Ironic that Bush has no economic policy (keep the stock market going boys), and the Democrats have no economic policy,(Butter, not Guns!), and their dance of death over Iraq is really a game of budgetary keep away. Give Congressional Democrats money to spend on domestic projects and they will win the election in 2008, certainly.

The value of money should enter into the equation. Poor parents often feed their children fast food, because it packs a load of calories, and groceries are expensive. The problem with worthless dollars is that sometimes there aren't enough of them.

While the official inflation figures mask the true decline in the dollar's value, why would anyone sell an original Impressionist painting for the millions in worthless fiat currency? Herein lie the truth of the stock markets meteroic rise. Why would anyone sell assets of any kind, for worthless paper? The only thing to do is buy and hold. The truth will come to pass when the buy and hold mindset reverts to the foreign supplies of important commodities, such as labor. That day will reflect a turning point for the world markets.

Hillary Clinton will attempt to govern from the middle, and no one wants to go there. Neoconservatives, now that they have had a taste of power, won't accept compromise. Antiwar Democrats, fed up with 16, yes 16 years of Republican foreign policy, including Bill's bipartisan war against Iraq, sanctions, and the no-fly zone. are fed up. There is no one left in the middle, except some disgruntled Republican swing voters, the most clueless lot. The secret of Hillary Clinton's success is Karl Rove. She is his best hope at holding on to power, because he knows the Right can move the standard, and she will follow.

Where did Wilkes get the money to pay for his attorney, Mark Geragos? (Michael Jackson, Whitewater, etc, etc). If this was a high profile drug profiling case the US Attorneys would prevent Wilkes from using any of his illegal profits, (the man is technically bankrupt) to pay for legal fees. Wilkes deserves the same treatment as the Media Cartel. Questions are also raised about the current U.S. Attorneys office, formerly represented by Carol Lam, who almost didn't prosecute the Cunningham case in the first place, and who was fired for pursuing a Republican Congressman, rather than chasing a few illegals around the back country with warrants?

Evidently Wilkes and Cunningham will not testify at their own trial. The Wilkes defense is, "Everybody does it, this is business as usual in Washington." It should be interesting to see if a jury can be convinced of their innocence, but San Diego is a Republican sanctuary. Lam prosecuted a City Councilman on bribery charges using an FBI wiretap, and the judge threw out the juries conviction, summarily. The US Attorney's office under Lam promised to retry the case, and I think her replacement Karen Hewitt, also pledged to pursue it, but the councilmen launched counter suits, and will likely prevail. The case was a travesty of justice. Lam later went to work for Qualcom, a San Diego company. Her replacement is a member of the Federalist Society.

The deeper question remains, how many black contracts were steered through Cunningham? Duncan Hunter, former Chair of the Armed Services Comm, and a friend of Cunningham, declined to run for office again, and his son will try for his seat, same name. It's likely Hunter is up to his ears in this too, but this trial promises to be a white wash. If this is business as usual it deserves a lot more attention.

Wall Street saw that first rate cut as a down payment, but Bernanke has abandoned a couple of the hallmarks of his predecessor, the first one being, that this may be a committee, but I speak for all of us. Bernanke is more than willing to let everyone have their say, in the press.

Then he abandoned the incrementalist policies of Greenspan. That finally sunk in, and the market tanked. It may be that Bernanke is being completely rational, and true to his own policy of inflation targets. Gary North makes these points well. First and foremost, M3 was abandoned because it was unreliable, and Bernanke dropped rates because of short term money supply issues. That implies he might just as well raise rates at the next meeting, if the data suggests that this is the proper course.

The market misread the Fed Chief. CNBC commentary, Bernanke saves Christmas. In the end we will see how closely joined at the hip, the Fed Chief, the Treasury Secretary, and the lame duck President are joined. That will really tell us where we are going.

The first misapprehension the average joe has about screenwriting is that it is synonymous with good dialouge. The primacy of film has not been disturbed by television, at least not on that account. Shows like the Sopranos, and West Wing are serials, the kind of thing movie houses were using to fill in the time before the feature film, back in the 1930's.

In the serial drama the writers ability to alter his character is severely restricted. Shows like South Park get around that by killing the same character every week in sort of mock defiance of the form. They killed Kenny!.

The screenwriter sets the stage, lays down a blueprint for the blocking, and if there are a few peripheral grunts and groans he might add those as well. The film, unlike the novel, is constrained by the limits of What Did He Say? Words pass quickly, and the audience is lucky to comprehend half the dialogue.

What may be worth a mention is the number of films about screen writers. Barton Fink, White Hunter, Black Heart, In A Lonely Place. Clearly the profession has some charms, even if they are misrepresented. The screenwriter should probably take the sort of direction actors often receive, don't act, behave.

To paraphrase Sam Fuller, "He lives his story." The writer has to be able to project.