[bitchiness] the new entertainment?

Is it a truism that we show our generation by the music we listen to and maybe the TV shows we choose to watch? If so, then it might define our national identity as well.

Having been out of the country for so long, I never had the necessity to witness the excrescence in the picture to the left here but this evening it happened.

Not knowing anything about her whatsoever and never having been a TV type person anyway, certainly as a viewer of that type of show, the eyes were popping as I saw her stand stock still, some sort of spindly, reptilian school ma'am and spit venom at a woman for no discernible reason.

In a cackling voice, she stared straight at the woman and asked if she sold cottages in France or something like that. Then she asked where she came from, before observing, "Why would anyone want to go to Preston to get a place in France? A smile vaguely played on the reptile's face all the while.

Firstly, is this entertainment and if you say yes, then what possible pleasure do you derive from making people feel small [unless they deserve it, I hastily add]?

I'd dearly like to meet up with her for fifteen minutes and see how she survives my observations of her. I think they call her Anne Robinson and she's reportedly made millions from this sort of thing.

[memories] can't bring them back

Arthur's Seat and Dromana

Whenever I'd visit Australia, to see my parents, one of the jobs was to take my aging mum down the peninsular and up across the ridge to Arthur's Seat, which had a restaurant complex and a concrete outdoors area called, I seem to remember, the Garden of the Moon.

The purpose was to have tea and scones, with jam and clotted cream, then it would be down the winding, hairpin road, underneath the chairlift at every pass, to the foot of the hill and thus down to Rosebud, Rye, Blairgowrie and Sorrento, where there was a fabulous ice cream parlour in the main street.

Actually, any trip would have done, as long as it had icecream somewhere along the way.

The last time I saw my mother alive was at Tullamarine Airport and I told her, "Just a few months, mum and I'll be back again." She smiled weakly, as if to say, "Right, well that remains to be seen." That was one of her favourite expressions. She didn't get out of the car and come in to see me off because the previous year she'd wandered from us and we'd had a job trying to locate where she'd gone.

I write here about the latter days but should dwell on the earlier era, when she was well, fit and as sharp as a tack. Nothing got past her - she'd listen to someone's story and make no comment but it was clear to all what she was thinking. In my case, I make comment, which gets me into all sorts of trouble.

The thing was - she was a phenomenon, she had to be negotiated around, she was loyal to friends to a fault and I don't recall one instance when she ever let me down, as distinct from the reverse. I think I was spoilt. When my friend's mum comes in these days, goes upstairs to change the bedding, comes down for a cup of tea and explains how they found a bargain over at this store but not at this one and what do I think of these cushion covers she found and they're going out later to dinner with friends and so on and so on ... I see much of my own mother in there.

I have a photo of her in the lucid days, sitting on a bench seat in the park, holding a picnic basket with the thermos flask poking out and two plastic cups inside under the tea towel. Everyone used to call her sweet and that comes out in the photo - she had a great many friends. We used to talk about plans for the future and she warned me about her memory then.

Quite matter-of-factly, she said not to argue but her memory was slowly fading - it was her bronchitis drugs, which she didn't hold with but had no choice. She said that if we were going to discuss important things, it would be better to do it now or the following year - she couldn't guarantee too much after that.

Now I have the start of bronchitis but that sort of thing is still far off, I hope.

One memory which sticks is her sitting at the dining table whilst I cooked an easy dinner for them, followed by fruit salad and ice-cream. She always thought that most amusing and never once mentioned the errors in preparation. She'd worry about me ending up alone and though I never was, I nevertheless was and still am, to make things as clear as mud. She never wanted to be alone and thank the Lord, it never turned out to be so - she was surrounded until the end, except by me, who was overseas.

So happy birthday, mum - I'm sure you'll pop down for a few minutes this evening and might even be reading this now. I'm sure they could spare you from running heaven for one day but no doubt there'll be a mess to clear up later when you get back. Say hello to the family for me.

Last year's post on this topic is here and glancing through the comments, how things have changed in one short year. Such is life.

Arthur's Seat at dusk

[obama] produce the vault copy and have done with it

Simple solution

The Chicago Tribune says:

The Obama campaign has maintained that he was born in Hawaii, has an authentic birth certificate, and is a "natural-born" U.S. citizen. Hawaiian officials agree.

