delicious

I finally got around to installing my GeForce 6600 GT this weekend. Installing mesa and the nvidia drivers was actually a lot easier than I remembered it from my original geforce-on-linux days. I’m not much of a PC gamer anymore, but I didn’t waste much time in tracking down the demos for Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3. Not flawless, but more than I expected with the sorry state of closed graphics drivers on linux. Nvidia is set to release a new driver at the end of this month that is rumored to be a large improvement over the current 7676 drivers. We’ll see.

Command & Conquer: Renegade still won’t run on wine proper, nor a cvs checkout of winex. I’m all but convinced that TransGaming purposefully cripples their cvs tree to intice people to pay for a subscription to the pre-packaged version (which actually works). Who knows, maybe I’ll pay my tithe and pick up a copy some day since several people tell me the few pc games I still play work perfectly on it. Anyone care to loan me a copy?

I’m talking about Abramoff, the chief influence peddler of our time, behind Tom Delay and Bush, influence - over things like enforcing monopoly decisions, peddled to monopolies like Microsoft. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth.

These Fascists favor monopoly corporations fronted by corrupt authoritarian governments underwritten by a cult of personality, and protected by endless propaganda guile. People are twisting themselves in knots to defend Microsoft and the Republican tyrants who protect it’s monopoly. Worshipping that idiot Bush, and his endless work to destroy our liberty (like his latest feint at martial law). Don’t waste your breath inventing nonsense equating liberalism to nazis. You’re a fascist, Microsoft bought your precious Republican party, and our freedom is burning while you dance to Bush’s fiddle. Try your claptrap on your fellow Republicans, who are obviously eager to believe anything.

The fact of the matter is that she’s nominated for one purpose and one purpose only - to pack the Supreme Court with pro-Bush justices so that when the criminal conspiracy indictments start raining down for scandals like Karl Rove committing treason by outing CIA agent Valerie Plame, he will have some people on the bench to keep him and his buddies from being sent to prison.

I’m getting tired of talking about this and having people refuse to listen so I’m not going to step off this topic (at least in this forum). I’ve said what I wanted said and it’s not my problem if people insist on wrapping themselves up in the warm blanket of ignorance to shield themselves from what the rest of us call reality.

Some people were confused by my linking Harriet Miers to Bush since some people seem to be having trouble focusing on the facts. I’ll be the first one to admit that when Miers tried the case mentioned she was a registered Democrat, but considering Zell “Liberalism is a disease” Miller is also a registered Democrat, I wouldn’t read to much into that. What is simple fact is that when Republicans didn’t run the Justice Department, Microsoft was ruled a monopoly. When they took over, Microsoft got let off. And now the Republican machine is appointing this Microsoft lawyer to the Supreme Court. Microsoft’s got a dad in the Republican lobbying machine that ties them all together. So the details of her party registration aren’t perfectly in line, but she’s essentially Bush’s personal lawyer. Doesn’t that sound “partisan” to you? You need every dot to line up in perfect corruption to see what’s plainly true?

…may be closer than you think.

And the juggernaut rushing at the American people that threatens to roll over our rights and freedoms is Corporate National Socialism.

(1) Conspire with brother, news corporations, big business, and SCOTUS to steal 2000 election.
(2) Start unjustified and costly war.
(3) Profit!
(4) Reroute some profits back into election cycle, collaborate with news corporations, big business, and tamper with electronic voting machines to steal a second election.
(5) Don’t prepare for a predictable natural distaster, allow hundreds to perish, and cut a huge taxpayer check to go to same Iraqi no-bid contractors.
(6) Profit even more!
(7) Lather, rinse, and repeat …

I’m surprised how many people I talk to haven’t ever heard of Jack Abramoff. Much like Karl Rove until late, he’s kept well out of the media spotlight in favor of political shadows and back rooms. He spent the latter part of his college years organizing Masachussetts college campuses for Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign before getting elected to chair the College Republican National Committee. There he was quoted as saying “It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently”. Later the Committee noted that Abramoff “changed the direction of the committee and made it more activist and conservative than ever before.”

