Naked Ambition
The Fabulous Daniel Sunjata Doesnt Mind Playing Gay, Tough Or In The Buff
Genre Magazine October 2004 p.20
After thousands of strangers saw Daniel Sunjata in his birthday suit, he wound up on Peoples 50 Most Beautiful list of 2003. Coincidence? Perhaps not, considering the actor got his big break in Broadways Tony-winning Take Me Out, playing a queer baseball star who spends a lot of time hitting the showers. Sunjata solidifies his status as a gay favorite this month playing Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes in the big-screen feature Brother to Brother, GENRE caught up with the 6' 1" hunk from the set of his new F/X series, Rescue Me, which just got renewed for a second season.Andrew Vlez
Brother to Brother is a very sexually provocative film
It deals head-on with homosexual themes, and then that takes a backseat to the humanity of what the movies really about. Plus, they go all the waytwo men making love onscreen. You dont see a lot of that in theaters these days.
Take Me Out also focused on gay themes.
Well, a man coming out was the keystone of the plot. After that, the play looked at everything from discrimination based on sexual preference to racism.
The play required a lot of on-stage nudity. Was that hard?
If youre not an exhibitionist by nature, its a psychological depth-charge to be naked and not obsess about people staring at your private parts. I admit I never got totally comfortable with it. Every time I got to the moment that preceded my nakedness, a great self-consciousness filled my mind. [Laughs.] But then I would just get naked and act the scene.
C'mon, you were named one of the world's most beautiful people!
What can I say? Yes, its flattering, but I dont have t-shirts with my picture printed on the front. I guess what I really want is for people to think Im good at what I do. Edited by: Star at: 11/11/04 4:08 am
Act For Change
Fear will always win in this country over hope. The height of hypocrisy is the Godly nation we espouse to be let fear rule the day. Fear and faith cannot exist in the same spheres.they cant. They cant exist together.
D.L. Hughley/Real Time With Bill Maher
"All truth goes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And lastly, it is accepted as self-evident."
- Arthur Schoepenhauer
Investigate Electronic Voting Machines
Now that November 2 has come and gone, some disturbing reports of
problems with electronic voting machines have surfaced.
Click here to take action! (the link didn't attach; instead, go to
www.actforchange.com)
For example:
In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system reported that Bush
received 4,258 votes while Kerry received 260 votes in a precinct where
records show only 638 voters cast ballots;
In North Carolina, a machine lost more than 4,500 votes due to a
mistaken assumption about the memory capacity of a computer;
In Youngstown, Ohio, and South Florida, numerous voters complained that
when they tried to cast votes for Kerry, the machines instead recorded
their votes for Bush.
All in all, more than 30,000 complaints have been gathered from across
the country. In the midst of such turmoil, it's crucial that an
independent authoritative investigation be undertaken to sort this all
out.
Please forward this newsletter to your friends and help spread the word
about this important campaign!
"Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
- Teilhard de Chardin
"The reasonable (person) adapts herself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to change the world. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person."
- George Bernard Shaw
moveon.org message - peace and warmth family!
Six prominent members of Congress have requested an investigation into the integrity of the vote. The decision could come as soon as Monday. Sign our petition <www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/> demanding a full investigation into whether the election was conducted honestly or not. Also, share your personal story if you have one -- members of Congress will use it in their call for an investigation.
Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it?
If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and so we can prevent this from happening again.
Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. The decision on whether or not there will be an investigation could come as soon as Monday. Join us in supporting the call for one now, at:
Then please invite your friends and colleagues to sign, as well. We need to show Congress that hundreds of thousands of Americans are serious about protecting the integrity of the vote.
We're all hearing the stories and wondering what's true and what isn't. But at least two cases of serious problems are accepted beyond doubt:
In Broward County, Florida, electronic voting machines counted backwards: as more people voted, the official vote count went down. [1]
In one Columbus, Ohio suburb, election officials have acknowledged that electronic voting machines credited Bush with winning 4,258 votes, even though only 638 people voted there. [2]
These are just cases where we know something went wrong. There were also lots of reports of people being denied ballots on Election Day. So far, these reports remain anecdotal, but they must be compiled and examined. And the Internet is abuzz with theories about why the official counts were so different from the exit polls.
