When I started this blog, at the original louschuler.com, I gave an annual summary of my favorite books, movies, and events. (Or, in 2006, my favorite book.)

And from time to time, I would write about movies and books without any reason other than to note a trend I’d spotted. I particularly enjoyed writing this summary of recent biographical films. (Important lessons: If your brother dies when you’re young, you will become addicted to drugs. But if you’re not addicted to alcohol or drugs, no one will make a movie about your life, because you aren’t interesting.)

This year, as usual, I haven’t seen most of the movies that show up on the critics’ top 10 lists. All I’ve seen are what’s available on DVD. And, because of the Olympics and the election, I spent way too much time watching TV, and way too little…

Tags: Tags: books, entertainment, movies, Politics, sports

I’ve been trying to avoid writing about explicitly political topics here, but I can’t pass this one up.

Here’s Washington Post columnist David Broder talking about Al Gore’s recent barn-burner of a speech:

His overall charge is that Bush has systematically broken the laws and bent the Constitution by his actions in the areas of national security and domestic anti-terrorism. He is not the first to make that complaint. My e-mail has included many messages from people who have leaped far ahead of the evidence and concluded that Bush should be impeached and removed from office for actions they deem illegal.

Gore stops well short of that point and contents himself with citing the cases that cause many others concern. The first — and to my mind weakest — instance is the claim that Bush took the nation to war on the basis of false intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass…

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If you look at pictures of scumbag Jack Abramoff leaving federal court yesterday, you see a guy who looks like he’s gone to seed. But according to this L.A. Times story, he was once a specimen:

At Beverly Hills High School, Jack Abramoff’s weightlifting prowess was the stuff of legend.

As a senior, he became the first member of the school’s 2700 Club, lifting a combined total of 2,700 pounds in the power squat, dead lift, bench press, and clean and jerk.

His former football coach, Bill Stansbury, recalled a game against Inglewood when Abramoff legally blocked an opposing player and knocked him out cold. …

At Beverly Hills High, he earned a reputation for ambition, hard work and commitment. He held the school record for the power squat, which he completed while holding 510 pounds on his back.

“Jack showed good leadership and was very dedicated, probably the strongest kid on…

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This is tough time of year for me. There’s so much to talk about, and yet, bringing up virtually anything that’s in the news will start a shouting match at family gatherings.

For example, I can’t talk about voting machines. I can’t mention all the recent problems with Diebold, the company whose machines counted millions of votes in the 2004 election. I can’t mention the class-action lawsuits from investors, accusing the company of making misleading statements that led to artificially high stock prices. I can’t mention that California now refuses to recertify Deibold machines until they’ve passed more rigorous testing, or that the machines were easily hacked in a demonstration in Florida. I can’t mention that the company’s controversial CEO resigned last week.

I can’t talk about illegal spying on Americans, even though it would be interesting to quote from this Kevin Drum post and ask this…

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It’s December 1, and I’m still thinking about the political discussion in our house on Thanksgiving, which I mentioned here. It wasn’t the first time I’d been invited inside the mind of a true believer, but because the argument stayed polite and level-headed, it hit me harder: When someone believes in a fixed truth with an unwavering and lifelong conviction, then everything that happens anywhere in the world serves to reinforce that truth. He only pays attention to people and pundits who tell him exactly what he wants to hear. Anything that contradicts his world view is the other side’s propaganda or disinformation.

It stands to reason, then, that people who refuse to consider most of the available information in the world are going to be wrong most of the time. Louis Menard explores that question in this week’s New Yorker:

Prediction is one of the pleasures of life….

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In the previous post, I listed three stories I should care about but don’t yet. The story I do care about — the one I spend more of my free time reading about than any other — is the one that some call “Plamegate.”

You don’t need me to tell you the particulars — if you care, you’re following it. But here’s something I find surprising: According to this story in Editor & Publisher, if you don’t care about administration officials deliberately outing a CIA agent to punish her husband, and don’t take it seriously, you’re in the minority:

Some 51 percent said it is already of “great importance,” with 35 percent choosing “some importance” and 12 percent “little or no importance.” Here are comparable numbers for other notable scandals in recent years, along with the month and year the poll was taken:

Clinton-Lewinsky (1/98)

Great importance – 41%
Some…

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The new, improved Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito Jr., is called “Scalito” for a reason: He’s regarded as a potential lockstep ally of Antonin Scalia on the Court. And, like John Roberts, he started off in politics as an employee of the Reagan administration. But, on the bright side, he’s not as abrasive as Scalia:

Alito is considered far less provocative a figure than Scalia both in personality and judicial temperament. His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.

One of those opinions established the importance of one of the most annoying Christmas-themed characters ever invented:

In the area of church and state, Alito has been consistently supportive of the conservative view that the courts should be more accommodating when considering state entanglement with religion. He wrote a majority opinion in ACLU v. Schundler, holding that a city’s holiday display that included a creche and menorah did not…

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If you’re a partisan Republican, October must’ve been pure hell. I can sympathize. As a liberal and lifelong Democrat, I know what bad stretches feel like.

But in this moment of presidential vulnerability, a few good things may have happened. A conservative chief justice joined the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing another conservative chief justice. I don’t imagine I’ll agree with John Roberts very often over the next 50 years (those SCOTUS guys don’t die young, and I figure I’m good for another half-century), but he is what a Supreme Court justice is supposed to be, and what Harriet Miers was not.

Another moment-of-weakness nominee, Ben Bernanke, is a stunningly good choice to replace Yoda as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Here’s what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who was hired by Bernanke as an economics professor at Princeton) has to say about the…

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I don’t know how many years it’s been since I read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, but I’ve never forgotten the passages in which Lewis’ Midwestern Republicans talk politics. It was my first exposure to what we now call the echo chamber — the endless repetition of a political party’s talking points, with each speaker using his turn at the microphone to say exactly what everyone else has said, but to say it as if revealing deep and profound truths.

Here’s a passage from Chapter 3, in which Babbitt (the first speaker) talks to his more learned and erudite neighbor in their quiet neighborhood in Zenith, Ohio:

“Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican candidate? Who’ll they nominate for president? Don’t you think it’s about time we had a real business administration?”

“In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its…

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… how both presidents Bush have nominated Supreme Court justices with slightly odd personal lives?

David Souter: lifelong bachelor; lives by himself in a farmhouse on an unmarked road in New Hampshire.

Clarence Thomas: married twice; accused of sexual harrassment by a former employee; left a paper trail at his local video store confirming that he is, indeed, a porn hound.

John Roberts: unmarried until his early 40s; has two adopted children, including a boy whom he dresses to ensure the poor tyke will get the shit beaten out of him his first day at school.

Harriet Miers: unmarried at 60.

For the record, I don’t care if any of them are gay, straight, confused, or just opposed to joint checking accounts. I don’t care about pornography. Adoption is great (although dressing boys in clothes that scream “sissy” should be punishable by four weeks at Parris Island). Sexual harrassment…

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