After producing the craptacular anti-Communist flick “Red Scorpion” in 1989 he went headlong into politics becoming a far-right Conservative Republican lobbyist where he made most of his Washington connections. In 1995 Abramoff worked for the Global Council of Islamic Banks, whose chairman, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, was under investigation for alleged funding of terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained under a secret contract by the Guam Superior Court to lobby against a bill proposing to put the Superior Court under the authority of the Guam Supreme Court. The $324,000 was paid to Abramoff through a Laguna Beach, California, lawyer by means of 36 checks of $9,000 each. The intention of this form of payment is to evade federal contracting rules requiring an open tender for contracts over $10,000. On Nov. 19, 2002, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, the chief prosecutor for Guam and the instigator of the indictment, was unexpectedly demoted and removed from the office he had held since 1991. The federal grand jury investigation was quickly wound down and took no further action. In 2005, Public Auditor Doris Flores Brooks initiated a new investigation of the Abramoff contract which is continuing.

Tyco Inc. claimed in August 2005 that Abramoff had been paid $1.7 million for an ‘astroturf campaign’ to create a ‘grass roots’ campaign to oppose proposals to penalize US corporations registered abroad for tax reasons. The work was allegedly never performed. Timothy Flanigan, general counsel for Tyco said that Abramoff’s lobbying firm boasted they could help Tyco fight a special liability tax because he “had good relationships with members of Congress,” including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Abramoff also bragged two years ago that he was in contact with Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by Bush’s nominee to be deputy attorney general.

On August 11, 2005, Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on fraud charges arising from a 2000 deal to buy casino boats. Kidan and a third associate, Ben Waldman, as yet unindicted, are accused of using a fake wire transfer to defraud Foothill Capital Corp. and Citadel Equity Fund Ltd that had agreed to lend $60 million to purchase the casinos on condition that Abramoff and his partners made a cash contribution of $23 million. The indictment alleges that the transfer was counterfeit. Abramoff was arrested on bank and wire fraud charges on August 12, 2005, detained overnight in holding and released the following day on $2.25 million bond.

Finally Abramoff is curently under investigation by separate state and federal grand jury investigations into lobbying performed for Indian tribes running casino gambling businesses. In addition to the allegations arising from the consulting contracts themselves, Abramoff is accused of illegally giving favors to (among others) senior Republicans Ney, DeLay, and Conrad Burns.

Abramoff is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with America. A far-right ultra-conservative who lies, cheats and steals to keep corporations and the ultra-rich elite in power. Wait… actually that makes him your run-of-the-mill Republican.

It was no surprise that Bush’s nomination to replace Sandra Day O’Connor was going to be a woman, but when he nominated Harriet Miers I couldn’t place where I’d heard the name. Turns out she’s former Microsoft paid legal counsel whose most notable court win was her success in arguing that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren’t “injured” and couldn’t participate in a class action suit against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0 which often destroyed valuable data. Of course Microsoft was quick to release a fix… for $9.95 which the consumers didn’t feel they should have to pay. Miers’ win in court saved Microsoft millions at the same time it cost consumers those millions in upgrade fees.

Also no surprise is Miers’ (and subsequently Microsoft’s) connection to Bush and the “Republican indictment gang”. At the time of the lawsuit Miers was in close contact with Bill Gates whose father is the Gates in the Preston Gates & Ellis law firm. Preston Gates & Ellis made sizable donations to Republican election campaigns especially a $13,000 donation to the reelection campaign of Richard “Doc” Hastings who now chairs the Ethics Committee where he controversially replaced Joel Hefley; Hefley had angered Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders by issuing several reports and letters criticizing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Preston Gates & Ellis also employed Jack Abramoff, an influential Washington power-lobbyist and conservative activist.

Abramoff is a central figure in a series of high-profile political scandals linked to the Republican Party. He is currently under investigation by grand juries in Washington, D.C., for his involvement in the Abramoff-Reed Indian Gambling Scandal, and by a grand jury in Guam over a separate matter. He was indicted on August 11, 2005, by a third grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for bank fraud arising out of an unrelated business deal. The investigations and indictments of Abramoff have taken on significant national importance because of his close political connections with leading national Republicans, including George W. Bush, Congressional Republicans and various influential conservatives.

