Right Wing Nut House

What makes a great movie villain?

Obviously, he must be evil. And relentless in persecuting the hero. And it doesn’t hurt if they are without conscience or any redeeming qualities at all, although that last is not necessary as we shall see.

I think the last thing that makes a great movie villain is that the part must be either well written or played by a great actor. There are plenty of villains who had the potential for greatness but never quite made the grade due to an inferior script or bad performance. Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West comes to mind. Hard to get over the image of Fonda as Mr. Everyman which made his portrayal of the child killer Frank difficult to accept.

The following are not necessarily the greatest movie villains of all time - just my favorites. I’ve left out villains like the Wicked Witch of the West and the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs not because they’re not evil but because they’re not really believable, are they? At any rate, let me know what you think of my choices.

10. Roger “Verbal” Kint - The Usual Suspects

For sheer surprise, I had to include “Kaiser Soza” in my top ten list. The incongruity of Kevin Spacey’s mild mannered Kint placed against the terrorist Soza (and the way the film revealed the surprise) was extremely well done.

9. Mr. Zorg - The Fifth Element

Has there been a campier villain than Zorg? Gary Oldham’s over the top performance was outstanding. And as a foil for Bruce Willis, he was perfect.

8. The Shark - Jaws

I’m still afraid to go in the water. I first saw the film at the old Chicago Theater - wide screen and the place was packed at midday. Every time John William’s “shark” music started, a noticeable murmur would run through the crowd. People were terrified of that mechanical beast. And I still can’t watch it without getting chills sometimes.

7. Frank Booth - Blue Velvet

Dennis Hopper could easily be on this list three or four times. But his portrayal of the maniac Booth whose sexual proclivities and homicidal nature combine to make him by far the weirdest villain in movie history, was a tour de force performance. (His turn as Howard Payne in Speed was also memorable).

6. Khan - Star Trek II

Only because I’m a sucker for any villain that quotes Melville and Shakespeare.

5. Booth - In The Line Of Fire

John Malkovich as the disturbed presidential assassin in one of Eastwood’s best roles and directing efforts. So much in control. So sure of himself. And in the end, so dead.

4. Casper Gutman - The Maltese Falcon

Probably not on too many people’s top ten lists but this is my blog and I’ll do what I like. Actually, Sydney Greenstreet had some redeeming qualities. He was charming and jolly. He was also someone you could trust only as far as you could throw his 300 pound body. I love the plot of Falcon plus the novel by Dashiell Hammett was faithfully brought to the screen by John Huston.

3. Masala - Ben Hur

Stephen Boyd is not the best actor in the world. But the way the role was written contrasted perfectly with Heston’s Judah. Unforgettable.

2. Hannibal Lector - The Silence of the Lambs

I didn’t care for Anthony Hopkins in any of the sequels, (although the remake of Manhunter with Edward Norton was pretty good). But his absolutely stone cold portrayal of the impossibly dangerous serial killer in Lambs was bone chilling.

1. Darth Vader - Star Wars

Could there be anyone else at #1? Darth is number one in so many ways - literary, mythological, cinematic, biblical - he rivals Satan in our culture as an icon of evil. He has no equal.

Note: Some honorable mentions:

1. Norman Bates - Psycho
2. The Alien - Alien films (except the execrable Alien vs. Predator).
3. Gollum - Lord of the Rings
4. Mr. Smith - The Matrix films
5. Freddie Krueger - Nightmare on Elm Street films

That ought to keep you guys busy for a while.

“The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough.”
(Winslow T. Wheeler, CDI)

I swear that most Congresscritters missed their calling. Serving in Congress is swell I’m sure. But if this were a different world, we might see many of those ladies and gents in nightclubs plying their craft as magicians.

It’s the old sleight of hand trick. Replace one bunch of greedy, grasping, politicians from one party with a sneaky, conniving, yet equally greedy and grasping set from another party. Hard to tell the difference in the end. The result is the same; unaccountability and a lack of discipline in spending our tax dollars.

This is because despite running on a platform that included solemn promises to halve the number of earmarks included in appropriations bills, as well as reforming the way they were ordered to insure transparency and accountability, the Democrats were apparently struck a severe blow to the head, having suffered a massive memory loss as a result and are carrying on pretty much as before.

That “as before” refers to the way that Republicans purloined tens of billions of dollars from the Federal government via the earmark gravy train - something the Democrats had a gay old time bashing them over the head with in the lead up to the election last November. And rightly so. The practice of slipping a Congressman’s pet project anonymously as an addition to appropriations bills at the last moment - behind closed doors in conference or even after the bill was passed - with little or no chance for debate (not to mention little scrutiny about who exactly was going to benefit) was an out of control outrage, an affront to the principles of good government, and a significant contributing factor to the deficit.

So, of course, the Democrats just had to give it a try:

When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers’ pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending “shall have no legal effect.”

Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process — a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call “phonemarking.”…

Upon taking control of Congress after November’s midterm elections, Democrats vowed to try to halve the number of earmarks, and to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that the money they are requesting will not benefit them.

But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.

It isn’t just the spectacle of rank hypocrisy that the Democrats are making of themselves. It is the supreme arrogance of power that sneeringly tells the rest of us to mind our own business and leave the lawmakers alone when they are planning to rob us blind:

Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.

Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.

“I don’t give a damn if people criticize me or not,” Obey said.

Obey may have the safest seat in Christendom. He also may be one of the more arrogant SOB’s on the Hill. The combination of the two give the Congressman the confidence to give the rest of us the finger just for trying to hold he and his Democratic friends accountable for how they spend our money.

The Examiner shows how Obey’s “reforms” will work in practice:

The same day, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., disclosed that earmarks will be inserted into bills only after they’ve been approved by the House and sent to conference committees with the Senate. Under this newly rigged process, there won’t be any of those pesky amendments against things like the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, House members will only be voting on conference committee reports, not on the thousands of earmarks that will be inserted into the bills covered by those reports. In other words, after some tentative moves in the right direction earlier this year, Democrats are now putting the corrupt system disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff called the congressional “favor factory” back behind closed doors.

Obey sounds like he’s a little overworked and under appreciated here:

“I have to sign off on that stuff,” Obey said. “And I’m going to make damn sure that we’ve done everything we can do to make sure that they’re legitimate projects, so that you don’t get embarrassed by some idiot who is putting in money for a project that happens to benefit himself and his wife.”

Those words would carry a helluva lot more weight if you held you own party leader accountable:

Another key Democratic reform requires House members seeking earmarks to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the project.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did just that when she requested $25 million for a project to improve the waterfront in her home district of San Francisco. Her request did not note that her family owns interests in four buildings near the proposed Pier 35 project.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said that any suggestion of a conflict of interest is “ridiculous.” He said that Pelosi was passing along a spending request from the Port of San Francisco and that she would not benefit from it.

