Howard Dean flies JetBlue.

How do I know this? I met him at the airport last night. We waited for the same plane.

Which they scheduled for 10:40pm.

It didn't depart until shortly before 2AM.

He's shorter than you think. Not short. Just shorter. Charismatic as hell, though.

Not so much the JetBlue attendants.

Oh, Tsuyoshi Shinjo... you're still a cad!

Shinjo, we always knew you were awesome. But if you had tried anything like this at Shea, you'd still be a Met...


Good luck in your future career as a nude model.

Could we have found the internet phenomenon to follow "Snakes on a Plane"?

No, probably not.

But we did find a movie starring Nicholas Cage and 50 Cent. A boxing movie. Called "The Dance."

And to think, I can't even get a meeting regarding a script...

Better late than never...

...but better never late.

From the NY Times: In Big Shift, U.S. to Follow Geneva Treaty for Detainees

Here's the general gist of what's going on, in case you happen to live under a rock:

In 2002, President Bush declared that members of Al Qaeda and other terror suspects seized during the invasion of Afghanistan were “illegal combatants, and so were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva conventions, which among other things set forth rules for the treatment of prisoners of war.

The main thrust of the recent Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, was that the administration had exceeded its authority by creating a system of tribunals without the approval of Congress. But the court also declared that the suspects fell under Article 3, which applies to all “armed combatants,’ and that detainees were able to assert their rights under Article 3 in federal court.

In case you missed it, that Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision means the President should have consulted Congress about Gitmo, and was in the wrong for not doing so. And he, and future Presidents, will need to do so. That's why Slate calls it "the most important decision on Presidential Power ever." I don't know about EVER (it merely just reaffirms checks and balances), but I imagine it could be for this administration because it might finally force Bush to play by the rules.

Or did it?

President Bush said last week that he “would comply’ with the courts ruling, but he has given no details of how he would do so.

Well, one can dream anyway.

And they say there's no good TV nowadays...

...you've just got to look for it. In2TV.

It's worth noting that among the last things I want to do with the ol' blog, providing free advertising for AOL services certainly makes the list. However, anything that streams episodes of Animaniacs, Perfect Strangers, and Welcome Back, Kotter in a quality better than YouTube can't be all bad, right?

Right?

How's your truffle shuffle?

I went back and forth on this one over the last few days.

From the AP: Experts Debate Labeling Children Obese

That's right. This isn't about dealing with child obesity. Just the wording. They don't want to call kids grossly overweight.

The rebuttal for the rewording argument seems like a gimme: "Why are we being so politically correct?"

Then, you get the retort: "But wait... the kids have very little (if any) say over their daily diet. Their caretakers (if available, one hopes) are fairly responsible for the kid's health here."

But now I'm back to the former. Besides avoiding the negative connotation the word "obese" exhibits, the US government uses terms such as "at risk of overweight" because kids may not be able to comprehend the term "obese." That's a good way to resolve it. More words. Kids like wordy explanations. Long and verbose. Perhaps with a slide show, even.

It seems fairly ridiculous to pull punches about something like this that, in a way, is self-inflicted. Sometimes the truth hurts. It can significantly sting in a country like ours where image makes scores of young girls and boys so superficial and self-concious about their looks. The thing is, you can't find resolution to a problem such as obesity unless you can talk about it actively. Give it a name. And stick with that name. Leave the name changing PR stunts to the professionals. (If you don't understand that reference, you can read about it here.)

And this is coming from a guy who has an affinity for fat kids, trust me...