Can anyone tell me what makes dembloggers so coo-coo for cocoa puffs over Kathleen Sebelius? I mean, what does she have going for her aside from the fact that she’s a woman? I’m not asking to be snarky, I honestly know nothing about her aside from the fact that she’s a woman, she’s Governor of Kansas, and she gave a really mediocre response to the State of the Union.

I just want to know if people like her because of something she’s accomplished as Governor, or at least something she’s tried to accomplish, or if it really just comes down to, “here’s an older white woman that can win back Hillary supporters.”

Now that the primary is basically done, everyone and there brother is going to have a Veep post. I may do one too, but most likely by the time I get around to it everything I was going to say will have already been said.

So apparently John Edwards came out the other day and “praised” Barack Obama without actually endorsing him.

It’s a little frustrating, because if Edwards had immediately dropped out after Iowa and endorsed Obama, I think this whole thing might have been over by Super Tuesday. When he dropped out and refused to endorse, I was confused. After Super Tuesday I was beginning to think that maybe he was saving his endorsement until the North Carolina primary, when it might have the greatest impact. Yet that has come and gone with nothing.

I’m pretty sure he’s hedging his bets, not wanting to piss off either candidate by endorsing the other. He’s likely either hoping for a VP slot or cabinet post this time around, or thinking that if Obama fails he can be Hillary’s VP pick in 2012.

Which is just slimy, weasely, politician shit that belies his newfound progressive/antipoverty identity he discovered in time for this election.

But I think he still holds out hope that he can be the nominee this time. Remember, he never officially dropped out of the race - he merely suspended his campaign. I think he thinks there’s an outside chance this will go to a floor fight at the convention and he can be the charming white southern man that comes in to save the party. I’m sure even he knows its a long, long, longshot… but it does explain why he won’t actually drop out of the race and endorse Obama, pledging his handful of Iowa delegates to the front-runner. It would be difficult to do that, and then turn around in Denver and say, “I didn’t mean it. Pick me instead.”

Though it might not be as long of a shot as you’d think. Remember, if it becomes an almost-tie between Obama and Clinton, those 12 delegates or so pledged to him can throw the whole thing into open balloting. If nothing else, that will give him leverage to horsetrade with either Clinton or Obama - 12 delegates for the VP spot.

Taking a break from Grand Theft Auto for a bit to celebrate my wife finishing another semester of school and watch some Battlestar Galactica season 3. I heard all the news about last nights primaries, and its funny how the media have gone from writing Obama’s obituary back to Hillary’s.

The calls for her to step down are likely premature, unless all of the remaining high-profile superdelegates come out and endorse Obama this week. Much more likely, both because it helps her save face and it helps the party is a decision to let the process play out without the ridiculous negative campaigning and attempts at character assassination. Its only a few more weeks until the primaries are over, and there’s no reason they can’t be like the final primaries between Huckabee and McCain before McCain finally clinched the nomination.

By giving voters a choice in states that have never really had it, they’ll increase excitement about the election, register new voters and activate folks who don’t usually participate. If they can do this without the Clinton smear tactics and ridiculous pandering (repeal the gas tax? really?) it will be a net benefit to the party, not a negative.

Moreover, by finishing the final races it allows Clinton to save face. Lets face it, she’s the closest thing this entire season had to an incumbent and it has to be pretty humiliating to go from the inevitable candidate to the loser. She’s got a few weeks to both rally the party in the remaining states and work on a concession speech that doesn’t sound like sour grapes or leave the door open to “if we can only get Michigan and Florida seated….” If she can manage to avoid her campain instincts to go negative in the last few weeks, she can really heal the damage this campaign has done to her reputation and her legacy. Imagine the day after she loses in Montana and South Dakota she concedes to Obama, mentions how great it was that every state got a chance to vote and how many new Democrats have been brought into the process, and does the traditional call-to-unity. This is immediately followed by endorsements by Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and whatever other big-name supers haven’t endorsed yet.

Of course, this whole situation is bringing back talk of the so-called “dream ticket” of Obama/Clinton - which has always seemed like a bad idea to me. However, it is true that Obama needs someone who can help him either with white women or blue collar men. While I can’t really see Clinton as the VP nominee, I can see a backroom deal where Obama basically allows her to populate his short list.

