Looks like Lisa Shue ran away with this one. Now the seeds are set for the Final Four round:

First up, is the Fairchild/Thompson match-up. Voting will remain open through 12 noon on Friday and the Shue/Carter match-up will then run through the weekend until Monday.

Once set, the winners of each will square off against each other for the Championship, which will run through next Friday. That afternoon, the overall winner will be declared and on Saturday April 29th I'll post a "tribute" to that lucky lady complete with new images. Let the voting begin!

View updated Tournament brackett HERE.

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New to the 'roll: You gotta love a guy with six posts up today and it's not even noon yet. Ran across his site as a trackback to the website that has the "emotional contagion" post.

Not to mention that he quotes one of my favorite Billy Joel songs and his assertive Comment Policy makes him a kindred spirit. Welcome aboard!

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Whenever I dip a toe into the fever swamp of the bitter, angry, unhinged Left side of the blogosphere (which I will do once in a great while when I need a good laugh), I'm always amazed at how these deranged folks are so powerfully drawn to each other. It's always either a mouth-frothing scream-fest or a big cyber-pity party.

Well, here's a fascinating post that explains the neuroscience behind this phenomenon known as "emotional contagion".

The next time you see a poll that shows Republicans or Conservatives being "happier" than Democrats and Liberals, remember that physiology plays a big part. Bottom line: Angry and negative people are bad for your health. Stay away from them. You'd think this would be common sense, no?

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This is the movie poster for Al Gore's "global warming" scare flick:

Does anyone else see the pack of penquins blindly following each other into a desert as a metaphor for the radical environmentalist movement?

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My cable company has finally signed a carriage agreement for SportsNet New York (SNY), which means that I won't have to miss some 120 Mets games this season (not that I have time to watch them all).

And as an added bonus, get a load of one of the new announcers for SNY that I also get to look at all summer:

SNY's Julie Donaldson

Cue Glen Quagmire: "Heh, Heh...Ooooooooooh yeah!"

The Team. The Time. The Hot Sports Babe!

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Compared to, oh, 4,700 who don't. BrainShavings has a great graphic that puts this into a nice visual perspective.

Go check it out.

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Is very good.

Opens in theaters April 28th. Dennis Prager declares that "All Americans Must See 'United 93'".

Jason Apuzzo at Libertas asks if Americans are "ready" to see the film. His answer: most definitely yes.

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This week's Carnival of the Raging RINOs hosted by Countertop Chronicles!

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Ever wonder what Bill Clinton would look like with a moustache? more...

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1 Hat tip: ME!

Posted by: Georgia Girl (gfsil) at April 18, 2006 02:14 PM (ZMwFa)

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No, not the guy from "Survivor". I mean Richard Hatch the actor who played Captain Apollo on the original "Battlestar Galactica".

Most of us over the age of 30...okay, 35...remember watching the show as a kid and over the years we've had nothing but good memories from it. When the network killed it after only one year, we were crushed. But we moved on.

Today, Ronald D. Moore has brought "Galactica" back to life as an updated "reimagined" series. While still retaining much of the plot and most of the characters, Moore has taken the concept to a new level and, in my opinion, it's one of the best shows on television today (behind only "24" and "Lost", in my book). The new series has been both a critical and ratings success and will be heading into its third season this fall. It has broken new ground, tackled controversial issues and attracted a wider audience than the first show ever did.

Now, Richard Hatch spent twenty years trying to revive the old "Galactica" - the "Galactica" that he was part of. He even went so far as to pitch a concept for a continuation of the series titled "Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming", complete with a four and half minute trailer. It was all his baby and he was hoping to write, direct, produce and star in the series (I expect he also planned to be director of photography, production designer, best boy, etc.). But the idea fell on deaf ears. In a Hollywood that thrives on remakes, even this concept couldn't sell.

Then here comes Ron Moore with his fresh look at the series and it takes off, buiding a loyal audience. Poor Richard Hatch, right? Oh No. Moore goes and hires Hatch to play a recurring role on his show out of respect for star of the original series. He plays Tom Zarek, a former political prisoner that has since managed to insinuate himself into a position of influence with the newly elected President. It's barely a supporting role but it's a significant one that could have a lot of potential down the road. So you'd think after all of this Hatch would be grateful to Moore for allowing him to be a part of this venture, right?

