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Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times: For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood or its plan to bring his classic graphic novel Watchmen — a dystopian epic that deconstructs the superhero genre — to the screen this spring.
"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hourlong phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I, for one, am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."
Moore is often described as a recluse, but, really, I think it's more precise to say he simply is too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. The 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect — articulate, witty, obstinate and enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he gets an edge in his voice only when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with... read more
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Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I, for one, am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."
Moore is often described as a recluse, but, really, I think it's more precise to say he simply is too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. The 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect — articulate, witty, obstinate and enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he gets an edge in his voice only when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with...">
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Carrie Johnson, Washington Post: Justice Department officials yesterday vowed to unravel the complex financial deals that helped prompt a market crisis in an effort that will generally seek criminal charges against individual brokers and bankers, rather than companies themselves, according to interviews with lawyers involved in the cases.
Mindful of the fallout from the last wave of business fraud cases six years ago, authorities are leaning against seeking indictments of major banks and insurers that may have inflated the value of their mortgage-related investments. Instead, prosecutors will look for such garden-variety crimes as false statements and insider trading by executives who tried to disguise financial problems or pad their wallets.
Exhibit A is Bear Stearns, the investment bank that collapsed in March and was bought by J.P. Morgan Chase during a cash squeeze that ultimately gripped Wall Street. Two former fund managers there are fighting criminal charges for allegedly misleading investors about the financial health of their unit. The company will avoid indictment, according to two sources familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not final. read more
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In 1773 a mob of American colonists famously dumped crates of tea belonging to the British East India Company into Boston harbor. It was a direct action by citizens against the tax regime of the British government, and just one of several incidents that ultimately led to the Revolutionary War.
More than two-hundred years later Americans still notoriously abominate taxes. They hate taxes so much that they deny themselves a privilege taken for granted by every other civilized nation on earth, namely, universal healthcare.
So how can they just sit quietly by as the greatest tax rip-off of all time is inflicted on them?
The $700,000,000,000 bailout package approved by the senate yesterday will place a tax burden of several thousand dollars on every man, woman, and child in the U.S. and that’s on top of the huge debt they already bear. It is a burden that exceeds by an order of magnitude the burden that the British tried to place on the American colonists after the Seven Year’s War. More significantly, it is the result not of justifiable expenditure, but of corruption at the highest levels.
Yet all is quiet. No protests in the streets, no angry... read more
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An appropriations bill signed by President Bush last week allows the controversial National Applications Office to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program that would turn military spy satellites on the US, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies. The government's own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, has warned in an unpublished report that the more expansive program in the offing lacks adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.
For now, the law restricts the NAO to "activities substantially similar" to those carried out by the Civil Applications Committee, an interagency coordinating body formed in 1976 to give civilian agencies access to military satellites for scientific and disaster preparedness purposes, such as "monitoring volcanic activity, environmental and geological changes, hurricanes, and floods." But as a draft charter for the Office makes clear, officials at the Department of Homeland Security hope to branch out from these traditional applications, providing assistance and information to domestic law enforcement agencies. read more
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Zachary Coile, SF Chronicle: While crafting a bill intended to rescue the U.S. economy this week, lawmakers couldn't stop themselves from adding billions of dollars in tax breaks that have little to do with restoring confidence in financial markets.
Senators quietly tucked a number of earmarks into the tax package of the 451-page bill that was passed Wednesday night and is expected to be put to a vote in the House today: a $2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children; a $100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners; $192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry; $148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers; and a $49 million tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill.
Many of the tax breaks were put in place years ago and were set to expire. But their inclusion is complicating efforts in the House to pass an economic rescue plan; an earlier attempt failed Monday. Several House Republicans railed on Thursday against the pork-packed bailout bill. read more
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People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.
The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.
It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.
The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind. read more
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It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.
The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.">
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Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK: Yes, she won the debate by not imploding. But governing requires knowledge, and mindless populism is just that — mindless.
The question, the McCain campaign later acknowledged, was a fair one. In one of her sit-downs with Katie Couric of CBS News, Sarah Palin was asked to discuss a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. "Well, let's see," Palin replied, pausing. "There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but ..."
Couric followed up: "Can you think of any?" Palin, still pondering, said: "Well, I could think of ... any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."
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Couric followed up: "Can you think of any?" Palin, still pondering, said: "Well, I could think of ... any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."
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