Eggplant Cowpork. “Wonton” had a Chinese equivalent of Cloud Gulp. There were unbelievable things to discover in this system! So after deciding the most interesting things to order (”Hibiscus Wing? Better order that, find out what that’s about”), they called over Mr. Wong, and he jabbered frantically in Chinese disapproval of their selections. It turned out he was reluctant to serve them the food Chinese-style, thinking that Americans couldn’t take it. Mr. Wong had mistaken them for typically timid Americans but these were explorers! They had been inside the machine, and lived to tell the tale (they would tell it in assembly language). Mr. Wong gave in. Out came the best Chinese meal that any of the hackers had eaten to date.

  So expert were the TMRC people at hacking Chinese food that they could eventually go the restauranteursone better. On a hacker excursion one April Fools’ Day, Gosper had a craving for a little-known dish called Bitter Melon. It was a wart-dotted form of green pepper, with an intense quinine taste that evoked nausea in all but those who’d painfully acquired the taste. For reasons best known to himself, Gosper decided to have it with sweet-and-sour sauce, and he wrote down the order in Chinese. The owner’s daughter came out giggling. “I’m afraid you made a mistake my father says that this says ‘Sweet-and-Sour Bitter Melon.’ ” Gosper took this as a challenge. Besides, he was offended that the daughter couldn’t even read Chinese that went against the logic of an efficient Chinese Restaurant System, a logic Gosper had come to respect. So, even though he knew his order was a preposterous request, he acted indignant, telling the daughter, “Of course it says Sweet-and-Sour Bitter Melon we Americans always order Sweet-and-Sour Bitter Melon the first of April.” Finally, the owner himself came out. “You can’t eat!” he shouted. “No taste’ No taste!” The hackers stuck to the request, and the owner slunk back to the kitchen.

  Sweet-and-Sour Bitter Melon turned out to be every bit as hideous as the owner promised. The sauce at that place was wickedly potent, so much so that if you inhaled while you put some in your mouth you’d choke. Combined with the ordinarily vile bitter melon, it created a chemical that seemed to squeak on your teeth, and no amount of tea or Coca-Cola could dilute that taste. To almost any other group of people, the experience would have been a nightmare. But to the hackers it was all part of the system. It made no human sense, but had its logic. It was The Right Thing; therefore every year on April Fools’ Day they returned to the restaurant and insisted that their appetizer be Sweet-and-Sour Bitter Melon.

• The bitter melon, by itself, tasted kinda bad.  It was, well, bitter.  It oddly worked alright if you are it with a piece of beef though.
• I don’t think I’ll ever have it again.  But it was really neat to try it once.  It could have been downright awful and I think the experience would have been worth it.
• Kat found her Bubble Tea.  It was a bit alien, but interesting.  If I go again, I think I’ll have to get a full cup for myself.
• There were a number of candy shops as well, all full of exotic treats, a number of which I’m not sure were that appetizing.  Dried fish candy?
• But, in retrospect, I wish I had gotten something.  You just don’t come across places like that in upstate NY.
• Cosmopolitan moment.  As we were headed back to the subway through Chinatown, surrounded by Chinese shops and workers, we were passed by a group of orthodox Jews walking in the opposite direction.  Three very different cultures sharing the same space at the same time, even if it was only in passing.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Via LikeCOOL:

Another Cloud Reel… from Delrious on Vimeo.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Unfiltered thoughts:

• The Ford Expedition is huge, and feels it.  Has a good turning radius, but hard to take tight turns.
• Ann directed us to an Afghan restaurant in Schenectady.  It’s like Indian, but different.
• The Poughkeepsie Line is a really scenic way to go into NYC.  At least until you go underground into Grand Central.
• The train emptied out at Yankee Stadium.
• The Yankees were playing the Sox.
• The Boston fan on the train survived the trip.
• It takes a long time to get about in NYC, at least if you don’t know the subway and bus routes.
• I think Julie could walk a hundred miles.  She was really well prepared for lots of walking.
• And she did it getting over a sinus infection.  Trooper.
• Hotel had a fire alarm go off on Saturday.  Was in the shower and didn’t hear it.  Once I got out, I heard it, but thought it was more important to put pants on than to get out immediately.  Before I got dressed the alarm turned off and I figured I might as well get properly dressed.
• Ann was very stylish the whole weekend.  She took pain killers so she could wear her boots through the city.  I’m impressed.
• The Cloisters is at the top of a hill.  There were buses that went up it, but we discovered it only after we had walked up the winding path.  Didn’t feel too bad about it, though, as it went through a wooded park and we got a great view of the Hudson.
• The Cloisters is beautiful.  There is an elaborately created chapel right off the entrance, but it was crafted out of elements from different sites.  Next time I go, I really want to take the tour so I can appreciate the context of all the elements.
• I still love Grand Central Station.
• Julie seemed to get a lot of sketching in.  I’ll have to flip through her book next time I visit.
• I discovered that I like a lot of the same things that the girls like for completely different reasons.  They really were enthusiastic about the artistic quality of the various artifacts, but I’m more interested in the historical context they represent.
• For instance, Kat noticed the fine details of two statues flanking one of the doors near the entrance.  But what really peaked my interest (apart from the fact that they were meant to represent Clovis and Clothar, two of the first French kings and founders of the Merovingian dynasty) was when Kat noted that all the other elements of the entranceway, including religious symbols, were headless.  This immediately implied defacement, and I began wondering what would have caused such an act.  Maybe it was an area controlled by the English during the sacking of the monasteries under Henry VIII or Edward VI.  Luckily, a tour went by just then, and explained it was the work of Huguenots, the Protestant French.
• The Met was impressive as always.
• But it seemed like a third of the place was roped off.  What the heck.  On a weekend?
• Didn’t get to see the Byzantine exhibit, but I’ve seen it like a million times.  Plus we missed the special Byzantine exhibit by a month or two, so all they had was the regular stuff (which is still pretty impressive).
• Julie sketched a lot of armor there.  Be interesting to see if any of it translates into garb for Novitas.
• I still like the pushcart vendors, even if the girls thought they were sketchy.  They are, but that’s part of the NYC experience.
• I still have yet to walk through Central Park proper.  I thought if we followed the road through from the Natural History Museum to the Met, we’d be able to wander a bit, but it was pretty much a man-made canyon, so we kinda missed it.
• Even ridiculous concepts tend to work out well on stage.  Toxic Avenger seemed a ridiculous idea, but worked out fairly well in production.  It was campy, but the actors really threw themselves into the role.
• Kat was right – the shifty cop was hilarious.
• I was really worried when I saw just how close to the stage the tickets were – the telecharge seating map indicated they were farther back.  Need to be more careful when buying tickets in the future.
• But it worked out really well.  We weren’t in the section that got wet, and even though I was worried there might be some splash damage, we didn’t get anything on us.
• And, with the exception of the very opening note, we didn’t get blasted by the music.
• And we got some interaction with the actors.
• Speaking of which, Kat got a bit of special attention from the lead actor playing the Toxic Avenger.  She seemed to appreciate it.
• Ann said that she’s always had tickets reserved at the box office and picked them up just before the show.  I think she’s right, that’s a better idea.  I’ll need to do that next time.
• At the last minute, decided to stop at Howes Cavern.  Hadn’t been there since grade school.  Very touristy, but neat.  The girls seemed to enjoy it.
• Along those lines, if you’re a tour guide, beware Ann and her camera.
• Got back at 8.
• Yankees swept the Sox.

Probably remember other things as well, but can’t think of them right now.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

To say I’m not Barney Frank’s biggest fan is an understatement of monumental proportions, and I was livid when I heard he wanted to investigate the investigative journalists who broke the ACORN scandal.  But, I feel it’s important to give props to the opposition when they do something right, and that’s what Barney Frank did less than 24 hours after signing a letter calling for the investigation, admitting that he didn’t carefully read the letter:

[T]he motivation of those who went to ACORN offices and initiated the discussions involving prostitution are wholly irrelevant to the fact that ACORN’s employees’ actions were outrageous and further indication of an organization that is at best poorly run in many regards. The defense against sting operations is not to ban them, but to behave properly so that they do not reveal as they did in this case clear evidence of gross impropriety.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

When (finally) covering the ACORN scandal, the Washington Post wrote the following about the film maker who shot the footage:

Though O’Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.

Later, a “correction” was added to the article:

This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O’Keefe, did not specifically mention them.

When a baseless accusation of racism against a whistle blower is made, I think a bit more than a “correction” is warranted.  This story insulted the honor and integrity of O’Keefe without merit or evidence.  The reporters and copy editors should be required to apologize, and not hide behind a lame journalistic convention designed to correct factual errors.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

For a long time, one of my major pet peeves in politics has been the “racism” canard used to rhetorically bludgeon Republicans.  For someone who thinks of themselves as liberal, consider it analogous to Republicans using patriotism as cover.