Maybe to his face. But get a load of this quote from an interview that Richard Hatch recently did with Dreamwatch Magazine (as quoted on TrekWeb.com):

Hatch talked about how he continues to feel that a continuation of the original series would have been just as successful as the Ronald D. Moore's re-imagining.

"I don't think a continuation would have been any less successful than a re-imagining," he stated firmly. "A continuation would have evolved the original show: it would have updated the Cylons, brought new characters in and gone into equally provocative areas. We could have had Eddie Olmos as the Commander, Mary as President, Jamie [Bamber] as Apollo's son, and Katee [Sackhoff] as Starbuck's Daughter. And we would have loved to have brought Ron Moore onboard too."

"A continuation would have had the best of both worlds – it would have had the values and positives of the old show but would have updated them for today. It also wouldn’t have had the problems the new show had in the beginning, when fans of the original felt upset and disappointed."

What balls! Here is a guy attached to the underbelly of a highly-successful project because the creative force behind it thought he'd be nice and throw him a bone. Talk about biting the hand!

Jeez. If I were Ronald D. Moore, I would make the character of Tom Zarek go the way of the red-shirted Star Trek guys.

Posted by: Gary at 02:30 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Geez..Richard Hatch has been a thorn in Ron Moore's side since the idea was announced to remake Battlestar Galactica. I remember all the controversy surrounding the premier of the BSG Mini Series. That same controversy is what piqued my interest to watch the mini series. It's been true love ever since....ahhh... Ron Moore has done a fantastic job of re-imagining this series. Despite our differing political views, I have to give Ron credit for offering an olive branch to Richard Hatch in the form of the character Tom Zarek. However, I'm still holding Ron personally responsible for breaking up the dynamic duo of Kara and Lee.

Posted by: Skyebuck at April 17, 2006 07:55 PM (CyqMo)

2 Aw, C'mon. You know the minute Lee and Kara hook-up the series will jump the shark. It'll be like David and Maddie on Moonlighting all over again. :wink:

Posted by: Gary at April 17, 2006 09:46 PM (AI6v2)

3 The original was one of the lousiest shows ever to air on television. Cheesy, stupid writing, stupid concept, stupid characters. The current show is one of the best, perhaps the best, sci-fi ever to air on television.

Posted by: rightwingprof at April 18, 2006 12:59 PM (hj1Wx)

4 I think you are being pretty harsh. If the original series had been without out merit it would not have been revived. Hatch has invested a lot personally in the series and I don't think there is anything in his statement that seems ungrateful. I think the Zarek character has a great deal of potential and I certainly hope that he doesn't go the way of the red shirts. Shame on you.

Posted by: zarek fan at June 20, 2006 09:57 PM (MtYJn)

5 As an actor, Richard Hatch had waaaaay too much invested of himself in a revival of that show. Even he has to admit that Moore has taken the concept to entirely new level. Most of the fans of this show are adults who loved the original as kids. We've evolved. The show needed to evolve. If they were to try and recycle the original, it would be a joke. It's like these fanboys who are all bent out of shape because the prequel Star Wars films just don't jack them up the way the first trilogy did. They were made primarily for kids, just like episodes 4-6. Except these guys aren't kids anymore. They've grown up even though the franchise hasn't. So things they think are stupid, they would have loved if they were twelve years old. Inviting Richard Hatch to be a part of this project was not something Moore had to do. Hatch needs to drop this whole "second coming" idea. No matter how hard he pitches it or how enthusiastic he gets about it, no one is interested. Plain and simple. He needs to go with the flow and make the most of the new "BSG" and embrace it - not express his disappointment over the demise of his pipedream.

Posted by: Gary at June 20, 2006 10:18 PM (Z0vta)

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We have our first "upset" of the Tournament with Lea Thompson beating out higher-ranked seed Jaclyn Smith to advance to the Final Four.

There is one spot remaining for the finals and that match-up is Erin Gray against Elisabeth Shue (a personal favorite of Llama Steve-O). Voting remains open through 12 noon on Wednesday, at which time we will move to the Finals round. Hey, something has to tide me over until NFL Draft weekend.

View updated Tournament brackett HERE.

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The Left (especially those in the Antique Media) hate Bush and Cheney. But pulling up a strong number three is SecDef Donald Rumsfeld. Now a bunch of retired Generals suffering from a wicked case of "hindsight-itis" - and many with an axe to grind - are running around criticizing Rumsfeld's decisions and leadership style. M'kay.