Nice try, Brendan. Did you forget the fact that the four buildings will almost certainly increase in value as a result of the improvements? Maybe we should ask how difficult it would be for the Speaker of the House to buttonhole some Port of San Francsico flunkie and get him to make the request in the first place? Of course, that kind of thing never happens, now does it?

The point is not to get rid of earmarks entirely. There are legitimate projects that for one reason or another, the Executive Branch refuses to fund. By having the power to override the objections of federal departments on spending matters, the Congress exercises a form of oversight that is both legal and, in rare cases, necessary.

But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that 13,000 earmarks are a scandal. And the way they are approved is an invitation to corruption. Just ask Duke Cunningham. The California Congressman is spending 8 years in prison for using earmarks to personally enrich himself and his cronies. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing the same kind of abuses by the Democrats that we got sick to death of under Republicans?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest report on the Iranian nuclear program yesterday with somewhat of a mixed verdict. The bad news is that the Iranians are making steady if unspectacular progress in mastering the centrifuge technology necessary to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels. The good news is they still haven’t a clue on how to connect large numbers of centrifuges in order to produce enriched uranium on an industrial scale.

First, the MSM take on the IAEA report:

Iran has again defied U.N. demands to suspend its nuclear enrichment programs, according to a report issued yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency, leading Bush administration officials to demand increased pressure on Tehran.

The IAEA report said that Iran has significantly accelerated its enrichment capability and has not provided a range of verification information to the agency. The IAEA’s “level of knowledge of certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear-related activities has deteriorated,” the four-page document said. The report described the last 60 days of activity since an assessment in March led to the adoption of a U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran. That resolution stepped up the sanctions initially authorized in December.

“The pressure so far has not produced the results that we all have been hoping for,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “The time has come,” he said, to “ratchet up the pressure to bring about a change in Iranian calculation.”…

Yesterday’s IAEA report said that during a surprise visit on May 13, nuclear inspectors found eight operating enrichment cascades — each with 164 centrifuges, for a total of 1,312 — being fed uranium hexafluoride at the underground facility near the town of Natanz. Five additional cascades were in various stages of completion. The number was more than four times the total number of centrifuges operating at the time of the last IAEA report, in February.

Although the total was far from the 3,000 centrifuges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted would be operating by May, some nuclear experts said that point could be reached by early summer. The glass “is a little more than half full,” said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

How has Iran “significantly accelerated” it’s program? This is directly from the report (HT: Arms Control Wonks):

Since the Director General’s last report, Iran has fed approximately 260 kg of UF6 into the cascades at FEP. Iran has declared that it has reached enrichment levels up to 4.8% U-235 at FEP, which the Agency is in the process of verifying. On 13 May 2007, eight 164-machine cascades were operating simultaneously and were being fed with UF6; two other similar cascades had been vacuum tested and three more were under construction.

(Emphasis mine)

The Iranians achieved the ability to connect 164 of the centrifuges in order to create a cascade that enriched uranium hex to around 5% last year. The fact that they have been unable to go beyond that and create much larger cascades is significant, although it is worrisome that they have so many of these “mini-cascades” operating at once. The experts that I’ve read also believe that Iran has just begun to introduce UF 6 or Uranium Hexafluoride directly into the centrifuges rather than injecting “feedstock” into the machines to prevent them from breaking.

Short version of report: Iran is making steady progress toward industrial production of enriched uranium but still faces significant obstacles to achieving that goal. And those obstacles are perhaps the most daunting in the entire enrichment process - connecting hundreds and hundreds of centrifuges into one, gigantic machine which will operate for long periods of time in order to enrich the uranium to the magic 85% level for bomb making.

Even if they can connect all 1300+ centrifuges, it would take a year of perfect operation for the cascade to produce enough U-235 for one bomb. Thankfully, this level of technical expertise is still beyond them. But it should worry us that they appear to be making steady progress toward that goal.

It is also worrying that the Iranians appear to be making progress elsewhere in their nuclear program. Construction of the IR-40 reactor and the operation of the Heavy Water Production Plant are continuing. This will speed the production of plutonium once the Iranians start enriching Uranium hex to industrial levels.

This still gives us time for sanctions and diplomacy to work. How much time? Certainly less time than our brilliant intelligence people thought only two summers ago when they confidently predicted Iran wouldn’t have the bomb for perhaps a decade. The Iranians are moving farther and faster than anyone in our intelligence community thought possible which makes one wonder why they even bother in the first place. Bush might be better off throwing darts at a board marked “countdown to Armageddon” with a series of numbers representing the length of time in years before Iran gets the bomb.

It would seem that might be a more accurate way to predict when the mullahs will be able to threaten their neighbors with nukes than relying on legions of intelligence bureaucrats who seem more concerned about not sticking their necks out instead of delivering intelligent, accurate analysis.

Too hard on our intel people? You bet! We spend upwards of $70 billion on hardware, software, and the care and feeding of thousands of analysts and this was the best we can do? (Andy: I know I don’t know what I’m talking about but something is still wrong with that picture.)

Leaving aside our failed intelligence on the Iranian nuke program, the question is where do we go from here? While there is still time for sanctions to work, the question of how severe we can make them and still bring along China and Russia at the UN remains unknown:

At a news conference last week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said that the United States would push for a third Security Council resolution if the IAEA report was negative. The measure is expected to require additional restrictions on Iran, including mandatory travel bans on specific government officials, expanded prohibitions against dealing with Iranian companies and banks, and new sanctions against companies associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Arms imports from Iran are currently banned; a ban on weapons exports to the country is also being considered.

U.S. officials said yesterday that the administration will delay pressing for new Security Council action until after the talks scheduled for next Thursday between European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. On behalf of the United States, France, Britain and Germany, Solana has been instructed to consider even a month-long suspension as Iranian progress, but Iran has refused and officials expressed little optimism the meeting would lead to a breakthrough.

Poor Larijani. The guy has tried to resign at least 5 times in the last few months, protesting Ahmadinejad’s wild rhetoric as well as his choice for Foreign Minister, Manuchehr Mottaki. But Supreme Leader Khamenei has rejected his resignation each time, if only because he seems to be the one Iranian negotiator who has any credibility with the western powers.

Meanwhile, Mohamed ElBaradei has recently proven once again that the IAEA is a nuclear enabling organization rather than an enforcement agency:

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei infuriated the administration and its European partners last week by telling reporters that the demands for suspension have been “superseded by events” in Iran. He said they should accept a certain level of uranium enrichment in exchange for more inspections and Iranian agreement not to expand the program.