The real big question, honestly, is whether the Clintons will really work to get Obama elected, or whether they’ll sabatoge his efforts in the hope that she can win in 2012.

I won’t be blogging for a while. I’m spending time in Liberty City.

There Will Be Blood: Let me start by saying that I am not a Paul Thomas Anderson fan. I thought Magnolia was crap, and Boogie Nights  never looked interesting enough for me to bother watching it. Yet There Will Be Blood caught my eye because a) I like the time period and b) it’s based on an Upton Sinclair novel. Having just watched the entire Deadwood series (granted, set two decades prior) I was in the mood for a film like this… not so much a Western - even though it is set in the deserts of southern California at the turn of the century - as a drama.

The film is beautifully shot and mostly well put together. It follows a self-made oilman from his beginnings as a silver prospector who discovers oil accidentially to his end as some sort of millionaire rattling around an empty mansion waiting to die. Most of the action takes place between, when he already has some success and comes to a town called New Boston to build what will be his eventual fortune.

Now, overall I liked the movie and thought that there were some very interesting choices made - like the decision to have no dialog for the first 20 minutes or so of the film. We see how dangerous prospecting is as the main character - Daniel Plainview - falls down the shaft he’s dug. We also see Plainviews determination as he literally drags himself all the way back to town to have his find assayed. It’s an interesting bit of character development and sets the tone for the whole movie.

Ultimately, if the film has a weakness (and I think it does), it’s that it is all about tone and “character study” and doesn’t have a strong plot. Rather than a unifying story arc, it’s one of those “stuff happens until it stops” films - the type that film students and critics love but guys like me just can’t get into. In fact, the reason I put “character study” in quotes is that my experience is that when I profess not to love one of these acclaimed movies, the cineratti condescendingly tell me that it’s a “character study” - as if only rubes in straw hats want something as base as a plot.

Now, this isn’t to suggest that There Will Be Blood is as random and pointless as, say, Magnolia. There is an identifiable storyline, and there are some decent conflicts set up along the way. The problem comes, as it often does for movies of this type, with the ending. After following the adventures (for lack of a better term) of Daniel Plainview in New Boston - buying up the land, setting up oil derricks, having a relatively minor conflict with a local preacher, having a visit from an unknown long-lost half-brother, having some issues with his son, and eventually building a pipeline that allows him to get rich off the oil he’s drilling - it all of a sudden jumps ahead a few decades. This is where we see Plainview in an empty mansion. In the final two scenes he berates his adult son and casts him out of his life, and delivers a wierd speech about milkshakes to the preacher. Yet both of those things seem to come out of nowhere. The conflict he had with the preacher never seemed nearly so central to the plot as the ending would indicate, and the scene with the son sort of comes out of nowhere. Sure, they show the audience how greedy, miserable, and paranoid Plainview really is - the character study stuff - but they don’t really work the the plot that has been set up to that point.

Maybe if there was time to show us what happened in the intervening decades they might make more sense. It seems like jumps in time always disorient me in a movie and take me out of the story while I try to get my bearings. This is the same problem I had with No Country for Old Men - which was also fantastically shot and great up until the last ten minutes or so. It’s also why I think a lot of biopics fail as they jump around a persons life to hit all of the “important moments” rather than concentrating on telling one good story.

It’s not so much that I think movies need to have a happy ending (There Will Be Blood certainly doesn’t), but I do think they need to have a good ending. Something that gives closure on the main plotline, hopefully ties up the disparate subplots, and completes a story arc rather than being capped on simply because the movie was ending.

I’d still recommend seeing the film, just as I’d reccomend No Country for Old Men. Both are beautifully shot, and gripping for 95% of the film. But I’d really like decent plots to make a comeback in film, and not have to choose between plotless arty movies and soulless simplistic blockbusters.

Have Heart - The Things We Carry: This band can be summed up in Rick Rodney’s two favorite words - “Straight Fucking Edge!” At least I think it was Rick Rodney that used to say that. Maybe it was some other mid-90s Victory style straightedge band. Who can remember?