I didn’t want it to sound like I’m a complete Wachowski fanboy because the Matrix Trilogy didn’t get past me free of criticism. My critique is just different from the far more common “I hate everything that’s groundbreaking and popular” mindset. Essentially there’s one thing about the movie that I don’t like.

1. Neo is “born” with this skill, and noone else has it. “Prophet”
2. Someone else knows about it before hand and searches him out. “Prophesy”
3. Neo must learn about, and then use, his special power or all is lost. “Savior”

Those kinds of story lines bother me. Religous implications aside, this type of baseline is the start of so much racist/classist thinking, that people are somehow born with or without the skill to succeed and there is nothing they can do about it. Too many people have used birthright as a way of claiming superiority where it really doesn’t exist. I prefer to think that anyone has the potential to succeed given sufficient effort. Just be clever. If Neo was just a normal clever guy rather than something unique, it would have been a lot better for me.

I know it’s been a while since their release, but one can hardly discuss a sci-fi movie, or movies in general, without someone chiming in with their reason for hating the Matrix trilogy. I’ve decided to let my opinion be known…

I think it’s interesting how the Wachowski’s constructed Reloaded and Revolutions. Love it or hate it, everything that happens is merely on a philosophical base, and everything plays second fiddle to that. Hence the plot holes and lack of character development.

Let me get you started with a partial explanation of the final battle between Smith and Neo. Themes of choices. You cannot see beyond the choices you do not understand, drilled into us by the Oracle throughout the series. Smith takes over the Oracle and now has her ’sight’. He foresees the battle with Neo and his win. Only one Smith fights Neo because he foresees that only one Smith is needed to win. All he sees is up to the moment when he defeats Neo, because that is the choice that he has made–Smith chooses to destroy Neo. But he doesn’t understand why he is killing Neo. So he cannot see past that choice and realize it will ultimately destroy him.

The Wachowski Bros. wanted to examine the idea of what is real, mind over matter, existence and all these things, so they created a story about The Matrix. They don’t care that there are probably better sources of energy than humans, because this suits their device of examining this philosophical topic.

Why do the robot suits not have protection for the humans? Because they wanted it to be humans fighting the machines, it’s a human vs machine war, and if they were encased in many layers of protection it would just be machines vs machines.

So sure, there are plot holes and undeveloped characterizations. And I’m not trying to make excuses for the Bros. But I think it is worthwhile to understand that this wasn’t lack of foresight by the writers, they just had (in their minds) more important things they wanted to talk about than geek out on the silly little plot details. There is a lot more substance to the movies than people realize, it just may not hit home in the normal areas the average movie-goer expects them to.

As food for thought I submit that some of us actually enjoy being challeneged by our choices of entertainment. Some movies should require multiple viewings. Some books, multiple readings. Yes, most entertainment is meant to be escapist but not all should be. As for The Matrix movies, I look at it this way. For the action fans, it was a kick-ass experience. People can play the Simpson’s “Comic Book Guy” role all they want and simply state it’s the worst movie/series ever with no real opinion or criticism at all, but you can’t tell me that you didn’t get a kick out of the first time you saw “bullet time” visuals and the total mayhem (when had you seen something like the lobby scene previously).

The first one or two viewings, the action was the main focus. After that, however, the surprise and excitement start to wear off and you’re not as distracted by the visual elements. This is when you have the opportunity to think about some of the deeper elements of the movie, the philosophy being chief among them.

As for being challenged, hell, I’ll take a Kubrick film over Scary Movie 3 any time. The Matrix was popular for two reasons: it was a fun, action-fantasy flick and it had a lot of interesting apocalyptic suggestions. It might not have been an iron-clad plot, but if that is what you were looking for in the first place, you should have rented Citizen Kane instead.

All the best movies need to be watched multiple times, and there are plenty of movies that are way more subtle than the Matrix trilogy. Come to think of it, if a movie didn’t need to be watched more than once, what would be the point in buying the DVD?