“We vehemently disagree . . . with the contention that somehow the international community should allow Iran to get away with violating all of its obligations,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in criticizing the IAEA chief. The official said that U.S., French and British officials will meet with ElBaradei at IAEA headquarters in Vienna tomorrow to express their displeasure.

Although I hesitate to use the analogy of a woman being raped told to lie back and enjoy it, in this case the shoe fits. ElBaradei has been undercutting a strong policy toward Iran for years even though his own agency has shown that the mullahs are not being forthcoming about their program and are obstructing the IAEA from doing its job:

One of the most striking things about the report is its emphasis on what the IAEA doesn’t know about Iran’s program because of Tehran’s lack of transparency. Not only has Iran refused to cooperate (for the most part) with the IAEA’s requests for information about Iran’s nuclear program(s), but Iran still won’t implement the additional protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement.

The UN Security Council, BTW, has required Tehran to cooperate with the investigation and ratify its additional protocol.

Anyway, this lack of cooperation is clearly impairing the IAEA’s investigation. According to the report:

because the Agency has not been receiving for over a year information that Iran used to provide, including under the Additional Protocol, the Agency’s level of knowledge of certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear related activities has deteriorated.

That information includes

information relevant to the assembly of centrifuges, the manufacture of centrifuge components or associated equipment and research and development of centrifuges or enrichment techniques.

This does not bode well for future inspections. The Iranians can continue to obstruct the IAEA from doing its job as long as the price they pay for doing so is cheap. Much broader and tougher sanctions are called for. Whether they will be forthcoming is anyone’s guess.

When the history of these times is written 100 years from now - that is, if the west is vouchsafed such a luxury as surviving that long - historians will view the role of the free press in the western world with a combination of confusion and awe. Confusion because they will look in vain for evidence that many in the media were actually working for the enemies of freedom, so often it seemed they played directly into their hands or seemed to do their bidding. And a feeling of awe that those professing to be so intelligent could act with such towering idiocy and irresponsibility:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

Of course, the press is not disloyal - at least not according to their lights. But I can’t think of anything that ABC could have published that helps Iran more. Especially since it now appears that, as I have predicted many times (and despite what the hysterical left has been saying for two years about an “imminent” attack on Iran) the Administration has apparently abandoned the military option in favor of turning up the heat on the Iranian regime politically and financially.

Or, at least that was the plan. Enter ABC News and their feelings of entitlement to undermine US policy and all of a sudden, the military option may be back on the table. This begs the question of who or what faction in our intelligence agencies leaked this time? Pro-war advocates? Anti-intervention advocates? Some stray partisans who hate Bush? Some stray partisans doing the President’s bidding? Perhaps those involved in a turf war of some kind in our intelligence agencies?

Take your pick. One is as good as the other. It wouldn’t be the first time for any of those factions in the last 6 years to leak classified information. It’s just that this time, the leaking has arguably made the world a more dangerous place.

If there is one foreign policy issue that enjoys bi-partisan agreement in Washington it is that Iran must be prevented from developing nuclear weapons. Disagreements abound about how to prevent them from doing so. But liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between recognizes the threat posed to world peace by the fanatics in Iran and that it would be an unmitigated disaster for our interests in the region if they were successful in building a bomb.

I think that this CIA covert plan would have enjoyed broad support among the leadership of both parties on the Hill. It is reasonable in that it attacks Iran economically not to hurt the population but to hit the mullahs where it counts; in their secret bank accounts they are using to fund their weapons program:

Riedel says economic pressure on Iran may be the most effective tool available to the CIA, particularly in going after secret accounts used to fund the nuclear program.

“The kind of dealings that the Iranian Revolution Guards are going to do, in terms of purchasing nuclear and missile components, are likely to be extremely secret, and you’re going to have to work very, very hard to find them, and that’s exactly the kind of thing the CIA’s nonproliferation center and others would be expert at trying to look into,” Riedel said.

Are there risks that go with such a policy? Of course there are. There are risks with any policy we pursue against Iran including doing nothing. Or trying to strengthen regional actors like Saudi Arabia to counterbalance Iranian influence. Or bombing the holy hell out of them. If it is a risk free policy you seek, you won’t find it.

Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations explains the downside to the CIA’s leaked plan:

Still, some fear that even a nonlethal covert CIA program carries great risks.

“I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran,” said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow,” Nasr said.

Nasr posits the absolute worst case scenario including the “cycle of escalation” canard that is usually trotted out by opponents to any strong action taken by the US against a putative enemy. The advantage the professor has in this case is that we’ll never know because most of the plan is for all intents and purposes is dead. If we thought it was hard to ferret out the secret funding mechanisms for the Iranian bomb program before, how impossible do you think it’s going to be now that the Iranians are aware of what we intend to do?

ABC’s excuse will be that if they didn’t publish, someone else would have done so. Of this I have no doubt, although what that says about the press in general in this country is not flattering. The fault lies with the leakers in this case. And the fact that the Administration has done so little over the last 6 years to investigate and punish those who reveal some of the most important secrets in government only encourages further transgressions. When unelected bureaucrats take it upon themselves to destroy policies they disagree with either for political purposes or, as may be possible in this case, in order for another policy option to move to the top of the pile, trust between those elected to make policy and those charged with giving our leaders accurate information and intelligent options to implement that policy breaks down.

Anyone can see the dysfunction in our intelligence agencies, the pettiness, the partisanship, the casual disregard for the rule of law. Is there any plan or program that would never be leaked under these conditions?

Not unless the perpetrators are identified and either drummed out of the service or arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for violating their oaths of secrecy and the law.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The worried eyes of the western world are turned toward Lebanon as the under trained and under equipped Lebanese army does battle with the Palestinian terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam in and around the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp just outside of the northern port city of Tripoli.

So far, the terrorists are staying true to form. They have taken refuge among the civilian population in the densely crowded camp and are using innocents as human shields. The Lebanese army, under orders to destroy the terrorists, tries to spare civilians the worst of the fighting but apparently, to no avail as many of the refugees streaming out of the camps this evening report dozens of corpses lying in the street and in buildings.

The death toll as reported by Lebanese media is 66 which includes 30 Lebanese soldiers, 18 Fatah al-Islam gunmen, 17 Palestinian refugees and one Lebanese civilian. That number is clearly too low as the United Nations reports gunmen opening fire on convoys bearing relief supplies into the camp killing several more civilians who approached the trucks to get much needed water and food. And as a tenuous, undeclared cease fire seems to be holding over the last 24 hours, thousands of Palestinians have taken advantage in the lull to flee the camp, relating stories about the fierce firefights in the streets and saying that the stench of death is everywhere.

Much has been made in the western media of Fatah al-Islam’s ties to al-Qaeda. There is ample evidence that, in fact, the leader of the group, Shakir al-Abssi, has been inspired by Osama Bin Laden, adheres to al-Qaeda’s ideology of establishing a world wide Caliphate, fought with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and shares al-Qaeda’s goal of kicking the United States out of the Middle East.