Hey, it's a free country and these guys are literally "arm-chair Generals" now. But, notwithstanding the Media's attempt to use this meme to somehow force Rumsfeld's "retirement" (which they would see as a major victory on their part against the Administration), the Editors at National Review Online are skeptical about the effectiveness of the nit-picks of these monday-morning quarterbacks.

"...the criticisms of Rumsfeld don’t have much force. Some say he is too imperious. This charge isn’t hard to believe of the strong-willed Rumsfeld, but it is disappointing that generals are apparently so easily cowed that their only recourse when dealing with a muscular Defense secretary is to whine about it after the fact. Others complain about his “micro-management” of the war. It is true that Rumsfeld has exercised a remarkably strong hand in dealing with the military. In planning for the initial Iraq invasion in particular, he was relentless in challenging the work of CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, driving him to come up with a plan that wasn’t just an unimaginative repeat of Desert Storm. The plan didn’t suffer from Rumsfeld’s intense attention; in fact, the opposite was the case. Even such Rumsfeld critics as Cobra II authors Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor credit the innovation and effectiveness of the invasion.

As a matter of principle, micromanagement from a Defense secretary is not a bad thing, even if Robert McNamara gave it a bad name during the Vietnam War. Our system is based on the U.S. military’s taking direction from civilian leadership. There is no reason to think that the assumption behind the micromanagement criticism of Rumsfeld — that if only the generals had been left to their own devices, things would have turned out fine — is true. Rumsfeld should actually be faulted for not micromanaging Tommy Franks enough when it came to planning for postwar operations, in which the general had little or no interest."

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1 Zinni..what a tool! This guy presided over more total failures than any general in recorded history. In a way, he is the undesputed expert on failure. He is one of the last people to go to for military advice. Even worse than Wesley Clark and his near starting of of WW3 in Pristinia. What is with libs and their obsession in digging up these testaments to failure as a weapon to use in their favorite sport of Bush-bashing?

Posted by: Skye at April 17, 2006 07:58 PM (CyqMo)

2 These people hate the military. It's amazing how much they fawn over a General who'll support their whacked out point of view.

Posted by: Gary at April 17, 2006 09:47 PM (AI6v2)

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Hmm. Not like me to go a whole weekend without a single post, I know.

No, I've not been cloistered away pouring through my tax return. It's been more like a perfect storm of real life events hitting at once. First, I had a funeral to attend - my second in two months - only this time in my family. My aunt died last week after a long bout with emphysema.

Then you've got the whole load-up-the-entire-clan-in-the-van thing for Easter, heading down to grandma's house for the holiday. Throw in some minor plumbing problems and an inability to pull myself away from the one Mets game that actually gets televised on my $%&#^! cable system and you've got a PC that sits idle for two days.

On that last item, I'm obviously giddy with anticipation tonight as the Braves come limping into Shea. I've been waiting for this one for a long time.

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It looked very much like Lynda Carter was going to run away with this one but by last night the Kim Basinger fans showed up in droves, putting her ahead. However, at the last minute, Lynda squeaked back into the lead. Having garnered 54.6% of the total vote, she will now advances to the Final Four.

The next match-up is Jaclyn Smith versus Lea Thompson. Voting remains open through the Easter weekend until 12 noon on Monday.

View updated Tournament brackett HERE.

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And deservedly so. I just got around to watching my tape of the episode that's the big meme this morning.

The fact that Comedy Central portrays itself as so cutting edge and then pusses out because they won't show a cartoon of Mohammed is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Congrats to Matt Stone and Trey Parker for coming with a brilliant way to show how badly the First Amendment has been beaten down by political correctness.

This quote from Robbie at The Malcontent sums it up best:

"To think, a silly little cartoon on basic cable about a redneck mountain town does more to defend the constitution than such self-vaunted press institutions like the New York Times and CNN. What an extraordinary world we find ourselves in."

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Too bad it isn't real. Go view "Die, Hippies, Die!"

h/t: Mad Mikey

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A test given for a course at Bellevue Community College reads like this:

Nice. Needless to say, it garnered some complaints. Who's the teacher who wrote the question? The college ain't sayin'.

