Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Black and Blue and Red... The election coverage was funny last night. I watched CNN first and I chuckled when I saw the "panel." I thought to myself, here we go... I chuckled first when I heard Paul Begala mention Limbaugh and called him a "drug-addled gasbag" or something to that effect. Then I laughed again when James Carville came on because Limbaugh always refers to him as "the forehead." Then I switched over to Fox News and it was so depressing, I felt like I was gonna jump out the window. The coverage was a bit confusing, too, so I left it on CNN the rest of the night. Well, I didn't think Bush would win re-election and, now, I didn't think the Democrats would win so easily in this year's mid-term elections. Right now, the Dems have 227 seats in the house as the Republicans have 195. There are still some undecided races, but the Dems will still have the majority. In the Senate, it's actually tied 49 seats to 49 with Montana and Virginia still being decided. The Democrats would need to take those last 2 seats to have the majority but if it becomes split 50-50, then VP Cheney (since he is the Senate pres. by authority of that thing we call a constitution), would most likely side with the Republicans, thus establishing a Republican majority. What complicates matters even more is that there is the ability for any candidate who loses by less than 1% to ask for a re-count, and that still can't even be done until the official count is announced which is sometime later this month, I think. In cases like this I'm always reminded of people who say that their vote doesn't count, so why bother. Albeit, a vote does count in every election, but the consequences of someone's action (or inaction) are even more glaring in a really tight race. If you think about it, that one person's vote could determine what type of senator they have, and, by consequence, what type of majority is in congress, thus leading to whether we pull troops out of Iraq, and then whether we use stem cells to cure Michael J. Fox, and then whether we stop killing babies, and then this and then that... ok, maybe one vote won't be that drastic, but isn't it nice to imagine that we have that kind of power? In other boring news, the Nets are 1-1 (but they should be 2-0; that last game against Miami was a fluke). They're looking good so far and I'm liking Marcus Williams. I think the Knicks are gonna be sorry they didn't pick him up. Actually, the Knicks are gonna be sorry for a lot of things as the season goes. Giants are looking great even with injuries and for the first time in a very long time, Rutgers football is nationally ranked. This might not be big news outside of the state, but it's huge over here, and we might actually see Rutgers playing in a BCS game. They're undefeated and playing another undefeated team this Thursday. Lastly, I just wanted to slip in that we saw The Departed this past weekend. It was GREAT! I checked on IMDB.com afterwards and found out it was a Hong Kong movie remake. Scorcese says he was "inspired" by the film, but from what I'm hearing, both movies seem to be almost identical. That's kind of a bummer because I've always liked the Hong Kong stuff eg, John Woo, Ringo Lam yadda yadda, but their stuff never seems to translate well to American audiences. And that sucks, because they've been making good flicks. Even more, I've heard Oscar buzz around The Departed, but if Scorcese got passed over for Kundun, the Aviator, Goodfellas, god, even Gangs of NY, and gets an Oscar for this one, then I would just see it as a pity Oscar. Kind of like what Morgan Freeman got for Million Dollar Baby or Paul Giamatti for Cinderella Man. OK, I'm gonna end this now because it's pretty clear I'm not doing any work. If anyone's got a good movie review for me, lemme have it cause I want to hear what's good.