Glynn Wilson

A great egret, also known as the great white heron [ardea alba] fishes the the Coosa River in Shoal Creek Valley near Asheville in St. Clair County, Alabama.

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Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

It is almost too nice a spring day outside to be sitting in front of a computer writing a column, but there are a few things I have to say today besides talking about watching the revolutionary garden grow.

The tomatoes, collards, green beans and corn are coming up fine and will help offset the rising food prices this summer in Bush’s recessionary world.

But that’s not all that’s going on in the world, not that you would know it by reading the corporate news media and watching the public relations that passes for news on the local television airwaves.

The state of the economy seems to be affecting the news media as it often does in hard times. It is becoming harder and harder to find real news stories worth reading even in the national papers. Every news organization in the country is still talking about the Reverend Wright today, even as presidential candidate Barack Obama went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” for the full hour this morning and still sounded like the smartest, most reasonable candidate in the race.

While Senator John McCain continued to support Bush’s surge this week and made a strange appearance in Selma, Alabama last week, as if any African-Americans were ever going to vote for him, Hillary Clinton was showing her support for Israel with language much like Bush when she talked about “obliterating” Iran if they ever launch a nuclear attack on the Jewish state.

Of course what the American masses who barely keep up may not realize is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and will most likely never obtain one. Dick Cheney and the Israeli military will see to that - if Bush doesn’t send in the U.S. Air Force soon and start World War III.

Obama pointed that out for Tim Russert, who just had to raise the issue - even though he should know better.

Even Brian Williams, the anchor and managing editor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” pointed out in a blog column the other day that the New York Times circulation is down and said this:

“I must admit that on Sundays it becomes a tough paper to figure out. While (last) week’s paper featured an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Edwards bemoaning the lack of serious, in-depth coverage of the political race, it’s tough to figure out exactly what readers the paper is speaking to, or seeking.”

What Times Is It?

I’ve been wondering that myself, since I check out the Times Website a couple of times a day looking to see if they might be breaking another story on the illegal surveillance program being run by the Bush administration - or something. The paper is credited with breaking a big story on that back in 2005, even though we had been talking about it on the blogs already, but where is the followup?

The Washington Post has done some fairly interesting stories of late, especially Dana Milbank in his “Washington Sketch” column, which by the way is online only and not in the print edition of the newspaper. Here are a couple of examples.

Anniversary of ‘Mission Accomplished’ Draws Laughs

The Incredible Shrinking Presidency of George W. Bush

The fare was so weak today I turned to The Nation magazine, where at least I found this:

Our Lapdog Media

But even that is not as strong as what you can sometimes find here at the little old Locust Fork Journal, when we have the resources and the motivation to go out and find the good stories.

I mean the Birmingham News is focusing all it’s guns on going after another African-American Democrat these days, the poor new mayor of Birmingham, instead of focusing its investigative attentions perhaps on a big story like why Birmingham has some of the most polluted air in the country. Was that story on the front page? Of course not. It’s “bad news,” not PR or manufactured news designed to bash Democrats.

Birmingham in Top Eight Polluted Cities

I mean we know what causes the bad air, mainly Alabama Power’s coal-fired power plants, along with the lack of an automobile inspection program that would help get the old polluting cars and pickup trucks off the roads. But I guess all that Alabama Power advertising money keeps them focused on things like doing the PR for the State Troopers in their “Take Back the Highways” campaign to keep drunks off the road (and everybody else who might like to have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner out at a restaurant).

If the local press had put as much effort into investigating the causes of the bad air and potential solutions as they do drunk driving, we could have already solved the problem.

Here’s a simple suggestion no one in the press or the presidential race has thought about. What if every car on the road and every house in the suburbs had a white roof? That would reflect sun light back into the atmosphere like the glaciers that are now melting due to global warming.

And what if the federal and state governments switched the tax incentives to putting solar cells on houses instead of investing in oil exploration and bio-fuels, which is one of the major factors leading to high food prices.

If you are also disgruntled with the fare in the newspapers or TV news stations and want to help us chase those headlines and investigative reports, please consider making a donation today. You will be glad you did.

by Glynn Wilson

The first woman Speaker of the United States House of Representatives came to Birmingham this week to try and bolster an Alabama Democratic Party that has been rocked by scandal in recent years.

Glynn Wilson

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Birmingham

Representative Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco addressed a packed HealthSouth conference center and gave powerful lip service to the “disrupters” in American history, from the founders of the American Revolution to the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

Yet her remarks were anything but revolutionary or particularly disruptive.

