Archive for April, 2009
Catch Grey Gardens on HBO (a movie whose sequel could easily film in Nairobi)
If you haven’t seen Grey Gardens on HBO yet, it’s really worth your time.
If you don’t have HBO, rent the original 1975 Grey Gardens documentary, and then wait for the HBO film to come to video too. The Broadway production last year was also very good.
It’s the story of the Bouvier-Beales, relatives of Jackie Kennedy, who descended into abject squalor in their summer home, the estate known as Grey Gardens, despite being related to a family that very often tells other people how they should live their lives — but has a problem taking care of its own.
It’s similar to the squalor the current president allows his own family to live in back in Kenya, or in Boston, in the case of his aunt. Looks like all the faux-Camelot marketing and the Portuguese water dog are not the only things he has in common with the Kennedys after all.
Tuesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Tuesday?
Are you following how the Trillion Dollars in Spending is being spent? Supposedly, $60 billion has been spent already. Are you looking into where that money is going? What are you hearing in your local communities?
All we could think of when we saw this cartoon of Rahm Emanuel was…
The cartoon above is from POLITICO today, and it has nothing at all to do with Boystown, but all we could think of when we saw Rahm Emanuel with his Appletini was “that sure looks an awful lot like Mini Bar or Sidetrack in there”…if you replace the elephants in the back with dozens of young, hungry social climbers and Mitch McConnell with Jake Gylenhaal, or one of the Jonas brothers, or Zac Efron, or someone.
Just walk into Mini Bar on Halsted any Friday or Saturday night and you will meet many very well-dressed young stockbrokers, bond traders, or lawyers who all landed very sweet jobs at big Chicago firms after Rahm Emanuel gave them, uh…recommendations.
Young, good-looking, usually dark-haired, football-player build type guys.
Because Rahm Emanuel is a giver. He likes to help young guys just starting out because he has such a big heart — and learned everything he knows about this “mentoring program” from his days in New York, at Studio 54, when he was a very friendly male ballerina at Julliard.
The role of Truman Capote in Appletini circles is, thus, now being played with gusto by Rahm Emanuel.
Fabulous!
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? April 20th, 2009
1045 – Bilateral with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands
215pm – Bilateral with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus
Go, Hillary, Go!
World Without Us: The Series
A new series debuts tomorrow night on the History Channel that essentially renders all of the crying, teeth gnashing, and hair pulling over anthropogenic climate change ridiculously moot.
The World Without US takes concepts that have been around for years in the works of people like Dougal Dixon (After Man: A Zoology of the Future and Man After Man, about future human evolutions), and illustrate how ferociously efficient the natural world will be in reclaiming the planet once human civilization disappears.
Essentially it boils down to this: less than 50 years after the last human vanishes, all the forests will grow back, cities will disappear under vegetation, natural streams and rivers will flow freely again, and all the damage human industry and culture wrought on the natural world will be healed, as if the last 10,000 years or so never happened at all.
Growing up in strong Democratic households, and having Earth Day and other traditionally Democratic holidays beaten into us by heavy-handed liberal schools, we were never once shown how resilient the natural world truly is — and how throughout the fossil record species have risen and fallen as the planet’s fortunes ebbed and flowed, largely influenced primarily by the activity of the sun (since we believe it is solar flare activity, not anthropogenic industrial emissions, that causes fluctuations in global temperatures).
Check out this new series to see just how little time it would take for the whole planet to become one giant forest again, and for all sorts of new animals to evolve to reconquer the planet without humanity around to limit their develop.
If you like the series, check out Dougal Dixon’s works on alternate evolution. It’s the kind of stuff guaranteed to make you the oddball in any cocktail party, since talking about the speculative future evolution of rabbits into deer-like ungulates and rats into monstrous leonine terrors is something not appreciated by anyone without a healthy imagination, and the ability and willingness to realize that humanity gives itself way too much credit: we might be the dominant species on this planet, but in the end the planet itself will dominate us, the way it’s dominated everything else. We’ve had about 10,000 years worth of impact.
But just 50 years or so without us around would already wipe most of our achievements out completely.
Monday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
What do you think the main stories this week will be?
