Vaughn and Psycho - does that make sense?

What happened to the middle of Vince Vaughn’s career?

Vegas baby! Vegas!...coined by Vince Vaughn. His Trent in Swingers, his coup de grace, arc de triumph, a personal masterpiece. 26 yrs old and the master of his craft…but that was 1996 and since what happened to Vaughn? He led in roles in Clay Pigeons and the Psyco remake…why? That is not Vince Vaughn. It is not until 2003, 7 yrs later, that we see Vaughn’s masterpiece “Trent” come back. Thankfully he comes back in a movie that saves comedy…Old School. Dodgeball then slips into the mix, but he rescues himself with the record breaking Wedding Crashers. Vaughn clearly and finally at this point recognizes where his bread is buttered. He produces The Break-up which is a reprisal of the “Trent” character, but while a mild success at the box office, the plot line is weak…Does Vaughn have another comedic classic in him…or are we destined to see Clay Pigeons return? Thankfully his upcoming line up is Old School 2 and Joe Claus…fitting to the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Interesting Bush Manuevering

This editorial in the USA today offeres an interesting hypothetical. Give the Republican party a boost going into 2008 by changing out Vice Presidents. Bump cheney and give an 08 hopeful some spotlight. That said while it is interesting to think about, who wants to be associated with the president with a 38% job approval rating?


Cheney is toast, so new veep in works?
Updated 11/16/2006 10:17 PM ET

Now it's all about the White House in 2008. With midterm ballots barely counted, they started lining up on both sides of the aisle this week. Before it's over, expect 10 or 12 Democrats and four or five Republicans to make a serious run for the Oval Office.
In modern politics, the party in power with a two-term president has had a vice president waiting to move up. Those nominations have been almost automatic. History over the past half century:
Bill Clinton's VP Al Gore in 2000. Ronald Reagan's George H.W. Bush 18 years ago. Lyndon Johnson's Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Dwight Eisenhower's Richard Nixon 46 years ago.
Dick Cheney unequivocally has taken himself out of the running. So he's toast.
It's hard to think of a good reason he should remain in office and logical to assume that some Republicans are pushing him to leave. It could be on "doctor's orders." He's 65 with serious heart problems.
Bush then could name a vice presidential successor who they hope might be nominated and win in '08. But the appointment would need approval of both houses of Congress. With control shifting to the Democrats in January, time may be of the essence.
Likely on the short might-be list (alphabetically):
•Bill Frist, 54, Senate majority leader from Tennessee.
•Rudy Giuliani, 62, former mayor of New York City.
•John McCain, 70, U.S. senator from Arizona.
•Condoleezza Rice, 52, secretary of State.
If Cheney goes, Bush could make political history by naming the first woman and first black as veep. When presidents are lame ducks, they sometimes think more about what historians will say than about current events.

Will the real Bush please stand up

Thanks to MSNBC live feed to their website, I was able to watch Bush's address yesterday live. And it was well worth it. What I noticed was nothing short of a sea change before my eyes most specifically during the Q&A. It felt almost as though Bush had awoken from a dream to reality. Or said another way, it felt like I got to see some of the real George Bush during that Q&A. Often he feels scripted and so pro following an agenda. I thought he was very candid and open to new agendas. He did manage to still put in catch phrases in his prepared remarks like his old stand by, "liberty" and a new one "fresh eyes", but in his Q&A again I thought he was very real. And this intuitively makes sense. He's got nothing to fight for any more. He has won his elections and the mid-terms are over...now the real Bush can please stand up. Is GW really the one who wanted go after Iraq, is he really the one that has shaped foreign policy? I am not certain of these answers but if you believe what Woodard has written in his latest book, Bush is not. I am very curious to see what happens over the next 2 yrs.

As for the democrats, winning power is a double edged sword. Because now they are equally responsible for shaping the conversation on what to do in Iraq and foreign policy. It is not easy enough to say what we have done is bad. They now have to say, what do we do from here. This is not an easy answer for anyone and there is no easy solution. The Dems got what they wanted but can they execute? Always a question that lends itself to uncertainty.