She talked bad about the war in Iraq, the foundering economy and how the Bush administration has turned the Justice Department into a political arm of the White House and the Republican Party’s election apparatus, and she received the strongest response when she recognized former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, recently released from prison, to a standing ovation.

But her address was couched in the most politically safe terminology possible, lest she offend some Alabama mother who might see her on the evening news.

She offered very little to the true progressive community in the country or this state.

As I commented to Siegelman after the main show, I considered showing my own disruptive nature by going up to the Speaker and asking her this:

If the Iraq War is so bad, why haven’t you led the fight to de-fund it in the Congress?

If the Bush administration is so bad and corrupt, why have you not led the fight to impeach Bush in the House, where impeachment proceedings must begin according to the Constitution?

But I figured I didn’t want to come off looking as disruptive as that liberal bastion of the Web, Raw Story, or the latest crazy man in Alabama journalism, Eddie Curran of the Mobile Press Register. And I figured our own Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham, who introduced Pelosi, wouldn’t appreciate it, since he seems to be trying to inch his way through a minefield to run for governor in 2010.

Of course Ms. Pelosi was for health care for children and veterans and pro-education, giving a nod to the Alabama Education Association’s Paul Hubbert at one point. Aren’t we all (well, except the Bush and Riley administrations and the Birmingham News).

She is for rebuilding America’s infrastructure and against deficit spending.

“Words have power,” she said, and she wants every voter to remember two of them: Iraq and Katrina.

She avoided mentioning the Bush administration’s massive domestic spying operation still under consideration in Congress, or Bush’s plan to grant retroactive immunity to the telecom giants. She has been at least half way on the right side of that fight so far, but we still don’t know where Davis stands on that issue. He and Pelosi embraced warmly, but he’s yet to take a public stance on whether he agrees with allowing the telephone companies such as AT and T - with offices here in Birmingham - to monitor the phone and e-mail communications of innocent American citizens, as well as their Web browsing habits.

One of the most interesting and newsworthy comments of the night came when Ms. Pelosi told the story of how Condoleezza Rice - now Secretary of State, then Bush’s National Security Adviser - called her one hour before the invasion of Iraq to tell her “we” were “going in.”

She claims to have said all the diplomatic options had not been exhausted, and that the president had no plan and the cost would be in the trillions. Maybe some of that was hindsight?

In any event, Alabama Democratic Party chair Joe Turnham said the dinner was a successful fund raiser for the party in its goal to stave off Republican Gov. Bob Riley’s campaign to raise millions of dollars to capture the Legislature by 2010.

We may have more to say about this later, but to be amused and confused, read the AP dispatches from tonight. I’m tempted to run the photo I snapped of ole Bob Johnson, who actually greeted me by name after the event. Maybe later.

Siegelman Given Hero’s Welcome by Alabama Democrats

Pelosi Questions Northrop Grumman Tanker Project

Glynn Wilson

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wows the Democratic Party crowd Friday night in Birmingham

Paramount Pictures

Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr.

Editor’s Note: Due to our growing concern that movies and blogs are two of the few places left in American culture where the truth can be told, we are going to be watching and reviewing more movies in the months ahead. Our reviewer is former newspaper man and expert movie buff Henry Rosenbush of Tuscaloosa, who blogs himself on one of our sister Websites, RosenbushCafe.com. Below is his first draft review written on the day the movie opened, today.

We saw the movie Thursday night in the local debut, however, and my impression is this: What I liked about Iron Man is that it was not just some jingoistic all American superhero special effects orgy.

The billionaire arms dealer anti-hero who you meet in an American humvee in Afghanistan in the opening scene is transformed into someone who wants to do good in the world, after his capture and escape, when he sees his company’s weapons in the hands of evil men. So he not only kills a few Middle Eastern extremists. He saves a few Afghan families too.

Review by Henry B. Rosenbush

Finally, Hollywood delivers a superhero who is middle-aged, rather than a nerdy kid, not from another planet, and devoid of superpowers without external reinforcement.

The Marvel Comics hero, creation of Stan Lee, provides exactly what is usually missing in the comic-to-movie-transliteration; witty, funny, profound and grounded in the reality of today’s turbulent Middle East. The bar was set Thursday, as Paramount Picture’s Iron Man opened in 4,105 theaters; it warrants the advanced hype as the summer blockbuster to overcome.

Downy is a perfect choice as the human champion turned metal man and in a delightfully wicked turn, Jeff Bridges, is top-notch as Obadiah Stane, surrogate father turned ruthless enemy.

