Last night was the second total lunar eclipse in less than six
months. Here is footage shot in England in March 2007.
** WEEKEND BOX OFFICE FINAL. A NEW SPY MOVIE CHAMP IN THE OFFING, WITH POLITICAL OVERTONES. The final numbers for the weekend domestic movie box office are in, and The Bourne Ultimatum has already shot past its predecessor, The Bourne Supremacy, and the highest-grossing Bond film in the US, Casino Royale. The latest Bourne, which captures the political zeitgeist with its distrust of clandestine cowboy operations, grossed $185.3 million through the weekend. The previous film topped out at $176.2 million. Casino Royale, last year’s smash reboot of the Bond franchise with Daniel Craig as the new Bond — which was itself influenced by the characterization of Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne and the more frenetic and realistic action movie style of the Bourne pictures — topped out at $167.4 million.
The Bourne Ultimatum is well on its way to being the highest grossing spy movie of all time in the US. It will finish with well over $200 million in domestic box office.
Meanwhile, The Simpsons Movie, which features a character called President Arnold Schwarzenegger, is up over $170 million. And Michael Moore’s Sicko, his high hopes documentary about the woes of the US health care system and wonders of socialized medicine, is slowly edging towards $24 million as it finishes out its run, which is well short of its backers’ hopes.
** BLAST FROM THE PAST. The Washington Post has just published a piece on hunting submarines, that reads like something straight out of the Cold War. Clearly a response to the present saber rattling by Russia — which in turns is at least in part a response to US moves to establish an Eastern European-based missile shield — it prompts a larger question. How did we get here?
My old boss, former Senator Gary Hart, said last week that there is something that even in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union early in the last decade suggests not simply an anti-Soviet dynamic, but an anti-Russian dynamic. Hart, who knew former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev quite well and has traveled to Russia more than 100 times, advocated, during the Clinton years, that the US supplant its now obviously highly problematic reliance on Arab oil with long-term deals with Russian oil sources. But that was rejected.
Russia wasn’t looking for handouts, says Hart, but expertise. A long-term energy alliance would certainly not have hurt. Now, with the advent of the Bush Administration, and the obvious enmity towards Russia of Vice President Dick Cheney, a leading advocate of a policy of encirclement of Russia and its near abroad. a resurgent Russia is repaying past slights.
** WILDER FOR OBAMA. Former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder, the first elected black governor of a Southern state, is preparing to campaign aggressively for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Southern primaries for Democrats have huge numbers of African American voters. Wilder is a very important symbolic figure, as well as a very formidable figure on the stump.
** FIRST LABOR UNION ENDORSEMENTS FOR PRESIDENT. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd and New York Senator Hillary Clinton draw first blood in the competition for labor endorsements in the presidential campaign.
The longshot Dodd gets the biggest prize so far in the form of the International Association of Firefighters. The IAFF, quite prominent in post-9/11 controversies in New York, has declared the destruction of Rudy Giuliani’s frontrunning Republican presidential candidacy its top political priority. This is something of a setback for Hillary Clinton, whose campaign had hoped to have the firefighters with her from the get-go. Clinton gets the smaller and much less well-known United Transportation Union.
** NO NEW HEALTH CARE PROGRESS YET IN CALIFORNIA. Incidentally, someone, somewhere, amongst the corps of reporters who cover the Capitol full time must have reported that there was no apparent progress — at least on health care reform — in the Big 5 meeting of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders I reported on this morning. That’s because the Republicans are against it. As I believe I’ve mentioned. Once or twice. Not that that means there can’t be a bill.
** GREATEST TV SHOW IN WORLD NOW ON AMERICAN TELEVISION. Perhaps I exaggerate. A bit. One of my favorite shows is again on US cable TV. Top Gear, one of the most popular franchises ever in Britain, is now airing Monday nights on BBC America. It may not be quite as fun as the ultimate guilty pleasure, Footballers Wives, but it’s close.
