Lord of the Rings and the replacement of Cheney

Well, it won everything. Clearly the oscar voters were rewarding the entire series and not just the Return of the King. I was torn, Lost in Translation is a great movie, it was the best movie this year. LOTR is the best movie over the past three years. It almost should have it's own category. There is mere mortal film and then there's LOTR which was directed by a man who by all reports is an actual hobbit.

In the news, there's a rumor, originally floated by the MSNBC gossip columnist that Cheney is getting replaced, most likely by Guliani. I think the funniest thing about it is anyone's ability to know how much of it is bullshit. This white house is so closed that nearly anything could actually be happening in there. For all we know of Bush's decision making process he's reading the cracks in chicken bones. Paul O Neill was the Secretary of the treasury and according to Suskind's book with him The Price of Loyalty, Bush never really gave any sign he followed or cared about the substantive points of any given debate. His mind was made up when he walked into the meeting. How he came to the decision is a mystery. So maybe Cheney's out, maybe he's not. Not like it really matters. He could go back to Halliburton and duck out of those nasty question about him and selective intelligence reading and those ever-present energy meeting questions. Or they could reinstall him in Rumsfeld's job and Rummy could knock Powell out of the administration. Powell's been battling the WH all along on everything (Iraq, Afghanisatn etc.) in spite of playing ball in the end on every occasion. The whole thing could just be a trial balloon. Rove makes a call and sees what happens...

Oh yeah, we're finally going to Haiti. Too little too late.