Anyway, "American Splendor" and "Crumb."  If you like documentaries about individuals, comics, the underground art movement, or personality disorders, you'll like these two flicks.

If I was an irrationalist, I'd be wondering if this was all payback for the 2000 election shenanigans.

But I'm not.  This is just bad luck.  It's what happens occasionally when you live in hurricane country.

Talk about putting the cobra in the cradle.

Putting aside the issue of separation of church and state, this bill is a slap in the face of the Constitution, which separates and balances the three branches of government.  If bills can be passed saying "no court may look at this legislation," then where is judicial review?  Right in the toilet.

All for a wedge issue they hope will get a few votes for them in the election.

Is there no level to which the Republicans will not stoop nowadays?  They are tearing at the foundation of our system of government here!

At least, there was a pilot show.  I don't know where it's headed.  You can hear a clip from the show on the site.

Check it out.

(MST3k is short for "Mystery Science Theater 3000," my all-time favorite TV show, and if you didn't know that, you probably won't be interested in what they're doing now.)

I wonder what they thought the steering wheel would be for?

Stocks didn't like this at all:  the oil news, plus problems at Morgan Stanely and Fannie Mae, caused the market to drop today.

The hurricanes are part of the problem, of course, especially since Ivan hit the oil-rich Gulf Coast.  Ongoing concerns in Iraq are another.  That, plus other problems as they crop up and the fact that worldwide demand has risen up to meet the current output potential, and oil prices are not going to drop soon.

Disclosure:  I have a bullish position in oil producer ExxonMobil.

There are still a lot of folks out there who seem to think "normal" oil prices are in the mid $20s.  They also seem to want to blame "fear and uncertainty" as though this is a mere emotional spike in the market that will settle back down any time now.   But if you check the recent history, the prices haven't really spiked; they rose gradually but steadily until August, settled back down for a while, and now are on the climb again.  It doesn't strike me as the chart you'd see on emotion or speculation.  I'll grant that the volume has grown greatly, especially in this second price rise, indicating some speculation; but speculators always move into markets that are on the march.  Speculative dollars are never in dull or sideways markets.

Markets don't care about what people think is "normal;" they operate strictly on supply and demand.  World demand is up, production capacity is flat; therefore more people are chasing the same amount of oil.  Thus, prices will rise until either world demand goes back down (recession, or a forced reduction in demand from high prices) or capacity is increased (a slow process, but it can happen).  In the meantime, with demand so close to the limits of supply, every hiccup that comes down the pike--hurricanes, Iraq, Russia's Yukos, Sudanese unrest, Venezuelan political upheaval--causes prices to move even more.

Sorry, I can't make a "no respect" joke about this one.

Though he made a lot of bad movies, he was in "Caddyshack" and "Back to School," and that's good enough for me.  Plus he was funny on stage, and helped tons of young stand up comics make it.

It doesn't look good, but maybe he'll be pull through.  After all, this is a guy who was a total washout until he was about 40 years old and decided to relaunch a failed career in comedy.  So you know he's tough.

Here's Rodney's home page.

Iran has learned all it needs to know about Bush:  if you have nukes (N. Korea), Bush is weak against you.  If you'd like nuclear weapons but don't have them (Iraq), Bush will claim you have them, then stomp on you.

They've chosen the North Korea route.

Of course, they're claiming that they are simply processing uranium for nuclear generator fuel.  But they're doing it in massive, unnecessary amounts.  What does it tell you?

Thanks, Bush, yet again.

Essentially, the government is saying, "we have enough evidence of collusion between the tobacco companies to put out false information about the health effects of tobacco for X years; therefore, profits they earned during those years were ill-gotten."  Under the terms of RICO, criminals are not allowed to profit by their crimes and must disgorge any such ill-gotten gains.

$280 billion is a lot.  It's bigger than the huge $246 billion multi-state settlement they reached over state program health costs a few years ago.

Because of this, the tobacco stocks sank some yesterday and today.

Could a verdict for the U.S. sink the tobacco companies?

I doubt it.  It's possible, I suppose, but they're very cash-flow rich, and could probably set up long-term bonds to cover the verdict, then pay the bonds back over years.

If they did go under, I'm sure there are enterprising people out there who would start up brand-new tobacco companies with no such RICO concerns hanging over their heads.  After all, there are addicts to service.