The Obama camp can "maintain" all it likes. The fact is that there is a court order on them to have produced the vault copy, not the extract that they are basing it on and they have failed to do that relatively simple thing.

The extract seems pretty clear in itself - it certainly seems an authentic copy and has been viewed and checked by Factcheck.org. That would seem to be that until you discover that Factcheck is run by the Annenberg Foundation, for whom a former board member was ... Barack Obama.

All it takes to clear the whole thing up is:

Submit the vault copy to the USSC, as ordered by the court.

The instant that is done, all these lawsuits fall away. Instead of that, those who are asking the questions are being labelled "a small minority of anti-Obama people", indulging in "sour grapes' and "conspiracy theories".

Ad hominem attack has no weight in law and hardly constitutes evidence. Once again, the solution is simple - produce the vault copy and end this speculation:

Obama’s paternal grandmother still maintains that her grandson—Barack Hussein Obama (AKA Barry Sotero)—was born in Kenya and that she attended his birth. Obama’s half-brother and half-sister have confirmed the grandmother’s statement.

Another source.

By the way, does anyone remember a man named Richard Nixon and some tapes he refused to release? His opponents were called cranks and conspiracy theorists too.

Pots and kettles

So why aren't the Republicans up in arms about it? Perhaps this will answer the question:

"The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over McCain's eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make McCain a natural-born citizen.

"It's preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy," Professor Chin said. "But this is the constitutional text that we have."

"No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there's a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside," said Peter Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University."

There it is - the law and the constitution don't matter, as long as "everybody's on board about it. When a large number of people agree to suspend constitutional provisions, that's OK then, isn't it?

What happens next?

The first Presidential Succession Act, passed in 1792, provided that after the President and Vice President, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate would serve as President.

In July 2005, Senate Bill 442: "A bill to provide for the Secretary of Homeland Security to be included in the line of Presidential succession", sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio).

1. Vice President Dick Cheney
2. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.
3. Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens, R-Alaska [1]
4. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

So clearly it would be Bush and Cheney until January but if there had not been another election before then, then House Speaker Pelosi takes over, then Sen Pres pro Tem Robert Byrd, then Condi.

What's with Hillary?

Obama’s transition team gave the green light to Clinton’s nomination after lawyers worked out a remarkable agreement addressing potential conflicts of interest for former President Bill Clinton, who has extensive financial ties abroad.

There is also the Johnson/J Edgar Hoover maxim about having the bstd inside p---ing out. What did Clinton discover about Obama when they were at bitter loggerheads?

[obama] already defaulting, fate decided tomorrow

All right, well now that that's over, we can concentrate on the next big issue:

WHY IS THIS NOT BEING DISCUSSED ON EVERY NEWS CHANNEL, IN EVERY PAPER AND ON EVERY BLOG?

December 1, writes attorney Thomas J. Latino, was “the deadline for the Obama legal team to file their response to the Berg Petition for a Writ of Certiorari.

There was nothing.

Mr. Obama has done what hasn't been done before…he has blatantly ignored a request from the Supreme Court of the United States – our highest and most revered legal institution. Mr. Obama, quite frankly, has thumbed his nose at the highest court in our land.”

On December 5, Leo Donofrio, a plaintiff in Donofrio v. Wells, is scheduled to have his case heard by the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, who have agreed to hold a “Rule of Four” Conference.

This means If four of the nine Justices agree that Donofrio’s case has merit, there is the potential for the Justices to issue a “stay” of the Electoral College vote on December 15, which would prevent the Electoral College members from casting their votes until this explosive issue has been resolved.

The greatest problem is that it is only the conservative and foreign press and blogosphere reporting this, so it's difficult to get a line on the actual truth here. I've read all I can and this is how I think it works - correct me if I'm wrong:

A Philadelphia lawyer filed a suit against Obama and McCain, alleging not "natural born citizens". His suits were overturned but Leo Donofrio then filed a stay of the election result, pending establishment of this citizenship matter. There seem two stories connected to this:

1. Obama was asked to produce his birth certificate by the USSC by December 1st gone and did not. This raises all sorts of questions about whether he was actually born in Hawaii and whether he was a dual citizen anyway.

2. There is an opinion that:

As a citizen of the UKC who was born in Kenya, Obama's father automatically received Kenyan citizenship via subsection (1). So given that Obama qualified for citizen of the UKC status at birth and given that Obama's father became a Kenyan citizen via subsection (1), it follows that Obama did in fact have Kenyan citizenship after 1963.

