Akkam’s Razor

From FirstShowing:

The Wave is an compelling German film that premiered at Sundance earlier this year. It’s about a high school teacher who sets up an experiment to demonstrate to his students what life is like under a dictatorship, but it soon spins horribly out of control when he forms a social unit with a life of its own.

Assuming this is the same version (it isn’t) - I saw a 1981 broadcast version of the Wave (as an ABC Afterschool Special, broadcast in primetime) in high school psychology class in 1989/1990 [available in two parts on YouTube].  Both the upcoming and prior video versions of The Wave were based on a book, which was in turn inspired by a 1969 real-life Paolo Alto, California high school ‘experiment’.

• Talk To Action | Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith - Third Wave doctrine is an example of an extreme religious exceptionalism - not only are all other religious and philosophical belief systems on Earth seen as invalid and under satanic influence, but Third Wave theology sees all competing branches, sects and denominations of Christianity, particularly other conservative Christians who refuse to join "the river" of these outpourings, as an obstacle to God's divine will. Third Wave adherents believe that other Christian churches must drop their competing doctrines, which prevent them from joining this final end-time army, and group together under the new authority of the Apostles and Prophets of this final age. In other words, true believers will join together, in one triumphant end time church, to do battle against evil in the final generation.

• Daily Kos: State of the Nation: It’s not just 600,000 in Ohio: LA, FL, MI, KS, NM, CO, and NV - Colorado dumped ONE FIFTH of all voter registrations — the largest in history. Florida is refusing to accept 85,000 new registrants — overwhelmingly blacks. New Mexico: purged half of the democrats in Mora county (Hispanics) and 600.000 mailers were returned. Ohio & Nevada are scrubbing tens of 1000s of voters who lost their homes to foreclosures. (Kerry lost by a mere 10-votes per district in Ohio).

• The Washington Monthly: John Didn’t Get What He Wanted - John didn't get what he wanted. Right. He could have waited to make his decision until after Palin had been thoroughly vetted. That, however, would have meant giving up his clever idea of announcing his VP pick the day after Obama's convention speech. Alternately, he could have gone with one of the people who had been thoroughly vetted: Pawlenty, for instance. But "neither was the transformative, attention-grabbing choice Mr. McCain felt he needed, top campaign advisers said". So he decided to gamble it all on someone he barely knew and had not vetted.

Foxnews now confirms that convicted DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found dead of a suspected suicide in Florida, as initially reported by their local affiliate. Palfrey was convicted on 4/15/2008 of money laundering, illegal use of the mail, and racketeering in the operation of her “high-quality fantasy service”, operated under the name of “Pamela Martin and Associates”. The investigation of her service resulted in the resignation of Randall Tobias from his position in the US Aid office, Harlan Ullman, the creator of the phrase “Shock-and-Awe”, and an admission of the use of her services by the “very sorry” Louisiana Congressman David Vitter, who is still in office. In the same time period, several additional White House resignations were tendered, apparently unrelated to the DC Madam. In the run-up to her trial, the US DOJ of Justice issued a gag order, stating that her phone records were in fact an asset, forbidding her from discussing (and profiting from) their contents. She intended to call her “johns” to the stand as part of her defense. The case has many interesting unexplored angles.

BC’s Brian Ross had initially said the following (reported at ThinkProgress, with video at Crooks and Liars):

“There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers,” Ross said. “And there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list.” Ross added that the women who worked for the service, potentially as prostitutes, “include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers.”

ABCNEWS’ Brian Ross had acquired many pages of her cell phone records and had breathlessly pitched them as holding several major names, abruptly reversing course on the night that the 20/20 piece aired.

As usually is the case in Washington, much of it is dull. There are no members of Congress we can find in these phone numbers, no White House officials. Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions, most of the men on this list just aren’t newsworthy.

During that same time period, allegations were made that one of the highest persons in the Bush White House as well as an ABC news personality were allegedly affiliated with the list. Larry Flynt also got involved, at one point stating that he was following 20 Congressional leads, but no other names had come forward.

Other little nuggets of interest:

• Cryptome has the phone numbers in list format (note, also on Scribd as images. See this story on Newsvine regarding the crowdsourcing of the bills).
• Maggie Burns mentions what Ms. Palfrey was doing on 9/11, as deduced by the phone records.
• There is a very clever honeypot at dcphonelist.com which allows users to search for a phone number, highlighting suspect phone numbers. They display statistics for numbers of interest.
• This is not the first suicide related to the Madam.

Wow. Just wow.

That debate last night.

Wow.

As of right now, there are over 12,000 comments lambasting the debate and moderators at ABCNEWS.

First, to get this out of the way, Hillary clearly ‘won’ (please note that I am an Obama supporter) the Philadelphia Democratic debate which took place at the National Constitution Center last night (Wednesday, 4/17/2008) .

So I decided on Glengarry Glenn Ross [IMDB, Wiki].  The film was originally a David Mamet play subsequently turned into a movie.  The title refers to two investment properties mentioned in the film - Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms.

Pretty rich film, when you get down to it.  Incredibly obscene, it was referred to by the cast as "Death of a F*cking Salesman". 

The clip is set in a Real Estate office with tired, gray men, on a miserably rainy evening.  Alec Baldwin's character, Blake (coincidentally, acting in a part that was originally written for fellow co-star Al Pacino) comes in to 'motivate' the sales staff. 

My, my, my… Curt must have been up to something very bad for a vast left-wing conspiracy GOP-led US Department of Justice to still be pursuing the influence-peddling case so long after he has been out of office.  The Delaware County Times leads with it in the header in print, with more coverage in both Harpers and on ABC News as well as context and perspective from TPMMuckraker.