Top Gear is about … cars. But it’s not one of those car shows about fiddling with engines and all that. It’s about the fun of cars. It’s quite amusing, it’s witty, it’s not changed for the American audience, so you get to wonder who these British rock stars driving a run-of-the-mill Chevy in time trials around the track at an old RAF base are, and so on. And it has Jeremy Clarkson, who I find hysterical. (For some reason, the featured BBC America photo is one of the other presenters, the also amusing Richard Hammond.) Clarkson is, or at least, pretends to be something of a conservative curmudgeon who takes subtle digs at Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is anything but a green and is, let’s say, an avoider of the politically correct, writes quite well (as his Sunday columns in the Times of London attest) and drives even better.
If I were to come up with a dream fun job, it’d be his. I mean, wouldn’t you want to race somebody traveling by train and jetliner from London to the Alps in a Ferrarri?
And yes, NWN is going a bit Brit again, partly because Britain is my Rodina (mother country), albeit a quarter of a millennium removed, and largely because there is a very significant 10th anniversary nearly upon us.
** IRAN TO WORK WITH SAUDI ARABIA ON IRAQI SECURITY? Declaring the US to be out of solutions in Iraq, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Iran is ready to fill the emerging power vacuum in Iraq. In concert with Saudi Arabia. Which would be a neat trick to pull off, given the historic enmity between the two nations, not to mention their contending branches of Islam.
** RANKS OF HEALTH CARE UNINSURED INCREASE, HILLARY COMMENTS. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who spearheaded an unsuccessful drive for expanded health coverage during her husband’s presidency: “Today’s new Census Bureau data reporting that now 47 million Americans have no health insurance, an increase of over 2 million people, demonstrates the urgent need to cover every American. When I began the fight for universal coverage almost fifteen years ago, there were 37 million people uninsured. It was an outrage then and with ten million more people uninsured today, it is an even deeper outrage today. … I look forward to announcing my plan to achieve this long overdue goal next month.”
** ROMNEY DISAPPEARS LARRY CRAIG. Mitt Romney removed US Senator Larry Craig from his Republican presidential campaign web site following the revelation of the veteran Idaho senator’s guilty plea on a charge of lewd conduct in a Minneapolis airport men’s room. Craig had just resigned as Idaho chairman of the Romney campaign, and as the former Massachusetts governor’s Senate co-chairman, a post he shared with Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who was himself a character in the classic All The President’s Men. Craig, a social conservative and longtime opponent of gay rights, provided a ringing video endorsement of Romney as a champion of family values. But that has disappeared from the Romney video archives.
With the exception of Fred Thompson, who is working on getting his candidacy airborne, all the top Republican candidates have been beset by embarrassing arrests of some of their top backers, as this column on the right-wing Town Hall notes. John McCain’s Florida co-chairman was arrested for soliciting sex in a men’s room. And Rudy Giuliani’s South Carolina chairman was arrested as a major cocaine trafficker. Then there are the multiple legal woes of Giuliani’s longtime compadre Bernie Kerik, his one-time NYPD driver who was appointed by President Bush to be US secretary of homeland security. But that’s another story.
As much as some gloat over the woes of Craig, you have to have sympathy for closeted gays in a Republican Party which employs a fundamentalist jihad on a number of issues such as taxes and sexuality. Some readers will say that they should become Democrats. But if one is not comfortable surrounded by the various agendas of labor unions, environmentalist groups, and left-liberal ideologues, that’s not an attractive option, either.
** CONSERVATIVE CALIFORNIA COUNTY GOING GREEN. In the wake of settling a controversial lawsuit brought against it by former Governor-turned Attorney General Jerry Brown, sprawling and conservative San Bernardino County — the largest county in the continental US — is providing new incentives for solar and wind power and placing developments which meet green building criteria on a fast track for approval. No doubt this will make some on the far right, who instigated the failed state budget stall, see red.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 106th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices are in the $69 to $72 per barrel range.
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Put a union bug in your sandwich…more protein!