A particularly egregious example is the ever insufferable Maureen Dowd of the New York Times in her column on Congressman Joe Wilson.  Apparently Jonah Goldberg thought so as well:

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times hears Rep. Joe Wilson shout, “You lie!” And her instinctive response is: “Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”

It’s the “fair or not” that gives Dowd away. She admits to hearing racism whether or not it’s warranted. That’s called prejudice. And unlike Wilson’s foolish outburst, Dowd’s was carefully considered. Dowd, Carter and Sharpton can’t grasp that conservatives are less hung up on race than they are and that we can get past Obama’s skin color. “Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it,” writes Dowd. She’s right. She’s one of them.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

Apparently, the global downturn has resulted in a massive drop in demand for shipping.  The result is a large number of transport ships are remaining idle, but are too valuable to scrap.  As a result, a large “ghost fleet” of anchored ships has formed off the coast of Malaysia.  The DailyMail has the story.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

It’s a bit of a cliche at this point for the right to complain about mainstream media bias, but occasionally there is such a stark example of it that your head spins.  For instance, it turns out a senior Obama appointee is a confessed communist, called Republicans “a*holes”, was a 9-11 “truther”, and the list of “frank” comments just went on and on and on.  It’s a major embarrassment to the Obama White House that such a senior appointee is of such questionable character.  But Byron York of the Washington Examiner has found that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the big three networks have zero news stories on the issue, despite it being several days old.  And watching NewsHour just now, I haven’t seen any mention of it.

Make fun of Fox News as you want, but without it there wouldn’t be anything to offset this willful ignorance and self-censorship.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

I came across this on TechBargains, and I think it was put there more as a joke than anything.  Here is the description:

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Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

The Japanese Liberal-Democrat Party (LDP), the party that has ruled Japan for almost all of the post-war years, lost the last election.  High hopes of the Koizumi administration a few years ago were followed by less-able (which isn’t to say inept – Koizumi was a phenom) and eventually the economic meltdown that hit Japan’s export economy particularly hard.  The Japanese electorate turned to the only opposition party of note – the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).  However, this is probably a short lived change in power and doesn’t represent a fundamental shift in Japanese politics.

The LDP is madeup of the powerful, entrenched interest in Japan.  That’s why you frequently see Prime Ministers that are sons or grandsons of previous PMs or other powerful members.  The DPJ, however, is an amalgamation of all the fringe parties that are too small on their own to pose an electoral threat to the LDP.  There is no common underlying ideology or other bonds apart from the desire to supplant the LDP.  As a result, you’ll get nationalists, conservatives, socialists and even communists in the same government.  The result is likely to be a very schizophrenic and short lived government.  A similar occurrence happened after the implosion of the Japanese economy in 1993, at the beginning of the lost decade.   The non-LDP rule was likewise disjointed and confused, and quickly led to the restoration of the LDP.

Expect an interesting couple of years, followed by a return of LDP to power.

For those interested, here are a couple Stratfor links (you’ll need to request a free copy via e-mail) on the subject:

Japan: A Likely DPJ Government (Aug 14th, 2009)
The Geopolitics of Japan: An Island Power Adrift (Aug 27th, 2009)

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

A little over forty years ago, a woman died.  A favorite son of a powerful political family got drunk at a party, and drove his car off a bridge.  He escaped the car and fled the scene without looking to see if his passenger, a young woman whom had attended the party with him (and was not his wife), had gotten out.  He didn’t call for help, nor did he report the incident to police until the next day.   The police said if they had been called within ten minutes of the incident, there was a good chance they could have saved her.  An inquest determined he had lied about the events of the evening.  He never served a day in jail.  His only punishment was a suspended driving license for 18 months.

RIP Mary Jo Kopechne.

Originally published at The Philipic. You can comment here or there.

I really like orange gum.  Loved orange Bubblicious as a kid, and the affinity stuck.  I think orange Stride was about the best.  But, despite the fact that it’s such a great, basic flavor, I just can’t find it.  Look in the supermarket sometime for just “orange” gum.  You just can’t find it.  In it’s place is “citrus”, which is a combination of a bunch of flavors that usually make the gum taste like a nasty version of Hawaiian Punch.

I swear, all the gum lines and manufacturers are in cahoots to deny us orange gum.  *None* of them offer orange – just versions on the citrus theme.