Anyway, I want to know why all of you readers out there still somewhat connected to the hardcore scene have been keeping this band a secret from me. Why didn’t you tell me like two years ago that I absolutely, positively had to drop everything I was doing and go get this album right fucking now? I take back every good thing I said about Bane and bestow it on Have Heart. In fact, I think I take back every good thing I ever said about Chain of Strength, Mainstrike, and Trial and name these guys the new kings of youth crew hardcore.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but I’m just excited to hear awesome hardcore music again. Basically, if you like every awesome hardcore band ever, you will dig Have Heart. Actually, let me be more specific. If you like every awesome youth crew hardcore band ever, you’ll love Have Heart. If you were into Frail or Ashes or all those bands where they played with their back to the crowd this might just be too awesome for you. These guys don’t sound all that different than other youth crew revival bands that were popular around the time I dropped out of the scene a decade ago (In My Eyes, Ten Yard Fight, Trial, Champion, etc) but they seem to just do such a good job at it that its impossible not to love them.

There’s no way I’m trading this. It makes me feel like an angry 19 year old straightedge kid again, not a 34 year old guy who eats breakfast and dinner at the same bar.

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Daily Kos: The Clinton and Obama maps.

ProJo: Film folks eat well on state’s tab.

New York Times: Beijing Pressures Automakers to Improve Efficiency.

AFL-CIO: More Layoffs, Fewer Hours on the Job and Teachers Forced to Take Second Jobs.

C-Net: TV power consumption.

AFL-CIO: Gas Workers in New Mexico, Firefighters in Alabama and More Join AFL-CIO Unions.

Green Car Congress: US Corn Ethanol Plants Show Efficiency Gains Since 2001.

AFL-CIO: Justice Isn’t Blind. It’s Partisan.

AFL-CIO: African Trade Unions Stop ‘Shipment of Death’

A Chinese cargo ship packed with rocket grenades, mortar rounds and 3 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition destined for strife-torn Zimbabwe is now reported to be returning its cargo to China. South African trade unionists refused to unload the ship Friday and other African unions have made similar vows in other ports.

IFPTE: International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Endorses Senator Barack Obama for President

ProJo: Union pulls out of efforts to reform pension plan

Bamboozled: Spike Lee’s attempt at “satire” bombed not because Americans are too stupid to understand satire, nor because the subject matter was controversial. It bombed because Spike Lee has no sense of subtlety, that essential component of good satire. You have to trust the audience to get the joke, not hammer them over the head repeatedly while screaming in their ears - which is the preferred method of communication for a Spike Lee movie.

Bamboozled is the story of Pierre Delacroix - played by Marlon Wayans using the most effette mannerisms and the nasalist “Eddy Murphy White Guy” voice he can muster. Pierre is the sole black writer at a television network, and is expected to come up with an “edgy” and “urban” show that will win over the coveted youth demographic. What he comes up with is, quite literally, a minstrel show. His pitch is to take a pair of homeless street performers, put them in blackface, and air “Mantan’s New Millenium Minstrel Show.”

The pitch scene is one of the funniest in the film, in a very “he didn’t just say that, did he?” sort of way. But it breaks down in two different ways.

Firstly, we’re given three conflicting motivations for Delacroix to pitch such a show, and none of them are followed up on. First its established that he’s repeatedly “Cosby-like” shows about the black middle class that the network rejects. After getting dressed down by his boss and ordered to come up with something urban and edgy, he decides to be as extreme as possible to make a point. Second, it’s mentioned that he’d like to leave and work for another network, but he’s under a contract he can only get out of by getting fired. Thirdly, Delacroix keeps saying that the Minstrel Show is satire, though he never really explains what or how it classifies as satire.

The second place it breaks down is the fact that, well, I can’t see a minstrel show getting popular today. Forget about the racial aspect of it, if you prefer. Imagine we’re talking vaudville here. I can’t see a TV executive getting so hyped up like it will be the funniest thing ever. I can’t see audiences dying in laughter at a guy tapdancing, or a show like that becoming a cultural phenomenon to the point where little white grandmothers are wearing blackface and calling themselves “niggers”. It’s like when you watch Studio 60 and you think, “My god, the sketch show they’re writing would be the most horribly unfunny sketch show, ever.”

