Las Vegas, all shiny and new, clean and well-coordinated, is for many people a blank slate place where people feel both free and safe to try on alternative identities. Tony wanted to go there to be alone, but hooked up very quickly with someone who knew what "Tony Soprano" means. I never felt that he actively envied Chris' life which was pretty fucked up. Instead, he envied Chris' youth and his "future" ...

I was musing the other day that Chris represented a new generation who were likely to USE their mob connections as a way to generate capital to largely move OUT of mob life ... making a movie, probably eventually to move to California or Palm Springs or Vegas ... none of this small New Jersey, one-step-above the alley-ways of the lower classes of life. Tony Soprano's mob riches and power may look like "small potatoes" to the MTV generation. The very real downsides of mob life including the competition from other younger, meaner, more international mobs are fairly self-evident.

The mob was/is an attractive alternative to grunt labor and other shit work ... but "hanging with the crew at the Bada Bing" day after day after day does not have the same cache for Chris/Meadow's generation. Similarly no-show jobs are a crappy alternative to a satisfying career ...

Oddly, AJ -- with the prospect of deadend pizzarria management positions ahead -- is not an unlikely next-generation mob candidate, having no other particular talent or drive.

Meadow has visions of a "career" and "independence" and a successful "professional" husband ... I doubt she'd settle for a mob associate, no matter how slick, but ... who knows.

just when you think their behavior cannot get any "lower" ....

Actually, I have a vague recollection of hearing this story before .... but it's still revolting ...

get a fucking rope.....

and someone please secure ashcroft's safety, I've been anxious to hear his side of the story on many things for months now....

archived at common dreams which reprinted the NYT article ...

url: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0101-01.htm

Published on Sunday, January 1, 2006 by the New York Times

Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program

by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen

WASHINGTON - A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

in an event precipitated by a revelation/exposed truth or two ....

... the killing will be declared "self defense" and she and the kids will relocate ...and live happily ever after ...

and the NY mob will step in and everyone will breath a big sigh of relief ... because, in fact, Tony really didn't "get it" ... and really that depressed fat dyspeptic slob never was all that popular, if ya wanna know the truff.

until the process was done ... How merciful to spare Mr. Falwell's friend, relatives and collegues those deathbed decisions of the only partially rescued.

Found dead at his desk, died in the saddle with spurs on ... Good on you!

I'm an atheist ... I am pleased that I will be spared future inflammatory bile and hate-speach from this man.

Rest in peace.

I am among those who will not miss you, even a tiny, teeny, istsy-bitsy bit, like I would somehow not miss an itch or migraine or a bad case of gas ....

Ironically, from your obituary, your father sounds like someone I wish I'd met.

Rest in peace. My world is already more peaceful in your absence.

This <<>> to be coming to a head with the Attorney General of the United States proving himself to be a serial L.I.A.R., for whom a dodgy memory and repeated "do-overs" after extensive prepping have not removed glaring "inconsistencies" .....

Under a "sane" administration, such a public official would have been asked to resign months ago ... but we appear to be in store for "Caine Mutiny" tough-guy theatrics for the next 18 months ... with Cheney playing the Bogart character ... with his ball-bearings in his pudgy pale claw.

so, "what did you do in the constitutional crisis, daddy?"

yes, let's talk again about that "soft bigotry of low expectations ..." why don't we?

after killing Christopuh but that didn't happen... and at least in Las Vegas Tony was reassured that he could still feel joy -- something that has been largely absent in his life as well.

I'm a bit doubtful that Chase will "use" AJ as a tidy-tie-it-all-up-with-a-ribbon plot centerpiece ... but it's possible ..

Tony's existence "enables" AJ ... it's quite possible that AJ's only redemption (since he hasn't the ambition or balls to leave on his own) is Tony's departure (one way or another).

I'm more interested in the crew, Tony's mob, which is looking a bit threadbare and -- as Tony has mentioned -- isn't pulling in the expected revenue.

Tony has appeared to virtually despise EVERYONE in the last few weeks ... my suspicion is that they despise him back. I gather the mob in general has been shrinking ... Tony has lost his heir-apparent and trotted off to Vegas, leaving unfinished business .... Is this a ripe moment for Phil to make a bold move? I think so.