But many Lebanese see the hand of Syria in al-Abbsi’s machinations. They point to the fact that around the time that al-Abssi was sentenced to death along with al-Zarqawi in Jordan for assassinating the United States diplomat Laurence Foley, he was freed from a Syrian jail where he had spent three years for plotting terrorist attacks there. Released last fall, he made his way immediately to the northern Lebanese refugee camp Nahr el-Bared where he began to recruit not only Palestinians but also Arab fighters and jihadists from as far away as Chechnya.

The New York Times caught up with the 51 year old al-Abssi in March of this year and found him well organized and fanatical in his desire to hurt the United States. At that time, Syria denied sending Abssi to Lebanon to create chaos calling the charges “baseless.”

But the facts are that Syria has a long history of supporting Palestinian radicals in Lebanon and using them as surrogates to create havoc. Dr. Walid Phares:

The Fatah al Islam is the latest marriage of convenience between a group of committed Jihadists, rotating in the al Qaeda’s constellation but gravitating around Damascus influence. The group accepts Bashar’s support and the Syrian regime tolerates the organization’s “Sunni” outlook: Both have a common enemy, even though they may come at each other’s throats in the future. The men of Bin Laden anywhere in the world, including in Lebanon, have the same standing order: Bringing down the moderate Arab and Muslim Governments (even in multiethnic societies) and replace them with Emirates. The men of Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinijad have converging goals, bring down the democratically elected Government in Lebanon and replace it with a Hizbollah-Syrian dominated regime, as was the case before 2005. Thus each “axis” has one objective in Lebanon: crush the Seniora Government. They will take all their time to fight each other after.

Indeed, Phares paints a grim future for Lebanon unless the Lebanese army can annihilate Fatah-al-Islam:

Today’s clashes between the al Qaeda linked terror network and the Lebanese Army are a prelude to terror preparations aimed at crumbling the Cedars Revolution, both Government and civil society this summer. It is a move by the Assad regime to weaken the cabinet and the army in preparation for a greater offensive later on by Hizbollah on another front. In short the Damascus-Tehran strategic planners have unleashed this “local” al Qaeda group in Tripoli to drag the Lebanese cabinet in side battles, deflecting its attention from the two main events, highly threatening to Assad: One is the forthcoming UN formed Tribunal in the assassination case of Rafiq Hariri. The second is the pending deployment of UN units on the Lebanese-Syrian borders. Both developments can isolate the Syrian regime. Thus, the Fatah al Islam attacks can be perceived as part of a preemptive strategy by the Tehran-Damascus axis. But the results, if the Lebanese Army fails to contain the terrorists, could be very serious to the Seniora Government and the UN. Worse, if the first piece of a Sunni Triangle is put in place in Lebanon, this could affect the geopolitics of the War on Terror globally: The rise of Salafi Jihadism along the coasts of Lebanon, from Tripoli to Sidon, passing by Beirut. This Emirate-to-be, could become the closer strategic enclave of Bin Laden to the US Sixth Fleet, Europe’s cities and Israel.

The violence has temporarily healed the breach in Lebanese politics as all sides in the current stand off between the Hezb’allah led opposition and the coalition of democrats elected in June, 2005 following the forced departure of the Syrian army are united in urging strong action by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government to destroy the threat posed by Fatah al-Islam. But the longer the battles go on, the more dicey the situation for the government. That’s because one faction in Lebanon is absolutely livid with the government for attacking the terrorists in Nahr el-Bared; the 200,000 Palestinian refugees spread out in 11 camps along the border.

Violent demonstrations against the actions taken by the Lebanese army were reported in several camps today as word got out that many civilians were killed in the attacks. In an effort to ease tensions in the volatile camps, Prime Minister Siniora met with several Palestinian leaders and agreed with him on working out what was described as a “mechanism” to contain the situation in the besieged camp. Details of the agreement were not forthcoming but “Palestinian sources told Naharnet they focus mainly on pacifying the camp’s civilian population, estimated at nearly 30,000.”

The big problem is that it is illegal for the Lebanese to police the camp itself. Only with the agreement of several Arab states, signatories to the Cairo Agreement brokered by Egyptian President Nasser would the Lebanese be allowed to police their own territory. This holdover from before the ruinous civil war has made the refugee camps a haven for violent groups where their jihadist ideology finds fertile ground among young, disaffected Palestinian youths.

If Dr. Phares analysis is correct (this editorial in The Daily Star confirms the rise of militant terrorist groups in Lebanon) it becomes of paramount importance for the Lebanese army to succeed in wiping out the threat posed by Fatah al-Islam. To that end, the United States is reportedly sending military supplies to the Lebanese army and has promised much more through the Paris Roundtable on aid to Lebanon. France has also offered aid as have other Arab nations who see the threat of radical Islam taking hold in Lebanon as threat to their regimes as well.

But the question of Syrian involvement in this episode (and several huge bombs that have gone off in and around Beirut over the last 72 hours) cannot be answered definitively. The reach of Syrian intelligence into all facets of Lebanese society is still so vast that it becomes easy for the government to blame Damascus for just about anything. But the confluence of timing and events would seem to point the finger at Syria as benefiting the most from chaos that would ensue in Lebanon if the terrorists were successful in creating a new “Sunni triangle” in the north.

President Assad is desperate to avoid the consequences that would flow from the sitting of the International Tribunal. Just today, the United Nations discussed the option of seating the Tribunal under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter since the Lebanese government and Parliament are prevented by Hezb’allah and their allies from taking up the matter themselves. Hezb’allah ally Speaker Nabih Berri has refused all pleas from the Parliamentary majority to call the legislature into session to consider the enabling legislation for the Tribunal. And the Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who is widely seen as doing Assad’s bidding in Lebanon, also refused to use his powers to call Parliament into session. Thus, the Prime Minister has called upon the United Nations to seat the Tribunal itself.

This is not an optimum solution for Lebanon. And there is opposition in the Security Council from Russia, Syria’s major benefactor. But it seems likely that Russia would not press the issue to the point of vetoing such a plan which means that sometime in the next 2 or three months, there will indeed be a prosecution of the murderers of Rafiq Hariri as well as a close look at nearly 15 years of Syrian meddling in Lebanon.

The evidence so far points a finger directly at President Assad and his top henchmen, including his brother who ran Syrian intelligence in Lebanon as well as his brother in law. The Tribunal will also reveal the involvement of several prominent Lebanese military and security officials.

