The movie “The Wave” is based on a novel by Morton Rhue and is based on a true story that happend in 1967 at Gordon High School in Palo Alto. The teacher starts an experiment with his students trying to show them how the Nazi regime was able to invluence so many people and why no one stopped them.

He created his own symbol (the wave), a dressing code, behaviour rules and a motto:

“Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action.”

The message is simple – what happened back in the 1930′s and 1940′s wasn’t so “unique” to Germany or to that era. It’s part of the human condition.

Watch…

Since then, he’s become more and more Bush-esque – right down to the verbal incoherence. After watching McCain present himself eloquently and with charm for years he now looks confused, uncomfortable, and rehearsed.

I was kind of disappointed that a guy who looked like an answer to partisan politics a year ago was now looking as corrupt and inept as any other political (which is to say: a lot).

But then …

palindrome

–noun

1.	a word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc., reading the same backward as forward.

I cannot imagine what possessed him (literally) to select his running mate. Mind you, there are many very well-qualified women who would have been incredible choices. But what has Sarah Palin ever done that qualifies her to be one stroke (sic) away…

The legislation is available online here, so I figured it was worth taking a look. There is so much rhetoric these days and the media is such a shill for the major political parties that I don’t believe anything until I see it for myself. So, I hop over to the page and search down for “SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMERGENCIES”.

Now, I’m no legal expert, but some of the subtle changes in language are kind of startling:

SEC. 1076. USE OF THE ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMER-
GENCIES.
(a) USE OF THE ARMED FORCES AUTHORIZED.–
(1) IN GENERAL.–Section 333 of title 10,

…

But when he did “The Passion” and then he and his dad went on this anti-semitic rant about how the Holocaust was exagerated, well, I lost interest in ole Mel as an actor and as a human being. I’m old enough to have met people who had those tattoos that the Nazi’s put on people in the camps. I know it was real. And for him and his father to purport otherwise, especially in order to promote his rather biased film, is really sick.

And then this week he gets blitzed (no pun intended) and pulled over for drunk driving. During the arrest he mouths off and insults the officer, and everyone else involved … and goes on a nice little rant about the “F*cking Jews”. So now any doubt about his motivations in how “The Passion” ended up are gone. He’s a bigot. Case closed.

Which would be bad enough, but Lordy, can you get any dumber than this? Here’s a guy who positively thrived in Hollywood…

• Lay was a freind of W’s. The Bush’s probably didn’t want him in jail, where he could be pumped (sic) for information on dealings with the White House. So a convenient CIA-esque quiet death … the kind of thing ole Ross Perot would go off about … comes into play. Not that far from believable.
• A quiet death was too good for him. He should have come down with AIDS or that Flesh-Eating diseases … or at

…

“What incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? Nothing satisfies you. Everyone asks for personnel changes, so the White House has personnel changes and everybody’s like, oh, they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First of all, that’s a horrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

The man has balls. To get up in front of the most powerful people in Washington and say these kinds of things. Comedy Central, fake news and all, is becoming a beacon for the only really honest look there is at what is going on. Maybe things are so bad or so jaded now that the only way to look at it is from a comic’s eye.

Here are some highlights (the full transcript is here):…

Say what? OK, so sometimes the “freedom” of the press is the freedom to not publish or broadcast things that will stir up trouble. So in today’s politically correct, “Forgive me for being an American,” world these decisions kind of make sense.

But it’s the double- and triple-standards that are in play that are sickening. CNN won’t show a cartoon which rips on an Islamic leader, but will show footage of Arab protesters burning the American flag, and will give prime air time to ding bats who say that the Holocaust never happened. How is one any less inflammatory or offensive than another?

Because only one will get your overseas offices burned to the friggin’ ground and your reporters taken out and shot and their bodies dragged through the streets, that’s why. In this case, “the terrorists have won.”

And maybe the Muslim world should…

In response to Katrina messing up oil production, there’s now a push for legislation to raise the average miles per gallon for cars sold in the US. This is being held up by congress as something that will benefit The People … who are “sick of high gas prices.”

Which sounds good on the surface. More efficient cars means we use less gas and spend less. But …

The oil companies will keep their same fat profit margins. If anything, they can just raise prices if demand should go down. Who ends up paying for this “saving?” Well, we do. We pay for more expensive cars which are more efficient. In fact, we pay for the retooling to design and produce these cars as well as those costs will be reflected in the prices for cars which are released in the interim.

Rather than sticking the American consumer again, why not have some legislation forcing the oil companies to have some percentage of their production be comprised of something other than petroleum? Germany in World War II ran their war machine quite well with a healthy mix of synthetic oil products. It could be done…

Well, lets start at the top. “Where was Bush?” should be a question which is asked a lot when reviewing the first few days of the tragedy when immediate action was needed. A lot of people despised Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911″, but the similarity of W’s response in the initial aftermath of that event (as portrayed in the movie, anyway) and to Katrina are strangely similar. Hey, he was on vacation, godamnit!

I’ll give him credit for going down there, but it was too little too late. And the barrage of talking points his handlers have him emit just make him sound less and less credible over time.

Then there’s the collection of dingbats he not only put into positions of responsibility (Brown and Chertoff) but has supported and praised all through this, despite their shockingly obvious incompetance. “You’re doing a good job, Brownie” … I almost puked.

Compare these inept robots to the guys who are getting it done, such as General Russel L. Honore. Honore is down in the muck, barking orders at anything that isn’t working. Chertoff and Brown issue moronic statements to the media. The contrast is almost…