I went to see Chicken Run over the weekend which is a story about chickens attempting to escape from evil chicken farmers in England done in Claymation - a much-refined version of the "Mr. Bill" technique. The movie is wonderful entertainment.
The voice of the male - rooster - lead is Mel Gibson which makes this movie his third anti-British film, in addition to "Braveheart" and the current "The Patriot".
The Confederate battle flag was removed from the South Carolina Statehouse on Saturday under the terms of an agreement reached among - guess who - South Carolinians. Maybe it's just me, but the ceremony wasn't the same without Bianca Jagger and Al Sharpton elbowing each other out of the way to get in front of the TV cameras.
Ron Brownstein, senior national political writer for the Los Angeles Times, had a column over the weekend in which he described Al Gore's problems, thus:
"In recent polls, Bush is consistently attracting support from about 9 in 10 Republicans--a far better showing than either of the last two GOP presidential nominees. Gore, meanwhile, draws only about three-fourths of Democrats.
"And while conservative activists have largely acquiesced to Bush's moves toward the center since the GOP primaries, Gore is still facing loud rumbles of discontent from liberal voices as diverse as Ralph Nader, the Green Party's presidential nominee, and the leadership of the United Auto Workers."
The soon-to-be chairman of Gore's campaign, Commerce Secretary William Daley, was interviewed recently by the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet. Daley was explaining why he is not concerned with the poll figures saying that Gore moved his campaign to Nashville "because everybody in this city [Washington, DC] said 'you can't beat Bradley.'"
I see this as a signal the Gore campaign is preparing to move to Tahiti because everybody in this COUNTRY says 'you can't beat Bush.'
As part of a number of celebrations and remembrances in Your Nation's Capital this weekend long-time friend and Viet Nam vet, Kenn Hill attended the annual meeting of the Viet Nam Helicopter Pilot's Association on the National Mall Sunday morning. As part of the ceremony, eight helicopters flew over at about 100 feet.
I remember someone telling me that, for soldiers who were wounded in the field, that sound - the whump-whump-whump of the blades - was literally the sound of life.
The New York Times "Week in Review" section reprinted a test conducted among 556 college seniors in which they were asked to answer 34 multiple choice questions about American history. The students were chosen from 55 leading colleges and universities including Harvard, Princeton and Brown.
The average score? 53 percent. Oh, I forgot to mention these questions were HIGH SCHOOL level history questions.
You may remember that on Friday I was a guest on the Ollie North-Paul Begala show, Equal Time and I begged - groveled, really, for votes. Well, there was some skullduggery going on because both Chris Lapetina and I were both tossed off after the first round of voting.
I think there was some cross-over voting going on. And the Supreme Court ruled just last week that open primaries were unconstitutional!
It was not a total loss, however. MSNBC took a frame from some appearance or another and had my picture on their web site which I have lifted. To see it, go here:
It's one of those things which makes you shake your head. Reuters reports from Oslo, Norway that a new "fashion craze" is leading young people to steal seat belts from airplanes to hold up their baggy pants. I can see mothers all over Norway, every morning, standing at the breakfast n��k saying, "Remember, Vidkun, to tighten your belt, pull on the loose end. To remove your belt, pull up on the buckle."
Midyear Mullings: As of the end of June, the Mullings website had over 200,000 visits for the first six months of the year which represented just under two million hits - over a half million in June alone. As of last night there were over 15,730 people on the e-mail subscription list which means Mullings combined "circulation" is now almost 240,000 per month.
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