He lost it when he reached age 21 because:

[T]he Kenyan Constitution prohibits dual citizenship for adults. Kenya recognizes dual citizenship for children, but Kenya's Constitution specifies that at age 21, Kenyan citizens who possesses citizenship in more than one country automatically lose their Kenyan citizenship unless they formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya.

Needless to say, this raises mindboggling issues because if doubt is expressed by four judges, then the Electoral College vote on December 15th must be stayed but this raises the question of the countdown to Inauguration Day. The delay would be unprecedented on this issue.

If the resolution of the matter is an eventual referral to the House of Reps, which is Democrat, then if Obama has been declared ineligible and struck off, whom would they select? Also, the question of fraud comes into it on a mammoth scale, let alone treason to the United States.

Tomorrow, it will be decided if Obama has a case to answer or not. Can you imagine the weight of the global community, the power within the U.S. and the entrenched positions having a word or two to the justices this evening?

[nuts and bolts of films] best, worst

The bad

When you see: 'Produced by Philip J. Roth, Directed by Philip J. Roth, Written by Philip J. Roth, you know you're in for trouble.

So it is with Total Reality and The Last Line of Defence. Rather than trash these movies with a thousand adjectives, better to mention a few of his other great works: Boa vs. Python, Locusts: The 8th Plague, Dragon Dynasty, Dragon Storm, Dragon Fighter, Phantom Force, Interceptor Force 2, Interceptors and so on.

The best way to describe these movies is with an analogy. Imagine you were shooting a film about basketball. Now, as every adolescent knows, you're only interested in the slam dunk [the finer details of how the ball made it to the net in the first place inconsequential] but even Philip J Roth knows he can't fill a movie with only that, so he inserts scintillating, connected dialogue like: "Pass me that ball." "Oh yeah, come and get it!" "Listen buddy, do you know who yer talking to?"

The woodenness of the cast in each of these films is a Roth trademark and makes Steven Segal look positively animated. The scenes seem to be ... well, they're difficult to describe. Imagine a clearly minor character who is never going to win the girl [Roth is nothing if not melodramatic]. This character puts his hand inside an erotic bomb which will destroy the universe, becomes all powerful, suddenly obeys stage directions to get angry and does so until told to switch it off and that's how it continues.

Now, some of you will see this as being in the genre of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, in other words, quite watchable in a macabre way and with a modicum of humour.

No, sorry, the Roth films are just plain bad, failing to engage the viewer in any significant way.

Not as bad though as my candidate for Worst Film of All Time: The Hottie and the Nottie, Executive Producer Paris Hilton, starring Paris Hilton. The tagline is "That's hot. That's not."

The plot is that there is a Hottie, Paris Hilton, who gets all the boys. Out of a sense of altruism, she refuses to go out and party unless her ugly ex-school chum, the Nottie, also gets a date but ... surprisingly, all the boys recoil from her.

Slant wrote:

[T]he film's disingenuousness is as transparent as executive producer Hilton's nightie, which she wears with more conviction than dialogue like, "A life without orgasms is like a world without flowers."

That's it.

With it's opening weekend smash takings of $27,696, for an overall outlay of $8 million, one can only surmise that Hilton was trying to undershadow Gigli, which set a record for the biggest second-weekend drop in box office gross of any film in wide release since that statistic was kept.

The good

Maybe we can agree, to an extent, on the most horrendous films but it's probably going to be tough to call the best movies ever. It completely depends, does it not, on what you see as a great movie.

For me it needs a blend of elements, no one element dominating - a bit of action [well, a lot really], believable and intelligent dialogue, wrily humorous moments, a romantic sub-plot which affects the main plot direction, actors who can act and who believe in what they're doing, great production values and with lines and scenes which remain with you ever afterwards, e.g. play it again, Sam.

Of the modern crop, I'd put Casino Royale right up there and from the olden day crop, perhaps The Third Man.

[canada] the governor general is now called in

Very interesting situation shaping up in Canada.

UPDATE: 19:05 - Steven Harper got his 7 weeks prorogue.

Steven Harper, on the back foot because of the alliance between all opposition parties, including the separatists, is tomorrow intending to put to the Governor-General, Michaëlle Jean, a proposal to prorogue parliament.