But then again, I never thought American Idol would be a huge hit year after year either. So what do I know?

It’s clear that Spike Lee is trying to skewer what passes for black entertainment today. He’s trying to say that the shows that were on UPN and The WB at the time (before they switched to an all-white-teen-drama schedule) were just as stereotypical and demeaning as Mantan and Sleep ‘n’ Eat. He also takes some shots at hip-hop and does a hilarious parody of Tommy Hilfiger. But his hamfisted and haphazard approach doesn’t really qualify as satire… unless you count the fact that he cast one of the Wayans Brothers - a god-damn modern Minstrel production company if there ever was one - as the lead.

Curtis Eller’s American Circus - Wirewalkers and Assassins: Curtis Eller is a Brooklyn based banjo player who’s music would fit perfectly on the soundtrack to either of the two best shows HBO has produced in the last several years - Deadwood and Carnivale. He’s somewhat similar in style and lyrical content to two of my favorite bands - Reverend Glasseye and The Bad Things - but he’s somewhat less theatrical than either band. His Circus provides accompaniment on percussion, steel guitar, upright bass, and organ, but their subdued performance merely supports Eller, who is clearly the star of the show. This leads to a much more stripped down style that sounds more authenticly Americana (albeit with modern production values) than the fantastical performances of either Jimmy the Pickpocket and Miss Funi or the good Reverend.

Lyrically, Eller has a great storytelling style. The most powerful song tells the tale of the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 and another is simply the plea of an aerealist’s wife who fears for her husbands life. The song Sweatshop Fire reads like something Johann Most himself would have written. “Save me Joe Louis” is the plea of a death-row convict who finally resigns himself to his fate.

I won’t go through all of the songs on there, suffice it to say I like the record and will not be trading it. If you’d like to check out the Circus yourself you can visit curtiseller.com or buy the disc at CDBaby.

NY Daily News: Battle has become a clash of class - and Hillary Clinton proves she has none.

DJWilson: DKM to play union rally.

AFL-CIO: 100 TV Technical Employees Join IBEW.

Green Car Congress: US GHG Inventory Shows 1.1% Decline in 2006.

Majikthise: Life parodies The Wire: Baltimore Sun replaces crime reporters with blogger.

ProJo: R.I. single-family home sales, prices plunge in February.

ProJo: Nurses strike averted at Butler Hospital.

ProJo: Henderson Bridge needs $50 million in repairs.

Green Car Congress: Aerodynamic Heavy-Duty Truck Trailer Cuts Fuel Consumption and Emissions By Up to 15%

ProJo: R.I. jobless rate climbs; 3.100 jobs lost in March

Miss Lily and I have just invented the best game ever!

See, I was just sitting here designing a wedding album and the cat, as she’s wont to do, decided to attach herself to my lap. Donna insists that she does this because she loves me, and not just because I have the warmest lap in the house.

Anyway, as I am wont to do, I was listening to music while I worked. Specifically, I was listening to Reign in Blood - which to this date is still one of the best metal albums ever recorded (possibly eclipsed by Metallica’s Master of Puppets or Acme’s To Reduce the Choir to a Single Soloist). As yinz probably know, it’s been scientifically proven that one cannot listen to certain Slayer songs without table-drumming or air-guitaring.

The thing is, the cat doesn’t understand that the point of such hand movements is simply to rock out. In her mind, the only reason human beings move their hands is to pet her. So she arched her back to get it closer to my hands, and therein came the epiphany.

Rather than air-guitar, I can cat-guitar.

I spent the next 15 minutes or so playing the cat like a guitar. I found she really likes the drum intro to Criminally Insane and the three-guitar noodling onslaught at the end of Raining Blood. However, she doesn’t like it when I use her kitty-head as an air microphone and scream “I WILL BE REBORN!!!!!!!!!!”

Later we’re going to try Piece of Mind and see how much she likes some Dave Murray and Adrian Smith action.