This much is known. What has not been revealed is the evidence that links this vast conspiracy to the numerous other bombings and assassinations - including last November’s killing of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel - that have silenced so many Syrian critics and opponents in Lebanon. It is expected that the evidence will be overwhelming that President Assad has carried out a campaign of terror directed against his political foes in Lebanon. And it is this prospect that has Assad doing everything in his power - including backing Hezb’allah in their effort to unseat the ruling majority government - to prevent the Tribunal from doing its work.

A convenient convergence of interests between Fatah al-Islam and Syria? Or outright collusion? The answer to that question may hold the key to the future of a free and independent Lebanon.

I’ll have Ed Morrissey as my special guest on today’s show. You can catch the stream here from 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Central time. A podcast will also be available shortly after the show.

Ed and I will talk about politics, the immigration debate, war funding, and anything else that crosses our fertile minds. It’s always lively with the Captain so I hope you can join us live today.

You can access the podcast by clicking the button below:

For my thoughts on last night’s finale and the entire season, I posted them here. The following is a recap of the hours 4:00 - 6:00 AM.

SUMMARY

When informed by Little Ricky that he will handed over to the tender mercies of his grandfather, young Josh Bauer understandably balks. And it doesn’t sound any more palatable when Doyle tells the youngster that it’s “for the good of the country.” Josh obviously doesn’t like Chinese food and can’t imagine living in a country where Britney Spears isn’t worshipped as a goddess.

Wait until he finds out that sexy pictures of Paris Hilton are banned on the internet.

Jack meanwhile is dragooned by some CTU agents and placed in custody. Not for anything he’s done but for what he’s liable to do in order to keep Josh from the clutches of his father. This is a sensible precaution - but so would taking away his cell phone and putting him in leg irons and handcuffs. Too bad they didn’t think of that.

Bauer begins working the phones, calling Chloe to get a lowdown of exactly what’s transpiring and then getting through to Karen Hayes at the White House. He pleads with her to stop the exchange, telling her that his father will doublecross them. Already against the plan on the grounds that it would be wrong to sacrifice the youngster, Karen decides to help.

She tries to enlist Tom Lennox so that they can present a united front to the President, but Tom will have none of it. Nor will he go “off the books” and do an end run around his boss. Tellingly, Tom casually mentions to Karen that he won’t be looking in her direction if she decides to help Jack which is all the encouragement she needs.

She calls Bill whose home is being searched by the FBI. At first refusing to take her call via his cell, Karen tries the landline and pleads with him to pick up on the answering machine. Bill relents and, after hearing her out, realizes what must be done and agrees to help Jack.

Josh and Doyle have landed at a deserted beach when Little Ricky’s phone rings. It’s Philip. And with CTU listening in, the elder Bauer orders the satellite coverage to cease. The old man’s technical wizardry is apparently limitless in that first he was able to override CTU’s security to get Zhou and his men into headquarters and now his ability to hack into CTU’s satellite feeds. Nadia realizes she has no choice and shuts down the link to the birds.

Having blinded his enemies, Philip now wants to speak to Josh. Doyle tells the kid to go easy on the old man to keep him off his guard but to no avail. “I hate you,” pretty much sums up Josh’s attitude. Philip tells him that because of what his father had done, he could never live in America, that people would always blame him for his father’s crimes.

Would that have been true? No doubt some people would blame the kid and his mother. But judging by what has happened to people like the Hinckley family (Reagan’s assassin) and Robert Oswald (JFK’s killer), I doubt whether it would have been much of a problem.

After hanging up, Philip sends a couple of thugs to retrieve the boy. And Doyle informs Nadia that he has it in mind to save the kid if he can. Nadia, under orders from the Veep, sternly warns him not to interfere - simply make the exchange. Little Ricky reluctantly agrees.

At the White House, Karen gets the ball rolling on Jack’s rescue by calling Nadia and asking for a real time feed of Jack’s position. Puzzled, Nadia agrees to give her the uplink. Karen then flashes the info to Bill who is looking to intercept Jack in the CTU SUV. Driving straight for the agent’s car, Bill runs it off the road. When one of the only two agents they left to guard Jack gets out of the car to investigate, Jack easily steals the other agent’s gun and coldcocks him. Bill distracts the other agent long enough for Jack to emerge from the car and disarm him. Off the two go to the rendezvous point to save Josh.

A completely unnecessary and time wasting scene occurs at CTU headquarters when Milo’s brother shows up and wants to know how his brother died. Nadia tells him he died saving her. Not surprised, says the brother. He loved you, you know.

Just the thing to make Nadia feel better.

After Chloe tells her that Jack has escaped, Nadia gives the bad news to Doyle out on the beach. Doyle assures Nadia that he will handle Jack by himself since moving TAC teams into the area will alert Philip.

It wouldn’t matter, of course, There isn’t a CTU agent yet made who could “handle” Jack Bauer.

Daniels comes and visits Karen in a holding cell and tells her that he’s disappointed in her, he expected better. Karen simply says that she doesn’t trust Philip to keep his end of the bargain. The Acting President rightly points out it wasn’t her call to make, something that seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Bauer is saying that his judgement is superior to that of the person whose job it is to safeguard America. And the fact that the Russians are breathing down our necks to retrieve the circuit board points up the logic of the Veeps actions. In the real world, Daniels is probably correct to sacrifice Josh in order to prevent a war. But on TV, the proprieties must be observed and the one innocent life is given superior weight to the interests of the United States.

Nice thought but hardly germane.

Philip calls Little Ricky and tells him to take Josh and start walking toward the shoreline. They hear a motor in the distance and suddenly, out of the darkness, a small, rubber boat appears with two men. Advancing toward each other guns drawn, Doyle orders one of the thugs to hand over the component so that the geeks at CTU can confirm its authenticity.

Surprise! It literally blows up in Little Ricky’s face. The thugs seize Josh and make for the open water only to have Jack and Bill show up. But they’re too late. The boat disappears into the darkness leaving Little Ricky with a badly burned face and Jack standing on the beach contemplating what to do next.

Calling Nadia to give her the bad news, Jack asks about satellite coverage. None is to be had thanks to Philip’s penetration of the CTU network. The boat gets away and once again, Jack is back at square one.

But perhaps not. Jack suddenly remembers that his father’s company has a hidden interest in oil platforms off the coast. Given the size of the boat the thugs took Josh away in, it stands to reason that they were either meeting a bigger boat or that they were on one of the oil drilling platforms.

This sets off a frantic search at CTU of the records to see if there is a platform that would fit the bill.

And on the platform, Philip tells Cheng (who seems to be everywhere) that he can have the board when he gets his hands on his grandson. We are told that they will be picked up shortly.

Back at CTU, Chloe is having trouble concentrating. Her vision blurs. When talking to Morris about how to access Philip’s financial records she suddenly faints dead away. Morris is beside himself calling for help over the motionless body of the woman he told less than 3 hours ago that their relationship was over.

But you knew that was a lie, didn’t you?