Fed-up, Fed-ex, Oops!

So as we've all been closely watching and just waiting for when, Britney Spears divorces Kevin Federline. I chose to spend my waking hours thinking of snappy headlines that would show up today...the one I came up with is "Britney gets K-Fed Up!" Pretty snappy I think. As I see my headline was pretty close to making the front cover of the USA today. Another one I just thought of as another twist on my original..."You can't spell Fed-up without 'K'!"

But in google news search, I see that there were a couple of other journalists with some snappy headlines of their own. I thought Fed-ex was a nice touch. The clear winner in terms of frequency in number of news titles was the Ooops I did it again. I like the thoughtfulness of that one because it ties in the fact that Britney has been divorced twice now. Below is a sampling of some of the unique headlines:

Britney 'K-Fed' up, files for divorce (USA Today cover)
Brit Poised For Comeback; K-Fed Now Fed-Ex
Oops, she did it again - Britney files for divorce from Kevin
Divorce me baby one more time: Britney Spears's marriage over
Britney Spears dumps 'toxic' hubby K-Fed, files for divorce
Britney Spears divorcing former 'Chaotic' co-star Kevin Federline

Quote of the Day

With Arnold about to get re-elected governor...I feel it fitting to go back to 2 famous movie quotes.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, "Future Boy", who's President in the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor? [chuckles in disbelief]
Dr. Emmett Brown: Then who's VICE-President? Jerry Lewis? [later he rushes outside, down a hill and toward his laboratory]
Dr. Emmett Brown: I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!
--Back to the Future

followed by....

"It's not a tumor!"
--"Detective John Kimball", Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kindergarten Cop

Need a landslide?

What has always been perplexing is the simple question...if the approval rating for the president is so low, why isn't it obvious that the other party [democrats] should be a lock in the mid-term and even presidential elections. This article in the New Yorker was an interesting read, but I'll leave you with one excerpt here:

In a normal democracy, given the state of public opinion and the record of the incumbent government, it would be taken for granted that come next Tuesday the ruling party would be turned out. But, for reasons that have less to do with the wizardry of Karl Rove than with the structural biases of America’s electoral machinery, Democrats enter every race carrying a bag of sand. The Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent fewer Americans than do its forty-five Democrats. On the House side, Democratic candidates have won a higher proportion of the average district vote than Republicans in four of the five biennial elections since 1994, but—thanks to a combination of gerrymandering and demo-graphics—Republicans remain in the majority. To win back the House, Democrats need something close to a landslide. Their opponents, to judge from their behavior, seem to think they might get one.

Free throws - They're FREE!

I am not in the NBA so it is hard to preach, that said FREE THROWS! This is the only time in basketball where you can take your time, there is no defense, and you get to score points. In tennis the closest equivalent is the serve where you can go at your own pace and hit the ball how you like...however in tennis you not only just have to get it in, you still have to hit a good shot such that your opponent will have difficulty returning. On the free throw line you just have to get it in the basket.

The Spurs lost against the Cavs yesterday. And Pop agrees with me.

An excerpt from an AP article after the game.

The Spurs, one of the most dominant homecourt teams in the NBA, slashed a 13-point deficit in the fourth down to four and might have won if not for a dismal 18-of-34 effort shooting free throws.

"I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me if free throws are a concern," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. They have "always been an Achilles' heel."

I say, Put it in the Contract. Let the money do the work. Or Don't let a player leave practice until he makes 8 out of 10 free throws. No excuses.

The Kerry Follow Up

I thought this was a well written observation of the implications of Kerry's comments as well as highlighting, should we even care when there are really big issues to be talking about? Below is an editorial from the USA Today 11/2/06.

Kerry pries foot from mouth; sound-bite politics escalate
John Kerry said something truly foolish on Monday, suggesting to college students that if they didn't get an education, they'd get "stuck in Iraq." Taken at face value, it was demeaning and offensive, implying that the soldiers fighting for their country are stupid and uneducated.