Gwyneth Paltrow imbues secretary-cum-girl-of-all-trades Pepper Potts with surprising nuance and is pulchritudinous while the most profoundly affecting perf is delivered by Shaun Toub, as fellow prisoner, Yinsen. While other acting is essentially one-dimensional, including Rhodey (Terrance Howard), the major focus is on how one man transforms from callous arms supplier to defender of the oppressed and in that respect Downey provides plenty of shadings and subtext to his conflicted superman.

Aside from a climax that too closely resembles last summer’s Transformers, it nonetheless delivers the goods in every department from the dozens of special effects companies, production designer J. Michael Riva, cinematographer Matthew Libatique and especially Jon Favreau’s nifty direction that judiciously does not rush the story towards its climatic battle between Iron Men Stark and Stane.

Getting a leap on Warner Brothers’ Speed Racer next weekend, followed by Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Par’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man provides entertainment on several levels usually devoid in summer action films.

Tony Stark, disarmingly portrayed by Downy, is a supercilious skirt chaser, but brilliant scientist, as well as, supplier of advanced weaponry to the world.

The film wastes no time beginning with an assault on Stark’s military envoy in Afghanistan where everyone is killed. Before settling in on Stark’s transformation in a cave prison, the film jumps back 36 hours to show us the lifestyle of the ubiquitous and fantastically wealthy playboy. Stark has similarities to Bruce Wayne; ultra-rich, parentless and haunted by demons that will shape his character’s conversion. Both characters are not Superman; they are earth-bound and require technology and body armor to succeed as superheroes.

Marvel Comics purist may quibble with minor changes. Updated from the 1963 original, Jarvis is no longer Stark’s butler, having been upgraded to a computer that offers plenty of advice that is resoundingly ignored. The original enemies were Viet Cong, but the screenwriters have wisely changed them to a disparate group of terrorists under the leadership of bald-headed Raza (Faran Tahir), who professes to be a modern incarnation of Genghis Kahn.

After bedding a comely reporter, Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb), Starks heads to Afghanistan for a successful demonstration of the Jericho rocket to the military and the assault on the convoy and Stark’s capture.

In a scene that echoes the recent realization that General Electric is helping Iran with technologies that are being directly used against our soldiers in Iraq, Stark sees numerous weapons emblazoned with the Stark logo that Raza is using to wreck havoc in the region with his group of grungy and dangerous terrorist minions. The dual screenwriting team of Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum and Matt Holloway cleverly eliminate any indication of Islamic fundamentalist ideologies and instead focuses on how weapons are sold clandestinely to fanatics and the expected carnage that ensues.

Stark finds himself a prisoner of Raza, who wants his own Jericho missile. With shrapnel embedded in his heart, Stark later surreptitiously removes the power source from one of his weapons and like a nuclear pacemaker discovers what will later power his Iron Man suit. Forced to build the weapon, Stark and Yinsen ingeniously design the prototype suit even while the terrorist watch them on closed circuit screens. After Yinsen sacrifices himself to give Stark time to complete a download to the metal outfit, the film’s first glimpse of its application in battle is seen as the terrorist’s camp is decimated.

After crashing in the desert, Stark is rescued by the American military, but naturally leaves the crashed suit that will be later reassembled by Raza behind.

Stark’s return is met with skepticism as he announces, at a press conference, much to the dismay of Stane and stockholders, that he is discontinuing constructing weapons. With stocks plummeting Stane secretly begins making his move against his partner and later aligns himself with Raza, but not before Stark returns to Afghanistan as a new and improved red Iron Man to finish off many of the terrorists he left behind. After finding the remnants of the original suit in Afghanistan, Stane’s bodyguards execute all the terrorists, although Raza is seen being paralyzed and not killed on screen.

As expected, the special effects are amazing, from a wonderfully rendered first time night flight over Malibu, California to Stan Winston’s superb Iron Man suit being constructed, similarly to the first Robocop, albeit, with a far more intricate assembly. Ramin Djawadi’s score is a plus with an excerpt of the title track, Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, as the credit scrawl begins and remain through the end credits for a hip teaser featuring an uncredited popular African-American thesp who articulates the anticipated sequel‘s possible storyline.

Stark’s sincere conversion is genuine in a humanistic manner which is unique for science fiction-based scenarios while the repartee with Potts and well-timed witticisms add to his charm. Credit Downey for earning audience sympathy as he brings altruism to a character that in lesser hands would have been contrived and incredulous.

Possibilities into romance between Stark and Potts are unrequited with a near kiss interrupted. Their chemistry, however, hints that in future installments a relationship may blossom.

The only challenge to the sequel is revealed with Stark’s final clever quip, which I will not disclose, but suffice to say this may be the first superhero movie ending that wears its literal dénouement proudly as if to wink at the enthusiastic audience.

Testing the improved suit: Paramount Pictures

The trailer…