"The college declined to release the name of the teacher who wrote the question. [Bellevue Community College President Jean] Floten said the teacher has apologized and requested cultural-sensitivity training.

The test question was originally written with the name of a comedian, Gallagher, whose signature shtick was to smash a variety of objects, often watermelons. Later, the question was rewritten, and the name was changed to Condoleezza, Floten said."

It's probably one of those "racially-sensitive" Liberals.

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Smacking the Nats down at RFK 13-3 in the seventh inning. Well on there way to being 7-1.

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Well, it's all over but the whining. ABC is expected to cancel "Commander-In-Chief" after only one season.

ABC suits will not renew COMMANDER unless audience levels can hold a 15 share, a source claims. The show crashed from a high of nearly 17 million viewers for its second episode to 10.4 million for its last, Jan. 24.

Kudos to Jonah Goldberg who predicted the failure of this turkey back on July 28 of last year:

"It will be dull because who cares how much more difficult picking a Supreme Court nominee, raising/lowering taxes, bombing terrorist camps, whatever is for a female president? Indeed, it will grow increasingly implausible for the audience to believe that there would be any significant difference for a chick president to do anything of these things, particularly after she proved herself capable of doing the job. And the more the producers try to hammer feminist issues into every situation, the duller or more tedious it will get. From the commercials, we're supposed to believe the government is drenched with crotchety white guys who just don't believe a woman can do the job. That's not only implausible, but to the extent they make it plausible they will still be repeating themselves week after week after week. Very quickly, viewers will say 'We get it, she's a woman. Next.'"

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Liberal Columnist David Corn has a piece posted at TomPaine.com in which he looks at what he sees as political similarities between 2008 and 1968. Essentially, he says that the potential leading candidates for the Democratic Nomination in two years - Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold & John Edwards resemble those of '68 - Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.

While I think the comparison is more than a bit of a stretch, the overall comparison may be apt in that modern Democrat Presidential candidates tend to splinter their party in wartime. Unlike Democrats in the early part of the 20th century - FDR against the Nazi's and Japanese and Truman against the Soviets - who united their party against a common enemy, the modern Democrats are fighting with themselves to decide exactly who the enemy is. In both 1968 and today, the leading faction decided that the enemy is not foreign, but rather domestic. For the today's anti-war Democrats, the enemy is actually Republicans (the Bush Administration) and Democrats with strong positions on National Security (Sen. Joe Lieberman).

While normally Corn and I agree on...well, almost nothing, he has one observation that I can buy into:

"There are, obviously, distinctions between 1968 and now. Hillary Clinton is not a commander-in-chief in charge of a tragic war (or the No. 2). There is yet no sizeable antiwar movement, as there was in 1968, for Feingold to use as a base. Edwards is not the vacillator that Kennedy was—although like Kennedy, he does raise poverty as an issue. But it sure seems possible that the Iraq war—if Bush does not achieve his complete victory there in the next two years—has the potential to dominate the Democratic contest and to split the party, as the Vietnam war did in 1968.

For now, the party is repressing those potential differences. Look at the Democrats’ recently released "Real Security" platform. Iraq is covered on page three of the three-page statement. And the plan offers little: "ensure" 2006 is a year of "significant transition" to full Iraqi sovereignty and of "responsible redeployment of U.S. forces"; "insist" that Iraqis make political compromises to unite their country and defeat the insurgency; "strongly encourage" allies and other nations to play a "constructive role." That's not much. The plan says nothing about what should be done if the problem in Iraq is not a self-contained insurgency but a civil war—or something close to it. Should the United States keep 130,000 troops in the middle of a sectarian conflict? Should it pick a side?

Clinton is straddling, not leading, and much of the leadership of her party is essentially doing the same. That might help Democrats in the coming congressional elections by providing on-the-ropes Republicans with little to attack. Then again, it might not. But the conflicts and dilemmas posed by the Iraq war will probably persist. If so, Democrats could find that their biggest challenge is not the Republicans but themselves."

While the anti-war Democrats will not be taking to the streets during their 2008 convention the way they did in Chicago in 1968, their influence will probably be just as significant. Only instead of nominating a Hillary Clinton as their Hubert Humphrey they may very well nominate a Russ Feingold or an Al Gore as their version of the Democrats' 1972 nominee, George McGovern. If this turns out to be the case, don't be surprised if history repeats itself - with a Republican ending up in the White House.

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