What do you think about the current president saying nothing while Chavez and others slammed America last week?
Do you get the sense that, no matter how much the MSM tries to downplay the way this president looks down on America and disparages the nation abroad, that more and more people will continue to realize this is Jimmy Carter all over again, and could very well look for a new Ronald Reagan who won’t sit quietly while the Hugo Chavez and other petty, vulgar tyrants of the world attempt to degrade the greatest country in the world?
The more of this stuff that happens, the more people have to face the fact that the man currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk has no idea how much damage he’s doing when traveling the world committing gaffes myriad and sundry, bowing to kings who support terrorism, and shaking hands with the likes of Chavez, as if he was an old buddy, if not long lost soulmate.
What do you think?
One year ago, an angel was born: Happy 1st Birthday Trig Palin!
Listen up, because we don’t say things like this very often — and we are neither the supernatural nor religious sort, but there are some people in this world who are either so good, or who inspire so much goodness in others, that we honestly and truly don’t believe they are ordinary humans — they must be angels.
We’re all in our mid-30s, and maybe, MAYBE, we’ve met 3 or 4 of these people in our lives. We are blessed that our dear friend Lionel is an angel, one whose strength, courage, and positivity in the face of suffering, pain, and illness makes us realize how precious and downright AWESOME life is day in and day out. And we are more thankful for this reminder than we can ever tell you.
Just as we are so very, very thankful Trig Palin’s in this world.
That marvelous, chubby, bespeckled little boy — an unexpected birth, an angel undercover who made more people think about special needs children than anyone who ever lived before him.
Think about it.
Before Sarah Palin ran for governor, when was the last time you thought about special needs children? When was the last time you opened your heart up to them? When was the last time you thought about the Special Olympics?
And in walked little Trig…and only the most heartless and vile amongst us weren’t changed.
That’s indeed an angel undercover, right there.
We have never met the little guy, but hope to one day…we want to head out to Alaska this summer, and if not then, then around Christmas next for Palin’s open house at the Governor’s mansion, because we’d love to see this amazing and special child in person.
Without even realizing it, he’s already done so much — because we’re certain we’re not the only ones who now have the Special Olympics on our radar because of Trig Palin and his absolutely awesome mom and dad. We’re teaming up with the Chicago Young Republicans to do a Special Olympics Bowl-a-thon fundraiser here in Chicago on May 13th — and that’s inspired by the Palins.
We are loud and proud Hillary Clinton Democrats who would go to Hell and back for little Trig, and any special needs child, in any way we could. Before Palin’s vice presidential bid, we never knew we loved these kids that much…we just didn’t think about them.
But, now we will never forget.
And it’s all because of a little guy who turns one today.
So, Happy Birthday Trig. We wish you every blessing as you grow up, and thank you so very, very much for teaching US so much at such a young age.
Sunday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
Here’s something we’d like you to help us with. What if all of us organized ourselves to research as much on ACORN as possible, and worked aggressively to push Congressional investigations and class action suits against what is essentially a domestic terrorist organization masking itself as “community organizers”.
We have less than 4 years until 2012.
ACORN really flexed its muscles like never before in 2008 — sometimes the universe brings you the wrong French toast, because we believe ACORN may have gone too far this time…and that, unlike in 2004 or 2000 where they were ative but didn’t make it onto the national radar, people talked about ACORN being a problem this time.
Now, we need to get them to do more than talk…we need to make people aware of how grave a threat to our democracy ACORN really is. We need to use all of the Administration’s Alinsky Method tricks against ACORN itself. Figure out who its leaders are, determine where its funding is coming from, and constantly shine light onto its activities.
ACORN is, without a doubt, more of a threat to us on our own soil than Al Queda, in terms of the damge it is doing to our nation and way of life.
Really, we need to pressure the Justice Department to pursue ACORN like they go after drug cartels and crime families. And politicians who help ACORN need to be identified and lambasted.
The White House is in perpetual campaign mode for 2012…and those who don’t agree with the marriage of ACORN and this Administration need to help take ACORN down. Without his not-so-secret weapon, it will certainly be interesting to see how “The One” plans to win the second term the MSM has already prematurely anointed him with.
