It doesn’t blow my mind because I saw it and thought it was awesome. It’s not out yet and I don’t want to see it, actually. It blows my mind because it was greenlit for production despite one major flaw (and I don’t mean the casting of Kevin Costner).

The premise of the movie is that some girl and her single dad live together. He’s an ass. She registers him to vote. He forgets. Then, through some sort of (hopefully) ridiculous turn of events, the entire presidential election comes down to his single vote and the two candidates woo him to get him to choose between them.

If you passed 5th grade civics, you’re aware of the electoral college, which protects us from these kinds of problems. If the electoral vote totals in a presidential election are 269-269, it is highly unlikely that one man would be the deciding vote, especially if he registered but forgot to vote. We don’t give Mulligans in US politics–if you forget to vote, you don’t get a second chance later.

If we let Kevin Costner get past this little barrier, we ignore the matter of the electoral college tie-breaker protocol. The Constitution stipulates that the House of Representatives casts the tie-breaking ballot for President and the Senate casts the tie-breaking ballot for Vice President. Perhaps in the movie, the House and Senate are also both split evenly and so intensely partisan that they have zero willingness to compromise an end to the national nightmare, and the incumbent Vice President passes away just before the election and right after the Senate goes into recess, and the partisan bickering in the Senate manifests a refusal to reconvene with an emergency session to confirm the dead Veep’s presidentially-appointed replacement, and the Supreme Court determines that a recess appointment of the Vice-President cannot carry out the president-electing duties constitutionally prescribed to a sitting Vice-President, and the House and Senate, both of whom are required to keep voting until a simple majority picks a winner, fail to choose a new President and Vice President by noon on January 20. If all of that happens in the movie, the decision still doesn’t go to Kevin Costner. The Speaker of the House would take over as Acting President until such time as the new House and Senate grew the Hell up and chose the new President and Vice-President (and they would probably not be evenly split after the election either).

In only one instance can I remotely accept this movie’s premise: if every registered voter casts his or her ballot, and there is a tie, and then the FEC and the state-level election boards, through the will of the sitting President (whose party affiliation differs from the congressional majority), in an unprecedented and completely illegal decision that goes unchallenged in the judicial system by his opponent (not likely), allows all registered voters who did not cast their ballots to vote, and a tie emerges once again in one last undecided state where there happens to be only one registered voter in the entire country remaining who forgot to vote.

I refuse to suspend my disbelief for this one. You say “relax, it’s just a movie.” I say “good day” to you, sir! Good day!

The LA Times has a story about the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University which has compiled, reviewed and coded nightly newscasts from the major networks all year. During the primaries, they found that 64% of statements about Obama were positive, but just 43% of statements about McCain were positive. Some folks on the right used that data to decry a pro-Obama bias in the media.

Well now, the same George Mason think tank has come out with a general election study. When network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative. Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

The major networks have been harder on Obama than McCain! I’m not surprised…think about the last time you heard a negative statement uttered on the news about John McCain. It’s a tough call to make because there are rarely ANY statements about McCain on the news. Sure, the quantity of coverage is tilted, but the quality of coverage should not be discounted.

I have to brag because I just got what I wanted for Christmas 5 months early. This afternoon, Dave and I dropped by our new apartment to see if we could check it out now that the old tenant has vacated. We move in on Wednesday and wanted to be able to finally get a look and see if we needed to buy anything new to match with the fundamental decor.

What we found were only pleasant surprises. First, the trash room on our floor has recycling receptacles (unlike where we live now). Second, our kitchen floor is granite tile, our counters are charcoal gray, our cabinets and appliances are all white with brushed nickel trim, and our cabinet space is about three times as much as we have now. Third, our bedroom closet is an enormous walk-in. Fourth, the light fixtures are awesome. Fifth, the laundry room is two doors away on our floor. And last, but totally not least, is the patio courtyard.

We were already expecting a surfaced patio (not a dangling balcony), but because our apartment is on the side of the building that it is on and the floor that it’s on, our patio is not the typical size. It is huge. We have a courtyard, I shit you not. It is enormous. Picture the biggest patio furniture set you can find at Home Depot. Are you picturing it? Great, because it fits with enough room for us to play basketball around it. We did NOT expect to see this when we walked up to our back windows, but now that we know it’s there, we’re changing our entire gameplan. Weekly party over here!!!

See below for the floorplan:

Why else would all his acting credits consist of Batman-related fare? He was in “Batman & Robin” in 1997 playing himself. He voiced the Governor of the Utah Territory in “Batman: The Animated Series” back in 1995. And this year, Heath Ledger’s Joker shook him around when he bravely uttered the words “we’re not intimidated by thugs!” Leahy also wrote the introduction to the collected edition of “Green Arrow: the Archer’s Quest” and the foreword to the first volume of “The Dark Knight Archives,” a hardcover reprinting of the first four issues of the Batman comic book.