REFLECTIONS ON PART I

Glacially slow and plodding. Too many unnecessary scenes. What’s up with Chloe?

SUMMARY - PART II

Josh arrives on the oil platform and tells Philip that he doesn’t want to go, that he hates him. Philip says that he’s doing it for his own good and that he’ll understand later that he did the right thing. Cheng, who probably had a hard time understanding how a teenager would show such disrespect to an elder, informs Philip that the boat that will pick them up is 20 minutes away.

Back at CTU, Chloe is awake but a little shaky. Morris is very solicitous of her health but all the doctors will say is that Chloe is exhausted and dehydrated. Chloe tells Morris to get back to work and save Josh.

And within minutes, CTU hits paydirt. They find a decommissioned oil platform owned by one of Philip’s front companies. A thermal scan confirms that people are on board and that a small boat pulled up to the rig in the last few minutes.

As CTU readies an assault, Daniels pulls them up short. The Secretary of Defense tells the Veep that the only surefire way to see to it that the circuit board is destroyed is have some F-18’s obliterate the platform and everyone and everything on it. So instead of a rescue attempt, Daniels orders the F-18’s in, making Josh “an acceptable loss.”

This obviously doesn’t sit well with Uncle Jack. Disobeying orders to return to CTU, Jack tells Bill that he’s going to commandeer a helicopter and try to rescue the kid himself. And in one of the biggest surprises of the series (to me anyway) Bill throws the book away and agrees to help.

Perhaps being freed from the shackles of CTU authority has allowed Bill to explore his true nature as lawbreaker and rule buster. He did a great job getting Jack away from the clutches of CTU already and this effort to help him get his nephew back shows Bill to be a true Bauer disciple.

Stealing a CTU copter was a simple matter. Jack drew his gun and told the pilot to take a hike. Not waiting to find out if Jack was serious, the pilot obliged and Bill - who displayed another hidden talent - takes the controls and makes for the oil rig.

Back at the White House, as the F-18’s scream toward the target, the Veep is informed that the Russian troops are on the move and the attack on our base is imminent.

As an aside, I would point out that the chances of success for the Russians are slim and none. In every major engagement where American men have come up against Russian equipment, it has been no contest. We wiped out hundreds of Saddam’s tanks in 1991 with the loss of only one of our own. Our planes run rings around Russian MIG’s. Our tactics are superior, our men better trained and motivated than the Russian teenage draftees, and the hyper accuracy of our artillery is legend. In short, it would be an embarrassing slaughter for the Russians. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything because we would be at war - a war that could very quickly go nuclear. But I thought I’d point out something the writers obviously didn’t know.

But President Suvarov believes Daniels when he says that they are about ready to take out the platform when Russian intelligence intercepts a sub transmission indicating that it will pick up some passengers along with the board about 10 miles off the coast. He says he will be satisfied if the oil rig is destroyed. Good news for the United States. Bad news for young Josh.

On their way in the copter to the rig, Nadia calls asking just what they hell they think they’re doing, that she won’t sign off on a “suicide mission.” Bill chides her saying that she knows what they’re doing is right and could we please have the satellite feed so we know what we’re up against? For the first time all day, Nadia shows a little spine and agrees to give them the uplink.

Jack tells Bill to come in low to avoid detection but it does little good. Cheng’s goons spot the helo well out to sea. The Chinese security chief tells Philip to get in a boat docked below decks and that its locater beacon will allow the sub to pick them up. He gives Philip the board and races to confront Bauer.

With the F-18’s only two minutes out and locking on the target, the firefight begins. Bill expertly brings the copter up to the top level where the helicopter landing area is while Jack handles the killing. And oh my, does it get bloody. Taking out the two men guarding the landing area, Jack tells Bill to set down and follow him. Alighting from the bird, Jack starts firing at the 9 goons on the lower decks including Cheng. The silly Chinese have taken cover behind barrels of oil, however, and Bauer takes care of all them by firing into the barrels and blowing them up. Standing over an injured and prostrate Cheng, one almost expects Jack to put a bullet in him. Instead, he asks where his father is. Cheng tries to bluff him by telling Jack “you’re too late” but Jack races down into the bowels of the rig, hot on Philip’s trail.

Philip drags the reluctant Josh toward the boat but the youngster fights the older man to prevent his abduction. Getting the kid in a choke hold, Philip tells him to stop his whining. Seeming to acquiesce, Philip puts the gun down to lower the boat when surprise! The kid picks up the gun and aims it right at the old man’s chest.

Thinking to talk him out of it - something he has probably done all his life - Philip advances on the kid. Then, just as he is about to grab the gun, Josh fires.

Philip Bauer is badly wounded. Josh stands over him ready to finish the job when Jack shows up. He pleads with the kid not to fire saying that he would never be able to live with the pain of taking another human being’s life. The young man takes Jack’s good advice and lowers the gun.

The jets are literally seconds from firing when Jack has his final confrontation with his father. I’m not sure if it could have been done better if there had been more time. Philip pleads with Jack to kill him - something Jack won’t do. He wants him held “accountable” - we assume in a court of law. Not to be, says Philip. I can’t walk and you can’t carry me. Realizing this, Jack’s parting words to his father are “You’re getting off easy,” which we assume means not only for the crimes he committed that day but also for the years of emptiness Jack endured instead of the loving embrace of a real father.

The jets are too close and Jack must make a run for it. Bill helps him by lowering the ladder and racing to a lower level where he picks Jack up just as about a dozen smart missiles slam into the rig, obliterating it and, we assume, Philip Bauer.

Should we assume that? Long time viewers of the show know full well that unless we see a body, don’t assume anything. Was Philip hurt that badly? Jack never checked his wound. And that boat with the locater beacon was right there. Another year with Philip as Jack’s nemesis would be interesting but I think they could do better.

Back at the White House, Suvarov is convinced the board is destroyed and calls off the attack. As if any of us really cared that much.

Jack is riding on the hanging ladder as the chopper makes its way toward shore. Suddenly, he seems to fall off causing young Josh to panic. No worries, Jack makes it to shore and waves the chopper on. Bill says “he isn’t ready to come in yet” whatever that means.

Daniels relents and pardons both Karen and Bill. Bill makes it back to CTU and Josh is reunited with his mother. We find out Chloe is pregnant and that she and Morris are back together.

And all of that is just filler, leading up to the highlight of the evening and perhaps the season; Jack’s confrontation with Heller about Audrey and the part the Secretary played in his descent into darkness.

Heller is at his home talking on the phone when he hears the door open. He knows right away who it is. It’s Jack, who in one of the most obvious breaks in the real-time continuum in the show’s history (how did Jack get from the shore to the Secretary’s house so quickly on foot), has come for Audrey.