I think I’ve had that Quiznos sandwich …
Saudi/Iran cooperation:
Bush’s has a new Iraq stance.. to say “Iraq is front line against Iran.” is the new mantra…So…the road to democracy in Iraq has come to its end…our mission is now being defined as the need for “containment of Iran”.. This new mantra is designed to buy him time and perhaps garner him more support on Iraq…and Cheney/Abrams and co. probably hope it will lead down the line to public acceptance for bombing Iran…which they have never given up on..Iran has somewhat the upperhand in Iraq at the moment…However, Iran could be signally the Saudis that they understand that they will not be able to ignore the Saudis or Saudi’s deep concerns about Iran’s domination of Iraq. The US, who has allowed our relation with the Saudis to deteriorate, may find itself more on the outside looking in, as these two negotiate an acceptable solution to the new geopolitical map of the Middle East caused by the US invasion of Iraq. It is quite POSSIBLE that Iran and the Saudis will be able to draw a line in the sand that both understand would be perilous to cross ….(for other reasons, it is also possible they may not)… Moreover, considering how tone deaf this administration is in the Middle East, the US being unable to impose an outcome here, just might be a blessing in disguise. It is in Iran’s and the Saudis self-interest to compromise and work together in bring stability to Iraq, thus impeding the al Qaeda franchises from taking further hold at their respective borders leading to insurgencies in their own countries. There are leaders in both countries that understand that. The question is how would this administration react to a Saudi/Iran finding a solution in Iraq? Certainly, there are individuals in this administration that would try to derail such negotiations for their own agenda….
Reading Bill’s comments, it seems to me the endorsement of Dodd is a message to Hillary – “stop calling us, we ain’t endorsing you.” Why that is, I don’t know.
Whatever happened to those Krazy Kos Kidz at Calitics? Nobody posts there either, like the Flush Report.
Barbara, your little pinky knows more about the Middle East than I do. I don’t pretend to understand half of what’s going on over there, but I will draw you back to your statement: “It is in Iran’s and the Saudis self-interest to compromise and work together in bring stability to Iraq.”
I agree and that’s why I’m concerned. The Saudis’ “control” of al Queda has served them well, but not so much us. Could they screw things up worse the America? No. But I think these two regional superpowers are very capable of succeeding in their mission of indemnifying themselves from the “Iraqi problem,” while making things very bad for us, Iraq’s neighbors and the Iraqi people.
Iraq was such a colossal series of mistakes and now it’s like watching a horrible chain reaction that we can’t stop. Maybe this intervention by Saudi Arabia and Iran is inevitable, but I think more foreign influence in Iraqi affairs is only going to bring more grief.
Iran has to be part of an Iraq settlement, which is why the US is engaging them. The question is how big a part.
While I am not an expert I think we are giving far too much credit to the Iranian thought process.
Iran wants THEIR form of stability in Iraq and on their terms. And those terms should really concern everyone — not just the idiots running policy for the U.S.
The Iranians have tried since the the 1979 revolution to bring down the Kingdom. Khomeni used to make veiled threats to overthrowing the Kingdom — for being to close to the U.S. — and establishing a Tehran-style government. Hell, they are STILL trying to. Believe me, the Saudis don’t trust the Iranians since 1979 — and I don’t believe they ever will. The Saudis, from what I have read, view the Iranians as unstable — partnering with them is as much a danger to them as telling them to bugger off.
I don’t know why we insist on subscribing higher motives to societies, particularly the Iranians, when their motives are much more base. Like most dictatorial societies, and Iran is a theocratic dictatorship, their own concern is how to stay in power and amass more power.
Stability is the other guy’s problem.
BTW, did anyone hear Larry Craig and the press conference declare: “I am not gay, I have never been gay….”
Mr. Garrison from South Park (in EVERY EPISODE): “I am NOT gay.”
Seriously, the comparisons here are spooky.
Like Mark Foley and others before him, the unrelenting hypocrisy of the right-wing NEVER ceases to amaze me.
Brasky: The Saudis’ “control” of al Queda
This statement is erroneous.