It’s nice to see an Iraq combat veteran come out and state the obvious truth that the pundits and the politicians are either too stupid to recognize or too scared to say:

The major issues of the Chinese Civil War, Vietnam War, and Iraq War are identical: an imperialist foreign power invades an agrarian society in order increase its wealth and strengthen its influence in the region.

Instead we’ve endured five years of heroic troops “defending our freedom” and evil terrorists who “hate our freedom.” Even on the liberal side we don’t get much better than that, mostly because we’re afraid of a right-wing “you hate the troops” assault if we dare tell things like they so obviously are - that the Iraq war has nothing to do with our freedom because Iraq does not, has not, and can not threaten our freedom.

So thanks to Mac for pointing out the obvious. If enough people link to 2 dinar, we’ll see how quickly the patriotically correct blowhards claim those troops are traitors, and not the ones we’re supposed to support.

Movie post (hopefully) later today. I’m back from PA now and getting caught up on stuff. Got some new music in so there will be a music post next week.

Dan Rooney, who has one of the most revered names in Western Pennsylvania that doesn’t rhyme with “Othlisberger”, has endorsed Barack Obama for President. For those who aren’t into football, its easy to dismiss this the same way one would dismiss an endorsement from, say, Madonna. But to do so is to underestimate not only how much folks in Western Pennsylvania truly love the Steelers, but also to fail to appreciate in what high regard the Rooneys are held. It’s not just about winning championships, its about championing a city that’s been through hard times. It’s not just about building a great organization, it’s about never forgetting where you came from. It’s not just about being a good owner or GM, it’s about being a good human being.

It’s hard in the world of professional sports where egos are outsizes, corruption is endemic, and loyalties are fleeting to really grasp the bond between the Rooney family and the people of Pittsburgh. Certainly nothing like it exists in New England, no matter how much we might like to root for our favorite teams (when they’re winning). This endorsement is going to matter more to folks than anything Ed Rendell has to say.

Now that The Hest is dead, I have to admit that the likelyhood of my ever getting to make a mismatched father-son buddy comedy starring Heston and Paulie Shore is pretty slim. Now we’ll never get to hear the line, “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty wea-sel.”

However, I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to make the same movie with Clint Eastwood. It can be one of those estranged relationship things where they are forced to go on a fishing trip together and they each learn to respect the other, and each learn something about themselves. I’m not sure of the title yet, but I’m leaning towards The Good, the Bad, and The Weasel.

Should Clint turn down the movie, there are a whole host of 60s and 70s action star tough guys that could play the part of the straightlaced angry dad. Wouldn’t you pay to see Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Weasel? Or Charles Bronson in Death Weasel. Wait, Charles Bronson is already dead. So is Kojak. And Steve McQueen. Richard Roundtree is still alive, but it’d be hard to find a way to reconcile that relationship.

Damn it, I’d better start working on this screenplay soon before the only 70s action hero left alive is Michael Caine.

If you watch this video you get to see the windowless office where I spent the last couple days, and some of the people I met. The folks were nice enough, but it was really wierd often being the only person in the room that, you know, was over 25 and actually went to public school.

Green Car Congress: GM Provides Snapshot of State of the Volt; Tracking to Production in Nov 2010.

ProJo: Chief disagrees with Carcieri.

AFL-CIO: T-Union: A New Global Union for T-Mobile Workers.

ProJo: Solar manufacturer announces Mass. expansion.

A Tiny Revolution: What No One In America Knows.

Newsday: US water pipelines are breaking; repair costs nearly $300 billion.

ProJo: Study finds gap growing in R.I. between haves and have-nots.

ProJo: New buffer against eviction for artists, small businesses. - So now instead of developers buying a mill building and evicting the existing tenants to turn it into luxury lofts or boutique retail space, now they buy the building and give the tenants 80 days notice before evicting them.

Progressive States: Stopping Profiteering in “Not-for-Profit” Hospitals.

Change to Win: There is No Place at the Table for Union-Busters.

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I’m in Pittsburgh working for Obama.

After the incredibly boring drive and the days of phone banking and data entry, we’d better fucking win.