Ruby Tuesday: Traffic, Iran, The Piano Tuner, The Red Sea

Picture: Quiet crossroads in Loogootee shortly after noon today. Siesta time?

Ruby Tuesday: And what came to mind when you saw 'Ruby Tuesday'? This (google rank #4) or this (google rank #1)? Or something else?

Netflix movie this afternoon: Traffic. Michael Douglas stars in this movie dealing with drugs and drug traffic. Lots of action and meaningful stuff on this side of the Mexican border and on the other side, even including subtitles on occasion (when in Mexico). Not a message of hope by any means. Gave it a four - we both enjoyed it.

From WAPO: Iran shut down a suspected effort to build nuclear weapons four years ago. Sure am glad to hear that. Sorry to see our president again getting the intelligence wrong. Glad the CIA is speaking up. Even gladder that the Press is picking it up and reporting it. And now the Press wants to know when the president knew what he knew, like maybe he knew before all the saber rattling about the real danger that we are all in because of Iran's growing nuclear capability. Good for them. I'm interested too though I already know the answer.

Update: Via tpm, Seymour Hersh on CNN saying that WH has know for over a year and that they tried to keep it out of the NIE. My oh my. Doesn't that beat all...

Started a new book, another one of Diane's which she thought I might enjoy as it has a setting in Burma: The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason. So far have traveled around London, across the English Channel to Paris and then by rail to Marseille; from there back on the water to the Suez Canal and down into the Red Sea and onto Bombay and then via rail to Calcutta. Destination: Burma.

It was as I was steaming down the Red Sea with the hero of the book, Edgar Drake, that I wondered how much of Africa to the east and Arabia to the west he was getting to see. Now my thinking was conditioned by the narrowness of the Suez Canal so I was thinking maybe Africa and Arabia weren't all that far apart. Well, just how far is it from one side of the Red Sea to the other? Have any idea? I had a rough idea after looking at a globe and eyeballing the distance between South Bend and Chicago; thought maybe it was comparable, about ninety miles, not a distance very easily spanned by the human eye thus making the Africa on my right and Arabia on my left not a very good construct. But the ninety miles happens to be way off. According to Wikipedia, it's widest point is a hundred and ninety miles. Wow.

So it goes. World turns.

Woodward's State of Denial

Picture: Lucas with Naomi and Leah and friends at the Children's Discovery Museum near Palm Springs last week.

Finished Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part 111. Found it enlightening as I was able to see much more of the little things that go on, the daily meetings, the infighting, the delays, the different personalities, all of which make up the daily life of our leaders and runners of our government. I found that those twin attributes that have been hallmarks of this administration, incompetence and arrogance, are displayed over and over again although the incompetence is much more prevalent that the arrogance. The biggest bad guy in this telling is Rumsfeld though Rice comes in a close second. Bush himself is aloof and incurious. Chaney is pretty much a non entity, something which I find rather amazing since I see him as a dark force ever present; maybe Woodward is hinting at that with keeping him in the background. In the latter part of the book, the wrap up, the author admits that he has pretty much been cut off by the principles (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley) since sometime in 2003 - book takes us up to the summer of 2006. Worth reading if you are at all interested in what's happening at the top of our government as it tries to win a war that is believed to be critical for the safety of the United States in the years to come. Note: it is about the war and little else - just about zip on politics and domestic stuff.

Sunday Wrap: Movie: The Tiger and the Snow, Colts Win, etc.

Picture: Lucas out in Palm Springs: the law has arrived!

Movie time tonight: The Tiger and the Snow, a very good Italian comedy that will make you laugh. In the end a love story. The main character is a goof and a poet with a passion for life. Well done, time well spent. Gets a five from me.

Colts win in a game that was a goodie. Had to sit on the edge of the chair right up to the last minute. Colts did get one pick, snapping Gerrard's zero interceptions for the season; another one was canceled because of a Colt penalty.

OSU and LSU for the college football championship. Could be that OSU gets skunked again. It is a rebuilding year after all.

Sunday Funnies: College Football Chaos, Wolverine Woes, etc.

Picture: Little Darling Leah yesterday morning before Oma and Lucas' leave taking.

Diane stumbled in just before 2 am this morning, tired...

-College football: Watched LSU win yesterday afternoon; watched Oklahoma win last night. I'ld put them in the championship bout but looks like OSU, who never played a top 20 team all year, will get one spot. Crazy year, right? Right. cbssports has a summary of the chaos.

-Michigan basketball team falls to Harvard and Amaker (MI's former coach). Not on the scale of the football's team loss to Appalachian State last fall, but nice for Tommy Amaker. Get this: they played at the Ivy League school's gym, a sell out crowd of 2050, that's two thousand and fifty, ended up chanting "We got Tommy! We got Tommy!" That's cool. Of course, there's also the public announcement by the LSU coach just before his team went on the field yesterday, that he was staying at LSU, scotching rumors that he was taking over the Michigan post. Bad day for Wolverine fans.

-Go Colts, stomp Jaguars. Jag QB Garrard hasn't had an interception in a long time, none this year yet in fact. Time to put a stop to that kind of stuff. Let's pick two just for the heck of it.

-Warm, misty and windy up here on the hill. Too bad about the mist - would be a golfing type day; still may head over there in a bit, at least for a walk.

World turns. Iraqi War still on; global warming still on; presidential politicking still on. Oh my.

Birds Breaking Bread and Birds on the Wing

Picture of a few of our feathered friends breaking bread together. Camera smarts: using a lowered numbered aperture setting allows for the focus to come forward and be on the birds; notice the fuzzed background. (Focus on Aperture)

Note on other birds: Diane and Lucas are in the air somewhere (or will be shortly), winging their way east after the conclusion of their stay in the wild west. Glad we have some good old Hoosier weather to greet them. Due in after 11 tonight up in Indy.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Just spent an hour watching and listening to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra do the Ghosts of Christmas Eve. Lee Wininger clued us in on these musicians who put on stunning light and sound shows. From Wikipedia:

Trans-Siberian Orchestra (often abbreviated as TSO) is a rock orchestra founded by Paul O'Neill, Robert Kinkel, and Jon Oliva in 1996. The band's musical style is often described in different terms, incorporating progressive rock, symphonic metal, and heavy metal, with influences from classical music. Trans-Siberian Orchestra is well known for its renditions of traditional Christmas songs.

Nice way to spend an hour on a cool Saturday morning.

PBS: Bill Moyers' Buying the War: Cudos to Knight-Ridder

As I mentioned last night, PBS was doing a fund raiser. Along with the special Johnny Cash clips from the 60's, they also ran Bill Moyers' Buying the War, a devasting critique of the Press and its role in selling the Iraq War to the Public in the months before March of 2003. It is clear that the Press, with the exception of Knight-Ridder, became propaganda tools of the Bush administration. They rolled over and practically begged to participate in the sham that was the run up to the war. They completely abdicated their role in keeping the Public informed, in asking the right questions, in being skeptical at every turn. They allowed the administration to lie, over and over.

From the link:

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

Moyers gives credit to the Knight-Ridder news organization for getting it right, for being skeptical, for doing the leg work that uncovered the facts and revealed the lies. Alas, the Knight-Ridder voice was drowned out by the roar of the right wing noise machine and the mis information blared from every available outlet, whether news print or television or radio.

Guess this program was originally aired sometime last spring. I missed it the first time.