Cadts:Iran wants THEIR form of stability in Iraq and on their terms
Correct…somewhat …but they understand they do not live in a bubble…they are part of the Muslim world, the Shia leaders of that world…they have been waiting to be reckoned as a world power…they are almost there in this multipolar world that the US has designed with this great failure, the Iraq War…building piplelines to Turkey transiting which will help free up EU from Russia- only energy sources…the US needing them to salvage something, …anything! from the Iraq disaster, and their great competitor the Saudis, home to the Holiest sites of Islam, needing to find a way to cooperate and accommodate h them…the bigger problem now is that RASANJANI is not yet the leader of Iran yet and Bush/Cheney still are leading US….so how this will all play out is very unclear
Brasky: The Saudis’ “control” of al Queda
This statement is erroneous.
Cadts:Iran wants THEIR form of stability in Iraq and on their terms
Correct…somewhat …but they understand they do not live in a bubble…they are part of the Muslim world, the Shia leaders of that world…they have been waiting to be reckoned as a world power…they are almost there in this multipolar world that the US has designed with this great failure, the Iraq War…building piplelines to Turkey transiting which will help free up EU from Russia- only energy sources…the US needing them to salvage something, …anything! from the Iraq disaster, and their great competitor the Saudis, home to the Holiest sites of Islam, needing to find a way to cooperate and accommodate h them…the bigger problem now is that RASANJANI is not yet the leader of Iran yet and Bush/Cheney still are leading US….so how this will all play out is very unclear
As far as the whole Iran-Iraq thing, I may be way off base…but hey, to quote somebody famous who once said, “I am naught a simple farmer who wants nothing more tend to my land.”
Actually, I believe Quiznos sandwich do have a union bug in their sandwich — its called their “steak supreme”.
Carole…after reading my responses, I fear I didn’t answer you properly…so I apologize for that.
However, Chris Dodd is a great guy and a fine U.S. Senator in the great tradition of Connecticut Senators (yes, there are some good ones). I know folks who work for him and raise $$$ for him.
Personally, he would make a fine President but he kind did all of this last minute and with the field as crowded with talent as the Democrats currently enjoy — a guy like Dodd won’t break through.
Believe me, I harbored the same hopes for Joe Biden in some ways — but, to quote Austin Powers, “Unfortunately, for yours truly, that train has sailed….”
CADTs”particularly the Iranians, when their motives are much more base.”
Like the Arabs, the Iranians are an ancient proud people… their history and their culture are very complex…like their people and many of their leaders…
Today is the feast day for St. Augustine. He is one of the definers of the “Just War”. He was a Berber; all Arabs of N. Africa have Berber blood…he influenced Descartes…I love both men.
Barbara, IRan and the Iranian (nay Persia and the Persians), have a beautiful, unique and ancient history – you are so right about that.
But that isn’t the issues. I just happened to think the motives of the current leadership is a great deal more base than we believe.
Maybe thats too simplistic….
“But that isn’t the issues”
Oh but it is…it very much is ONE of the issues…FT’s editorial today on IMF addressed this very issue…
“Droit de seigneur” is still alive and well in the West….and we will be sorry down the line if we don’t elect Obama….very sorry.
Wilbur,
RE: OES Report for California
I would be happier if every EMS worker had a satellite type phone or “s” band. It would be nice if the locals where as tuned in as the military.
CADTS,
Your comments are always accurate and intellectual. I appreciate all of them.
Mr. Craig has created a ludicrous scenario for himself.
“Top Gear” sounds like a blast.
The link above I tried to provide above to Obama’s very gutsy op ed piece (FT)on Sub prime Loans appears to not work…The piece is wonderful, and also serves as an indictment against excessive lobbying…It can be found in today’s Financial Times print pg 9…
Barb, here is a fixed version of your first link:
http://tinyurl.com/29hv3g
Barb, here is a fixed version of your first link:
http://tinyurl.com/29hv3g
I should add — I would’ve Tiny’d the second, but I can’t seem to get my FT account to work right now, and that article isn’t public.