Do you have a story? Were you prevented from voting? Tell us, at:
Six prominent members of Congress have called for an investigation. Representatives Conyers (D-MI), Holt (D-NJ), Nadler (D-NY), Scott (D-VA), Watt (D-NC) and Wexler (D-FL), have demanded that the U.S. General Accounting Office:
immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered, and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration. [3]
We've got to support their call by asking our own Representatives and Senators to join them.
If you have a personal story of disenfranchisement, tell us. These members of Congress have agreed to include our stories and comments in their call for an investigation. Please sign now -- we'll deliver our compiled statements to them on Friday.
Even if you don't have a personal story, your signature on our petition will still help build support for an investigation.
To keep our faith in democracy, we need to know the facts. Your signature, and your story if you have one, will help.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, Rosalyn, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
November 11th, 2004
At least some of us are on the same page when it comes to our president. Unfortunately we are few and far between. Some battles we will never win so we have to live life to the fullest and stay positive - Never, Ever, Quit!
Just remember that you are one of the few male actors that still care and who do positive things.
On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide
FRANK RICH
On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide
Published: November 11, 2004
FAREWELL to Swift boats and "Shove it!," to Osama's tape and Saddam's missing weapons, to "security moms" and outsourced dads. They've all been sent to history's dustbin faster than Ralph Nader memorabilia was dumped on eBay. In their stead stands a single ambiguous phrase coined by an anonymous exit pollster: "Moral values." By near universal agreement the morning after, these two words tell the entire story of the election: it's the culture, stupid.
"It really is Michael Moore versus Mel Gibson," said Newt Gingrich. To Jon Stewart, Nov. 2 was the red states' revenge on "Will & Grace." William Safire, speaking on "Meet the Press," called the Janet Jackson fracas "the social-political event of the past year." Karl Rove was of the same mind: "I think it's people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies ..."
And let's not even get started on the two most dreaded words in American comedy, regardless of your party affiliation: Whoopi Goldberg.
There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.
The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.
If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be the undisputed king of the red cultural elite, Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is a rising profit center within his News Corporation, and each red-state dollar that it makes can be plowed back into the rest of Fox's very blue entertainment portfolio. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" and the Vivid Girls' "How to Have a XXX Sex Life," which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. O'Reilly. There are "real fun parts and exciting parts," said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News's "Big Story Weekend," an encounter broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.
Almost unnoticed in the final weeks of the campaign was the record government indecency fine levied against another prime-time Fox television product, "Married by America." The $1.2 million bill, a mere bagatelle to Murdoch stockholders, was more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." According to the F.C.C. complaint, one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which "partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies," and two female strippers "playfully spank" a man on all fours in his underwear. "Married by America" is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton ("The Simple Life") and wife-swapping ("Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy").
None of this has prompted an uprising from the red-state Fox News loyalists supposedly so preoccupied with "moral values." They all gladly contribute fungible dollars to Fox culture by boosting their fair-and-balanced channel's rise in the ratings. Some of these red staters may want to make love like porn stars besides. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) An ABC News poll two weeks before the election found that more Republicans than Democrats enjoy sex "a great deal." The Democrats' new hero, Illinois Senator-elect Barack Obama, was assured victory once his original, ostentatiously pious Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race rather than defend his taste for "avant-garde" sex clubs.
The 22 percent of voters who told pollsters that "moral values" were their top election issue - 79 percent of whom voted for Bush-Cheney - corresponds almost exactly to the number of voters (23 percent) who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. They are entitled to their culture, too, and their own entertainment industry. And their own show-biz scandals. The Los Angeles Times reported this summer that Paul Crouch, the evangelist who founded the largest Christian network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, vehemently denied a former employee's accusation that the two had had a homosexual encounter - though not before paying the employee a $425,000 settlement. Not so incidentally, Trinity joined Gary Bauer and Fox News as prime movers in "Redeem the Vote," the Christian-rock alternative to MTV's "Rock the Vote."
