Nothing But the Truth

Last night I watched “Nothing But the Truth” on DVD.  I enjoyed it much more than I had anticipated.  It is an above-average political thriller, which is enhanced by its obvious parallels to the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in the “real world.”

The cast is outstanding, with Kate Beckinsale playing the lead as a reporter who refuses to give up her source and ends up going to jail and suffering terrible collateral losses as a result.  Vera Farmiga (one of my favorite underrated actors) is terrific as the outed agent.  A big surprise was Matt Dillon, who plays the heartless special prosecutor – he just keeps getting better and more credible as he ages.  Also turning in fine performances were Alan Alda as the famous civil rights lawyer, Angela Bassett as the editor, and Noah Wyle as the attorney for the newspaper.

The script is excellent, and does not contain the “holes” that some political thriller’s have – everything seems perfectly believable. 

A very nice DVD rental for sure.  I recommend it. 

~  Tom

Props for Sheldon Whitehouse

Lately I have been hearing of lot of interviews of, and comments by, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. I had never heard of this guy before, but I love to listen to him now that I have discovered him. He is so well spoken and articulate, but his best attribute is to make his point directly, without having to lay down miles of bullshit, equivocation, or “weather vaning.” I am very impressed. So, I was not surprised today to hear him call out the hypocrites of the right on their bogus claim that Sotomayor was an “activist” judge and that the left wants to pack the Supreme Court with “activist” judges who will not follow the constitution. He points out who the real activist judges are! This is some really courageous, strong stuff. Check it out.

Also making similar comments were Dianne Feinstein and Russ Feingold, but not quite as good as the “Whitehouse Edition.”

~ tom

The fountain of youth?

Today, I was driving around with my dog doing various errands and I turned on the local FM 24/7 jazz station, KCSM.  I realized that I had not been listening to any jazz for a while, but I immediately got right into it.  It turned out to be an epic set, mostly stuff I had never heard before.  Especially fantastic was a piece by the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band – the cats were cookin’ and blowing in a sort of controlled mania.  Very, very hot.

But the real point of this post is to note that as I was driving around on a gorgeous summer day, listening to great jazz, I felt like I was in my twenties again.  I can get flashbacks and contact highs from old rock and pop songs, but today confirmed that only jazz can transport me back in time to the point where my whole being takes the ride.  I could almost smell the funky, exciting odor of the small club at which I saw Trane in SF at age 20 on a fake ID.  I was literally only about 8 feet from him, and I’m still recovering to this day.  Reminds me of the Grammys that year when Carlos Santana won about a zillion categories -- at one point he stopped, got real serious and said to the watching world,  “Listen to John Coltrane every day.”  Think I’m gonna try that.

~  tom

Palin – WTF?!

I’m up here at the Tahoe place.  Twitter is all “a-twitter” over the breaking news that Sarah Palin is not going to run again for governor AND that she is resigning office as of July 26th.  I can hardly wait for the “real scoop.”  Any guesses?

Testing Windows “Live Writer”

I was just looking at the programs listed at “Top 10 Freeware Software Nobody Knows About - But Should” and ended up downloading #7, “Windows Live Writer,” which I am using to draft this post.  This thing is wonderful!  It has all the tools that come with Blogspot, and also a few more, which I will try out soon.  Also, it’s much easier to import photos,

and it is a full featured Word Processor, with lots of different fonts to choose from. 

And I	Can
Even set up	Tables!

Oh, and it even lets me inset maps.  The push pin is where I live by the SF Bay.

This is way cool.

More on single-payer health care

To increase your chops in debating this issue, here is another resource.

Turning over the rock...

I have been just going crazy over the right wing trying to characterize the Obama administration as being a "Fascist" regime -- "socialist" was bad enough, but this takes the cake.

However, I realized that my thinking and current knowledge on the subject of fascism had dreadfully eroded since my "political science major" days as an undergrad. So I decided to restore/update my chops on this subject.

In pursuing that quest, I found the following site, which explains the subject perfectly. Applied to Obama - forget it! Applied to eight years of Bush - Yep.