What are your thoughts on how we can start working against ACORN, and what sort of plan we should develop? There are many issues we could tackle, but what do you think of taking something like this and making ourselves experts on it, and then become a force to be reckoned with in terms of our ability to win any debate on ACORN?
Since ACORN is now receiving billions from the latest spending bills, and the White House wants ACORN to be put in charge of the census, it seeems like this is an area where we can all do the most good.
What do think?
Domain Name Change: we're now www.HillBuzz.org
In preparation for the changes that we have coming in June to step things up around here, today we’re launching our new domain name: www.HillBuzz.org.
This marks the beginning of the third incarnation of this site, which started out as HillBuzz.blogspot.com, becoming HillBuzz.wordpress.com, and now HillBuzz.org.
We chose the .ORG because we feel a community has developed here that, going forward, we’d like to see as a moderate, centrist, rational, responsible, intelligent, articulate, and passionate organization continue to evolve with all of you out there.
We’re working hard on a lot of exciting new things for HillBuzz — so use this thread and tell us what you’d like to see happen as this site evolves from now through June. It’s taking a lot of work, effort, and cooperation amongst ourselves, but also in reaching out to various computer experts to get this done. But, we know it will be worth it in the end…and www.HillBuzz.org will challenge us to do everything we did as HillBuzz.wordpress.com, but do it much better.
With your help, we know that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Saturday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Saturday?
Here’s some of what we are thinking about:
(1) Republican strategist Steve Schmidt says what we have been saying for a long time: Republicans can’t use religion as a weapon any more. It will take someone really bold to pull this off — and after meeting Michael Steele this week, we believe he’s the man to do just this: if the Republican Party ended the perception that it attacks the LGBTQ community using the Bible as a weapon, then in about 10 years the next generation of gay men, in particular, would most likely be Republicans. Go ahead and laugh if you want, but here in Boystown, all those two-career, heavy disposable income, highly taxed household guys we know would be voting Republican if not for the simple fact that they perceive the GOP as a bigoted religious party. That’s not how we feel, and we stress that before you chime in with comments, but we are telling you what we hear every day from people, especially since we continue to be Democrats who work with the Chicago Young Republicans and other groups when we share common agendas and stances on things. But, when we ask Republicans to help us raise money for Chicago House (AIDS charity), Equality Illinois (equal spousal benefits), or march with us at Pride, the religious bent of the GOP comes out and suddenly no one wants anything to do with us again. And that’s the way things have been for decades — but Republicans need to wake up and realize that LGBTQ people have an awful lot of money in general, are typically very well educated and largely entrepreneurial, and are stuck with massive tax bills because of the lack of basic spousal rights and tax breaks that straight couples enjoy. If not for the weaponized scripture, these people would be votes for the GOP. The only reason the LGBTQ community votes solidly Democrat is because the GOP, at large, makes us feel so unwelcome. Steve Schmidt is right: layoff the attacks. You don’t have to like us. But you have to accept the fact we exist, and that no matter how much you don’t like us, you are never going to switch us from Jake to Maggie in the Gyllenhaal household. Sorry. No matter how many Bibles you pound, or how much you stray from Christ’s own message of acceptance and unconditional love in your zealous quest to berate and abuse us, we will never want to do anything more than spend the day with Maggie talking about how smoking hot awesome her brother Jakey-G is. It’s irrational to think that will ever change — and downright ridiculous that the GOP hasn’t caught onto the fact that they prevent themselves from tapping into a true gold mine of not only vote, but campaign contributions, by shunning the LGBTQ. It’s as stupid as Nancy Pelosi preventing energy exploration in the Arctic and Gulf: all of those riches, all of that potential, all of those opportunities, cut off for no good reason. Being nice to us doesn’t mean you have to go gay too. But being horrible to us won’t ever make us go away. And since you can’t ever get rid of us no matter how much you try, you might as well try working with us, and then maybe together we can make sure the 45th President who will be elected in 2012 won’t be another socialist. Then, once the country is safe and on the right track again, you can go back to saying how terrible we are and how we’re all going to Hell — and we’ll go back to talking about how fat you look in those jeans and how much your hair is a code red fashion emergency.