He’s not going to get her. But Jack lets Heller have it with both barrels. He’s just seen his father die and felt nothing. He blames Heller and people like him for what he has become: “The only thing I have ever done is what you and people like you have asked of me,” which is as telling a statement about who Jack Bauer really is that has ever been uttered on the show. Jack is a creature of those who created him. And in order to do as they have asked through the years, he has become what he most hates.

Heller tries to fob him off with platitudes about what the country owes him. Jack’s having none of it. “I’m not interested in what you think the country owes me. I want my life back.”

That last line was delivered almost plaintively by Jack. He wants to be normal again. He wants to live in a sane world. He warns Heller not to send anyone after him, that he’s “very good at disappearing” and “pretty good at killing, too.”

But Heller is brutal. “You’ll get back into the game,” and Audrey will suffer for it. It is then that Jack realizes that Heller is right, that he is, in fact, cursed. Anyone who comes in contact with him is doomed. Quietly, he goes into Audrey’s room. She’s asleep when he tells her how much he loves her and that he’s sorry to have to break his promise to always take care of her. Silently walking past Heller who is waiting outside her room, Jack leaves the house and walks toward an escarpment where the waves are crashing the shore far below. He looks lost, bereft. He gets a faraway look in his eye as he sees the road ahead of him. Without Audrey, without anyone, it is a road to nowhere.

BODY COUNT

Jack took out 6 of the 8 Chinese on the rig with explosions and offed two near the helicopter landing zone. Bill took out two more. Final totals are below:

TOTALS

JACK: 46

SHOW: 438

Last night’s season finale was not a total disappointment although you could say that of the five previous finales, this one was the worst. There were no real shocks, no big surprises, no deaths of major characters. But in my opinion, the last 10 minutes of the second hour redeemed the entire night and perhaps the entire season.

Jack’s soliloquy at the end, addressing Secretary Heller and letting loose all of his frustrations, his pain, and his doubts about himself and what he has become actually tied up some loose ends from the last 4 seasons. Jack Bauer is not unaware of what he has had to do to protect the United States and what the rivers of blood he has had to wade through have made him. He hates himself for what he has become.

As I have noted since the season started, his obsession with Audrey is based on the fact that she is his last link to the world of the normal, the sane. When Jack almost tearfully tells Heller that he wants his life back, he is referring to the first season when life included family, a home he could find refuge in, the support of his wife, the love of his daughter. This veneer of normalcy (despite the problems with both wife and daughter) gave him a psychological grounding that allowed him to justify his work to himself as necessary. He clearly saw himself as a patriot doing good works. Was it pathetic of him to believe that all of that could be recaptured if only he could be with Audrey? Heller thought so as I think we were to believe as well.

As his life darkened in succeeding years and he immersed himself more and more into his work, it became harder to justify what he was doing in the name of the United States alone. In the end, his fanatical determination to get the job done - to win - overrode any personal considerations or doubts about the methods he was using. And his accusations against Heller during that excellent acting turn by Kiefer Sutherland revealed a Jack Bauer who knows that he was used by politicians and policy makers as the bluntest of instruments to save their own rotten hides when the security of the United States was on the line. All they had to do was appeal to his patriotism and point him toward the terrorists. Jack did the rest and made them all look good.

More than two years ago, I asked the question is Jack Bauer a patriot or a thug? To answer that question, I hearkened back to a time when America was young and worshipped the legends of Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett. Those two “hunter heroes’ epitomized American exceptionalism - lone figures set against he backdrop of the American frontier, fighting wild animals and Indians, independent, self-reliant, willing to go against the grain to get the job done.

Much has happened to Jack in two years. I think in a very real sense, he has become an anti-hero, related more to Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” gunman whose latent violent proclivities are used to protect the weak and innocent rather than an unsullied hero who selflessly sacrifices himself for his country. No matter what you think of his methods, justified or not, the fact is that Jack Bauer has blood on his hands. No real hero would allow his personal feelings of revenge to affect his work. And this year, more than any other, the palpable feeling imparted to the audience was that Jack had turned his mission into a personal quest for payback. Not necessarily only against the Chinese but against anything and everything that had made him what he is.

I wish the writers had fleshed out this resentment a little more during the course of the season. It would have made Jack’s confrontation with Heller that much more dramatic. As it was, coming after Jack had basically left his father to die, it was emotionally charged drama - especially for longtime viewers of the show who recall how Jack almost worshipped the ground that Heller walked on, looking upon him as a surrogate father. Seeing him as one of the main authors of his pain and suffering had to leave Jack feeling bereft. And when Heller hammered home the point that whoever Jack touches ends up dead or ruined, Bauer must have realized that he could never go home, that the road he must travel from here on out would be a lonely one, a road to nowhere. And the only solace he will find, the only peace available to him, perhaps the only thing that will redeem him in his own eyes, will be his own death.

That, I believe, will be the basis for next year’s show. It will almost certainly be the last given the fact that Kiefer Sutherland’s contract runs out in 2008. And the disappointing ratings this year probably mean that the show has run its course with TV viewers. As has been pointed out by critics, they’ve done just about everything as far as existential threats to the United States - nukes, gas, bio-terror, assassinations. About the only place they haven’t gone is inside Jack Bauer.

Can a character-driven season like that succeed? Sutherland is certainly a good enough actor to carry it off provided the writing is crisp and the underlying story a little more plausible than we’ve seen recently. Rumor has it that the show will leave the confines of CTU which makes sense given the fact that Karen and Bill will be retired and Chloe will be on maternity leave. If they make next year’s season a personal quest for Bauer, those characters and their special abilities and connections could probably function as Jack’s technical back-up on whatever mission he will be on.

The real question is do we still care enough about Jack Bauer to watch him week in and week out? My personal answer is yes although I have doubts that the show will ever be able to recapture the kind of audience (17 million two years ago compared to about 10 million today) that it had in its heyday. No matter. The core fanatics like me will watch anything with Jack Bauer in it and thus give the show a nice send off into TV history.

And when that history is written, it will note that 24 changed TV drama for good and Jack Bauer will go down as one of the more unforgettable television characters ever.

The show premiered two months after 9/11. At the time, the country was ready for a TV drama to take the American people into a world where terrorism was more than something you simply read about but rather was a bona fide threat to our safety and security. Five years out, we forget that basic fact at our own peril. And eventually, we won’t have 24 around to remind us.

NOTE: My recap of last night’s finale will be up around 11:00 AM Central.

May I have your attention please?

As we prepare ourselves for tonight’s sure-to-be-rousing finale of 24, there are a couple of things we should keep in mind so that the shocks and surprises don’t overwhelm our nervous systems and send us scurrying under the bed, not to emerge until next season.

