Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Travel and the Swine Flu

Travel and the Swine Flu
By this time most people are concerned about travel to various areas where there has been an outbreak of the swine flu, especially travel to Mexico. I just read an interesting post that connects the swine flu to the Democrats.
From www.huffingtonpost.com 4-28-09
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/28/michele-bachmann-links-sw_n_192493.html
Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, following Rush Limbaugh's cue, suggested on Tuesday that President Obama was to blame for the swine flu crisis. She went even farther than the talk show host, implying that swine flu epidemics are a Democratic phenomenon that dates back to President Carter:
"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."
Unfortunately, Bachmann's facts are a little off. As Glenn Thrush notes, Republican President Gerald Ford, not Carter, led the country during the last outbreak of the virus.
This whole erroneous coincidence is just so remarkable. It allowed me to draw another unusual coincidence: While airliners were crashing into the World Trade Center on 9-11-2001, Michele Bachmann was shopping at Macy’s. Do you see the connection? Michele Bachmann must have known about the impending attack and fled for the safety of a department store. And, for all we know, Macy’s was behind this horrible attack on our soil.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

State of Play the movie

Last year I did travel, but not much. For my birthday in July Dianne took me to Sedona, AZ. We also drove to the "ghosttown" Jerome, which was unique, as well as some of the folks we met there.

However, this post is about a movie shown in the KCET film series class that Dianne and I attend twice per year. State of Play, from Universal, comes out this Friday. It has Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, Rachel McAdams and more. It is based on a hit BBC mini-series of the same name about investigative reporters helping solve the murder of a congressman's mistress. It is well written, very tight, suspensful, well acted and I highly recommend seeing it. Originally, Brad Pitt was assigned to play the part Russell Crowe got, and I can't see how anyone else could have done as good a job as Crowe.