This sort of thing goes on in banana republics all the time but in one of the major western economies, it attracts more worldwide interest than would otherwise be so.

Michaëlle Jean has three real choices. To:

1. prorogue parliament;
2. let the alliance try to form a government;
3. call for another election.

N2 is quite a possibility, in order to avoid another election so close to the last one.

Against this is the GG's own feeling of what is best for Canada - allowing Quebec separatists into government, a move which would provoke a backlash across the nation, despite grumblings about Harper, may not be wise.

N3 would be deeply unpopular, so soon after Harper was elected. So it comes down to N1, a request from the PM himself and one which would defer the situation so that counsel could be taken, as well as maintaining some semblance of stability.

It is worth looking at Michaelle Jean herself for a clue as to where she comes from. She appears, if not to be particularly socialist, to at least support left liberal causes and at the same time, seems to wish to intervene if it's a social justice cause:

This notion of Jean overstepping conventional boundaries continued into 2007 when contents of her speech given at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were seen by some as a thinly veiled criticism of her Cabinet's decision to end the Courts Challenges Program.

She has, in particular, tried to lay the separatist ghost:

Jean's father, Roger Anthony Jean, who moved his family from Haiti to Quebec four decades ago, clearly was offended by earlier suggestions that his daughter had sympathized with Quebec separatists. "That's a lie," he declared. She has never been a separatist. Never. Never. Never."

One comment:

I think Michaëlle Jean is part of that group of the majority of Québeckers who haven’t taken (and don’t want to take) an absolute position on the question. I think that for this reason, and also because she is a pretty well known journalist here, many people in Québec identify themselves with her. To find here at an important federal position, even if it is only honorific, can only help Canada’s cause in Québec.

She connects with the young very well - here is her personal website, Citizen Voices, where you can contact her. Moving on, there's apparently something called the Travers column in Canada which said this:

"Michaëlle Jean once joked that Paul Martin chose her as governor general because she's "hot". It's not so funny now that Stephen Harper has her on ice."

That seems as pratty as John Lennon's quip about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ. The Travers column further debated PM Harper's less than warm relations with the GG:

At most, it suggests that the Conservatives do not respect the GG because she lacks qualifications other than being a good looking woman and an immigrant. The article does emphasize that the GG is treading on thin constitutional ice with her meddling in political affairs.

So, not everyone appears to love her. The Globe & Mail invited reader comments and here is one by Thomas Baxter:

First and foremost, the Governor-General is not the head-of-state of Canada, nor the "queen" of Canada, but only the representative of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The out-going Governor-General often usurped her role, and also the one she was supposed to represent.

Adrienne Clarkson went on tours masquerading as the head-of-state. She was seen in public, captured on camera, upstaging the Queen, and failing to meet protocol.

When the official papers were prepared for former N.B. premier, Frank McKenna, to report as Canada's Ambassador to the United States, the Queen's name was removed and the papers were sent on behalf of the Governor-General. The government has no such power. The Opposition parties should have screamed loudly. The Governor-General should have sent these papers back to be re-written before she signed them.

I checked out Adrienne Clarkson and she does seem to have been pretty appalling, apart from being a "devout Anglican". She seems to have been a spendthrift to boot.

Here is another comment about Michaëlle Jean:

Another woman, another media person, and another who was not born in Canada. Surely, there must be some Canadian born person that could represent the Queen? [Susan Marsh]

Rideau Hall has today therefore assumed an importance not intended for it and not unlike the exercising of his GG powers by Sir John Kerr in the Australian coup 'etat of 1975:


Kerr had made a study of the reserve powers through his earlier professional relationship with Evatt, the author of the standard work on the reserve powers as they applied to the British Dominions, The King and His Dominion Governors (1936).

Kerr was familiar with this book, and re-read it before accepting Whitlam's offer of the Governor-Generalship. Kerr took an activist and highly unusual view of the role of Governor-General. Neither temperamentally nor politically was he inclined to accept that the Governor-General was a mere cypher, bound always to act on the Prime Minister's advice.

He unwisely saw the office of Governor-General as a central player in Australian political life, and so it proved to be.

Will Michaelle Jean, now someway into her GGship, feel she has the requisite experience to go her own way on this issue; will she go with her left-liberal leanings and her dislike for Harper or will she try to gauge the mood of the average Canadian?

Let's wait till tomorrow to see.

[Here is how the issue arose last year.]