So Mohammed Atta dies and goes to Paradise, and he is met at the gates by The Prophet, and escorted into a luxurious palace room filled with dates and honey and other delicacies.

Seated around the room are Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, George & Martha Washington, Lighthorse Harry Lee, his son Robert E. Lee,Ann Carter Lee, George Pickett, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, and scores of other great Americans.

Mohammed Atta looks bewildered, and the Prophet taps him on the arm, and says:

"I said Virginians".

I'm going to hell now for sure...

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Last night I watched part of HBO's Generation Kill, a dramatized version of Evan Wright's book of the same name.  I remain impressed.  Part 2 picked up with the immediate aftermath of the invasion, and the run up route 7 through the fire fights in Nasiriyah.

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I watched the first installment of HBO's acclaimed "Generation Kill" last night.

I was ambivalent about watching it, because I thought that David Simon might go a little lefty on Evan Wright's story about his time embedded with the US Marines in First Recon.

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This says it all.

An excerpt:

My father-in-law, Orson Bean, an author, comedian and actor, was once blacklisted as a Communist back in the '50s. Ed Sullivan called him to say he could no longer book him on the show. Fifty years later, and after a sharp ideological metamorphosis, Orson says it's harder now to be an open conservative on a Hollywood set than it was back then to be a Communist.

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I am watching the speeches at the Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner on FoxNews right now.

I have two things to say:

1.  Dick Cheney was funny, self-deprecating, and at times, had some great jabs.

2. Mo Rocca is not funny.  He was horrible.  Why do people think he IS funny?  He kept complaining that Dick stole his jokes (especially the Darth Vader joke).  Any comedian that needs PowerPoint to be funny -- and does a poor job at it -- is not funny. In fact, I think staph infection in one of my testicles would be funnier.

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Mark Newgent -- another BSG freak like myself -- asked my thoughts on the season premiere for Battlestar Galactica.  I thought my analysis might be entertaining for other fans of the show, so I am republishing it here below the fold.

Note:  if you have never watched the show, none of this will probably make sense to you.

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Tonight marks the beginning of the fourth and final season of "Battlestar Galactica" on the SCI-FI channel.  One of the best shows on television, creator Ron Moore promises a complete wrap-up of the story line of a lone Battlestar (think interstellar Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and Iowa class battleship all-in-one) leading a rag-tag fugitive fleet towards a shining planet, known as Earth.

The show has always had massive critical acclaim, but never the stellar ratings of other SCI-FI genre fare like any of the Star Trek series.  That is unfortunate, because it boasts one of the best ensemble casts on television and some of the best writing ever seen on cable TV.

Taking the basic plot outline of the original Glenn Larson show from 1978-79, Moore "re-imagined" BSG with a grittier, less-operatic approach.  Instead of battling the massive Cylon empire, in the "re-imagined series", the Cylons are -- in Malcolm X's words -- the "chickens coming home to roost".  Robots who rebelled against their human creators, they now look and act like humans.  And in the premiere mini-series, they all but annihlated the human race.

Chased across their known universe, the last 40,000 humans have to confront their own sins, their faith, their own shortcomings, their own fears, and their own cruelty -- to one another AND to their few Cylon prisoners.  The show touches on deep themes of faith, honor, nobility, torture, law, and politics.    And over three seasons, we see the Cylons becoming more like their former human masters.  This becomes clear when an important fact of the "Cylon hierarchy" is revealed:  the seven human models have programmed the Centurion models so they cannot revolt like they once did against their human masters.

I can't wait for the premiere.  It promises to end better than The Sopranos -- and certainly The Wire, which seemed largely phoned-in.  Here's looking forward to the last season of a story of humanity.

So say we all.

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If you have never seen Lil' Bush on the Comedy Channel, you should.  Even if you are diehard conservative/libertarian (like myself) who things that, despite many mistakes, on the whole GWB has been a fair president.

But be warned:  you will be offended.  It is a sarcastic, disrespectful, irreverent show.  And lefties -- including Lil' Al, Lil' Nancy, Lil' Obama, etc are not spared its caustic humor.

Essentially, imagine South Park, but the leading characters are Lil' W, Lil' Condi, Lil' Rumsfeld, and Lil' Cheney.

My FAVORITE character, though, is Lil' Cheney.  His father, of course, is Darth Vader.  Lil' Cheney talks with the same quiet mumble you hear from the real one.  Although, the mumble is more pronounce and more cruel.  In fact, I watch the show solely to watch Lil' Cheney.  Any time he speaks, I am on the floor in stitches.

Of course, I am a HUGE Dick Cheney fan.  He is a man of few words, and lots of meaning.  And I think he was absolutely at his best when he told that walking human turd Pat Leahy to go frak himself.

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If you are looking for a compelling movie that tells a great story through the talent of some fine actors -- including Kyra Sedgwick, Alan Rickman, and Mos Def -- then I suggest you check out "Something the Lord Made".  It's the store of Dr. Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, Ph.D., who made history at Johns Hopkins by performing the first heart surgery in the history of medicine.

Working to solve the problem of the "Blue Baby", or Tetralogy of Fallot, Blalock and Thomas perfected the procedure that made "Blue Babies" a thing of the past.

The movie covers their time at Hopkins, when Baltimore was still segregated, and the two struggled to resolve their enormous respect for each other in the shadow of a segregated Southern city-- and institution -- that placed every barrier in front of them possible.

Check out "Something the Lord Made".

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John Hinderacker over at PowerLine blog dissects the latest bit of questionable reporting from 60 Minutes, the vaunted inner sanctum of the CBS News Empire.

It just seems they continue to be suckered by skilled scam artists and the insane.

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