Under fire from outraged-but-gleeful Republicans, Kerry says that he intended nothing of the kind, that he really meant to make a joke about President Bush, a self-admitted C student who got the nation mired in Iraq. Maybe so. But the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who has endured a presidential campaign and knows the price for loose talk, compounded the initial error by lashing out at critics and taking two days to apologize.

What to make of the uproar?

At one level, in the maddeningly bland discourse that often passes for political dialogue, rare unscripted moments can offer a revealing window into a candidate. In 1968, Republican presidential hopeful George Romney's admission that he had been "brainwashed" during a military tour of Vietnam suggested a lack of mental toughness. Four years later, when Democrat Ed Muskie appeared to cry in New Hampshire, it raised questions about his emotional stability.

In today's age of talk radio, bloggers and YouTube, such moments just reverberate more loudly and quickly.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's scream after he placed third in the 2004 Iowa caucuses suggested an angry man who lacked self control, torpedoing his campaign. This year, in Virginia, Republican Sen. George Allen's calling an Indian-American Democratic operative "macaca" and singling him out for derision at a campaign event suggested a racially insensitive bully. His re-election, once seemingly assured, is in doubt, as are his presidential aspirations.

Kerry could find his 2008 hopes similarly impaired. His comments reinforced his reputation for having a tin political ear. His initial reaction suggested he was more interested in displaying bristling toughness under fire than in expressing regret for disparaging the troops, including highly educated ones, who volunteered and are proud to serve. Kerry was, after all, once just such a soldier himself. Botched joke or not, the right thing to do was to apologize, which Kerry belatedly and grudgingly did Wednesday.

At another level, the Kerry flap is sadly typical of the sound-bite politics dominating the closing days of a brutally negative campaign.

Future historians might well shake their heads that with the nation bogged down in a failing war and threatened by terrorism, three of the days leading up to a crucial election were dominated by a gaffe by someone who's not even running this year.

Aren't there more important things to talk about? Does any candidate, for instance, have a workable plan for what to do next in Iraq? Or a way to fix the federal budget, immigration policy and the health care system?

These are tough issues. Maybe it's just a lot easier to play "gotcha" politics.

Kerry and Charisma

Kerry 'stuck in Iraq' remark target of right-wing talkers


Kerry makes what could have been misworded joke..."get a good education or you'll end up stuck in Iraq". Bush and co. used this as an opportunity to say Kerry was calling all the troops stupid. Kerry's office today released the official speech as it was supposed to have been said, "I can't over stress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." How Kerry could have missed all these lines is troubling in itself since he missed the whole crux of the punch line.

Thinking of running again for 2008! Are you kidding me? Kerry needs to get over himself. The reason he got as far as he did in 2004 was because he won in Iowa. Kerry got good grades when Bush got C's, Kerry was an athlete in college when Bush was a cheerleader, Kerry is a decorated war hero when Bush was just a war journalist...Kerry had the backround and the set up to win against Bush the first time around. He botched that opportunity because he couldn't speak a message clearly. I would hear a Kerry speech and walk away feeling like I had no idea what he just said. (though statisticians would say that the good economy at the time would have predicted an incumbent would win). It is quite possible that this comment slip up could end his high political ambitions. Democrats are already trying to distance themself with even Hillary Clinton saying Kerry should apologize (but of course this is self serving, bc she wants one less opponent in the race). He's lost his chance, now let someone else have a go.

The democrats need some one with clear charisma. I think Clinton and Obama have a chance of providing some of that. Obama has proven to be a clear speaker and Clinton can clearly ride the Bill Clinton love fest. Though the concern I have is to win an election you have to win the on the fence voter and I am not sure that either one of the two can do that, which might mean by default there will be a republican winner in the presidential race - who ever that republican turns out to be. Hopefully in this day and age, being african american or being a woman doesn't hold back voters. Where they do have a chance is if America is really craving the freshness that McCain doesn't have to offer. The dark horse = Al Gore. Does he use his lightened personality and humor side to come back into action? The answer is no...money will be behind the Clinton juggernaut. I am no Larry Sabato, but I have my own crystal ball.