First, don’t expect too much. Relying on the writers to make good on all the plot twists and threads that they’ve carelessly thrown in to the show this year would be dangerous. Best to approach the show tonight with the very same attitude that the writers have; viewers are stupid sheep and we’ve forgotten just about everything that’s happened except for the last six hours or so.

I guarantee you won’t be disappointed if you keep that thought uppermost in your mind during the entire two hour finale tonight.

Secondly, expect the death of a major character. To facilitate our speculation, I’ve started a dead pool here at the House. Please choose one of the following (or offer your own choice for shocking death) in the comments below. You will note that I have not included Philip Bauer. It would obviously not be a shock to see him offed by his own son. Nor have I included anyone at the White House.

1. Audrey Raines
2. Chloe O’Brien
3. Morris O’Brien
4. Nadia Yassir
5. Bill Buchanan
6. Josh Bauer
7. Marilyn Bauer
8. Mike (Little Ricky) Doyle
9. Jack Bauer

I included Jack for a reason.And that is, my main speculation for tonight’s show is that we will not know at the conclusion whether Jack Bauer is alive or dead.

I think that Fox wants the option of not bringing the show back after its disappointing ratings this season. I also believe, reading between the lines of several Howard Gordon interviews I’ve read in the last two months, that the producers are not quite sure where to go with the series to revive it. Let’s face it. The show is tired. Six seasons is an awful long run for a show with this kind of format where the writers are constantly challenged to come up with ever more inventive plot twists and threats against America. Gordon himself may be anxious to move on to other things.

For all those reasons, expect an ambiguity surrounding the fate of Jack. He may even end up being thought dead by his CTU comrades but no body will be found.

As for the rest, my pick in the dead pool is Chloe. Almost written out of the show at some points this season, Chloe has lost her snark. She’s become a kindler, gentler, more human Chloe. Time to pull the plug.

And what about the paternity of Josh Bauer? Whose son is he?

Will Phillip be killed off? Or will they try to bring him back next year to torment Jack some more? If he dies, will Jack kill him, thus adding patricide to his ever growing burden of hellish images he must live with for the rest of his life?

Will Audrey make another appearance?

Does anyone care if we avoid war with Russia?

Give it your best shot in the comments. And tomorrow, we’ll see if anyone came close. (Note: I’ve never come close in three years of doing this.)

Hullabaloo’s Tristero is a a truly deep thinker. He thinks such deep thoughts that if he thought any deeper, his mind would disappear down a black hole. This would be improvement in the quality of his cognitive output in that at least it’s a given that not even light can escape the gravity well of a singularity - a boon for supporters of rational thought everywhere.

Despite this, Mr.Tristero has, in fact, hit the nail on the head with this post where he idly wonders about those conservative lawmakers who are abortion foes and anti-gay marriage advocates by day but by night, are sex perverts. Or maybe he hit his noggin on a nail thus causing his head to explode, popped like a helium filled balloon. The only problem is, such a happenstance presupposes that there is anything at all in his head in the first place. And I am loathe to draw conclusions from facts not in evidence.

To prove his case, he uses as an example a human turd out of South Dakota, a legislator caught abusing children in a particularly vile manner. His conclusion?

But this scandal brings up loads of questions, (like how he could live with himself as probably the most obvious). But the most puzzling of all is how he could persistently seek legislative office (and he tried for the Senate but failed) and not only that but go out of his way to sponsor this legislation, given his propensities.

And I think it may be fair to raise a more general question, whether an obsessive concern with regulating abortion and defining marriage has more than just a casual association with sexual perversion. By “obsessive concern,” I’m not talking about some decent schnook who’s been fed christianist propaganda,. I’m talking about someone who, like Klaudt, gets all proactive about it, deliberately trying to legislate morality, trying to build a career on it.

Let’s try and stretch that “casual association” with sexual perversion, shall we? First of all, we have this clod from South Dakota. Then there’s Foley. And, um…oh yeah. That mayor out in Washington state, the internet stalker. And then there’s…uh…well, I’m sure that Tristero could think of hundreds and hundreds of other conservative lawmakers to make his case, that there is “more than a casual association” between social conservative lawmakers and sexual perversion, can’t he. Can he?

The idiot is talking through a bodily orifice not generally used for conversing. What an absolutely riotously stupid notion. The idiocy of even broaching such a connection leaves one gasping for air. How many lawmakers, (and just to give his case a boost, let’s include preachers and others who are just advocates for those positions), have been arrested on charges of sexual perversion? Maybe we should ask John Aravosis. I’m sure he has those figures at his slimy fingertips.

Take that number - and once again, let’s be generous and say 20 - and divide it by the thousands of lawmakers who similarly use the social issues for electoral advancement but don’t go around fondling little boys or playing doctor with children. The fact that it is an infinitesimal percentage of the whole tells you all you need to know about Mr. Tristero’s mind numbingly stupid postulate.

No, my brainless friend, it is definitely not fair to raise the more general question about “obsessive concern” for the issues of abortion and gay marriage and any connection with sexual perversion. Only in a warped, dysfunctional, hyper-partisan mind would such a stew of witlessness make its way from some deep, unknowable part of the subconscious and see the light of day.

And Tristero’s got company. The list of blogs and bloggers on the left who have jumped on Tristero’s mindless meanderings is staggering. Would someone please tell me what possible connection there could be in any clinical, scientific, statistical, or even coincidental way between perverse sexual proclivities and those who advocate against abortion and gay marriage? You can’t because there is none to be found - except in the feverish blatherings of left wing bloggers who insist on wildly extrapolating conclusions not based on any rational suppositions and from virtually non-existent evidence.

It is the purest of smears - par for the course from those in the “reality based community” who regularly take leave of their senses to revel in illogic and bathe in the bile generated by their hate and loathing for their political opponents.

Hypocrisy and politics are joined at the hip. Al Gore (who arguably wants to control my life as much if not more than any social conservative through his draconian “solutions” to global warming ) weeps for the planet while living in a house that generates more carbon emissions in one night than my little abode does in two weeks. Ditto the celebrities who are on the global warming finger wagging tour who fly around the world in private carbon spewing jets.

Egregious examples of hypocrisy abound on both sides of the aisle. Why then this obsession with conservative hypocrisy regarding sex? In the finest intellectual traditions of Hullabalo and Tristero, let me speculate that by railing against this kind of hypocrisy, lefties are covering up their own sexual inadequacies. Perhaps they can’t get it up unless watching re runs of Pee Wee’s Playhouse? Or maybe it’s something more sinister. It could be that they are secretly sexually envious of Republicans because everyone knows that conservative women are drop dead gorgeous compared to liberal females. Their secret fantasies about conservative babes drives them insane, thus these irrational attacks.

Of course, that last was a baseless, scurrilous, and unfounded attack with no evidence to speak of and counterintuitive to boot.

Welcome to Tristero’s world…