How cool is that??? I bet he imagined the Joker was Dick Cheney telling him to go f__k himself on the Senate floor on June 22, 2004 when he gave that “we’re not intimidated by thugs” line. Apropos indeed.

I was planning on holding out until after our move next week to go see “The Dark Knight,” but when the guys from work offered up the opportunity tonight, I couldn’t resist succumbing to the thrill of being part of the biggest opening weekend of all time.

And lo and behold, I am utterly blown away. “The Dark Knight” is not just a good comic book movie. It’s not just a good action flick. It’s an amazing film. It is the “Gone with the Wind” of Batman movies, and perhaps the “Gone with the Wind” of 21st Century cinema. Massively entertaining, the characters are fully developed, the message is introduced subtly and clarified over the course of 2.5 hours to its full-blown crescendo just as the final credits begin to roll.

And then there’s the star. The star is not Batman, or Bale, or the Joker or Ledger, it is Ledger’s portrayal itself. Heath was crazy good at what he did for a living and we only really started to notice with his last couple of movies. His performance is perfectly studied, as if he observed real murderous psychopaths for 8 months before hitting the set and playing “terrorist without a cause.” To think we won’t see his face on-screen again after the upcoming Terry Gilliam flick hits theaters is to know the agony of squandered potential. Jack Nicholson was nominated for a Best Actor Golden Globe in 1990 for his Joker performance. Ledger should have an Oscar named after him.

Go see this movie.

From Reuters today:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator’s trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials’ visits to Iraq in advance.

“I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators” who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

While the AP and even Fox News noted that “when [Obama] will arrive is a subject of operational security, so we don’t know anything about that,” Senator McCain had no problem divulging that his opponent will be arriving with a slew of other elected officials in Iraq this weekend.

What would the outcry be if Obama publicly broke with protocol and disclosed information about McCain’s imminent visit to a war zone? I know I’m more than a little concerned that McCain has done this to Obama’s trip, but I sense that more people would go ape-shit if it was the other way around.

Would the comparison be one of senility versus inexperience? Is senility somehow excusable? Thoughts?

85% of all Eddie Murphy movies
Adam Sandler
Alternating Will Ferrell movies
Alzheimer’s Disease
Flava Flav
Athlete hosts of SNL (excluding Peyton Manning)
Bill Engvall
Carlos Mencia
D.L. Hughley
Damon Wayans
Dane Cook
David Letterman
“Desperate Housewives”
Dilbert comic strips
“Entourage”
“Everybody Loves Raymond”
“Futurama” (once it started airing on Comedy Central)
George Lopez
Jay Leno
Jeff Foxworthy
Jim Belushi
Jim Breuer
Larry the Cable Guy
“Little Bush”
Mad Magazine (after you reach 15)
“MadTV”
Margaret Cho (post-1996)
Matthew McConaughey
Movies that mix animation and live-action (excluding “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”)
People getting badly hurt
Perez Hilton’s commentary (we only read you for the scoops and the photos)
Roseanne Barr (post-sitcom)
Rush Limbaugh
Ryan Seacrest
Satan worshipping pedophiles (get it…that joke wasn’t funny either)
“The Jimmy Kimmel Show” (not its host)
“Two and a Half Men”
“Ugly Betty”
“Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

The image on the cover of the New Yorker smartly mimics Michelle’s tilted and playful countenance when she gave him the fist bump that got Fox News anchor E.D. Hill asking if it was a “terrorist fist jab” on June 6. The image on the cover also shows the couple in terrorist garb with a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall of the Oval Office.

The point the artist makes here is “anyone who thinks this is what’s going to happen if Obama’s elected is ridiculous.” I get it, and the typical New Yorker reader is likely to get it. For a more sophisticated public, it would appear to be brilliant subversion…but its execution ignores (while simultaneously lampooning) the fact that a chunk of the public doesn’t comprehend how ridiculous that proposition is.

Obama said “I’ve seen worse” and appears to have let it roll off his back, probably so as not to be dismissive of his minions’ efforts to turn him into a victim. It’s a shrewd albeit self-serving move, but I don’t think the halo effect is at play like some on the right would charge. I think the people freaking out are just stupid.

Some suggest that “if Obama’s swooning, humorless supporters continue to force critics to whisper, to shut up or to explain their artistic renderings, our precious gift and right of free expression will diminish if Obama is elected in November.” What they fail to realize is that there have always been people making a big deal out of satire they don’t understand. That’s why “South Park” and Sarah Silverman are deemed offensive.

And futhermore, there is no pattern of worship of Obama causing people to freak out—there has been nothing off-limits in terms of what people can say about him, only his campaign’s dismissal of untruths and ridiculous bigotry. Yes, he has to defend his lack of experience. Yes, he has to defend any apparent waffling. Both of those things are being attacked quite thoroughly.

Idiots who happen to be overly reverent supporters hardly pose a threat to the First Amendment because they are upset about a single magazine cover that actually supports their candidate. If the First Amendment is your worry, I’d be more focused on Obama’s FISA vote than his supporters’ whining.