But the distance between this hard-core red culture and the majority blue culture is perhaps best captured by Tom Coburn, the newly elected Republican senator from Oklahoma, lately famous for discovering "rampant" lesbianism in that state's schools. As a congressman in 1997, Mr. Coburn attacked NBC for encouraging "irresponsible sexual behavior" and taking "network TV to an all-time low with full frontal nudity, violence and profanity being shown in our homes." The broadcast that prompted his outrage on behalf of "parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere" was the network's prime-time showing of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."
It's in the G.O.P.'s interest to pander to this far-right constituency - votes are votes - but you can be certain that a party joined at the hip to much of corporate America, Mr. Murdoch included, will take no action to curtail the blue culture these voters deplore. As Marshall Wittman, an independent-minded former associate of both Ralph Reed and John McCain, wrote before the election, "The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment." That amendment has never had a prayer of rounding up the two-thirds majority needed for passage and still doesn't.
Mr. Wittman echoes Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?," by common consent the year's most prescient political book. "Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" - until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons - from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) - are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.
But it's not only the G.O.P.'s fealty to its financial backers that is predictive of how little cultural bang the "values" voters will get for their Bush-Cheney votes. At 78 percent, the nonvalues voters have far more votes than they do, and both parties will cater to that overwhelming majority's blue tastes first and last. Their mandate is clear: The same poll that clocked "moral values" partisans at 22 percent of the electorate found that nearly three times as many Americans approve of some form of legal status for gay couples, whether civil unions (35 percent) or marriage (27 percent). Do the math and you'll find that the poll also shows that for all the G.O.P.'s efforts to court Jews, the total number of Jewish Republican voters in 2004, while up from 2000, was still some 200,000 less than the number of gay Republican voters.
When Robert Novak writes after the election that "the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, socially conservative agenda is ascendant, and the G.O.P. will not abandon it anytime soon," you have to wonder what drug he is on. The abandonment began at the convention. Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator who champions the religious right, was locked away in an off-camera rally across town from Madison Square Garden. Prime time was bestowed upon the three biggest stars in post-Bush Republican politics: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All are supporters of gay rights and opponents of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. Only Mr. McCain calls himself pro-life, and he's never made abortion a cause. None of the three support the Bush administration position on stem-cell research. When the No. 1 "moral values" movie star, Mel Gibson, condemned the Schwarzenegger-endorsed California ballot initiative expanding and financing stem-cell research, the governor and voters crushed him like a girlie-man. The measure carried by 59 percent, which is consistent with national polling on the issue.
If the Republican party's next round of leaders are all cool with blue culture, why should Democrats run after the red? Received Washington wisdom has it that the only Democrat who will ever be able to win a national election must be a cross between Gomer Pyle and Billy Sunday - a Scripture-quoting Sun Belt exurbanite whose loyalty to Nascar does not extend to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was fined last month for saying a four-letter word on television.
According to this argument, the values voters the Democrats must pander to are people like Cary and Tara Leslie, archetypal Ohio evangelical "Bush votes come to life" apotheosized by The Washington Post right after Election Day. The Leslies swear by "moral absolutes," support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and mostly watch Fox News. Mr. Leslie has also watched his income drop from $55,000 to $35,000 since 2001, forcing himself, his wife and his three young children into the ranks of what he calls the "working poor." Maybe by 2008 some Democrat will figure out how to persuade him that it might be a higher moral value to worry about the future of his own family than some gay family he hasn't even met.
Re: On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide
star, i can't tell you how many people have said that this article is so on point! the moral values and the so-called religious lives of the country's right wing, are SO NOT a part of the recent republican party history. in fact, moral values and a good heart and spirit are at the heart of not just the democratic party members but of everyone who understands the reasons why a preemptive war is not right, why rights should be equal for all, why money to put food on someone's table and someone's retirement should never be tampered with, why is it so important to secure the health and treatment for all people so they can pursue life, liberty and happiness. moral values and religious/spiritual insight present in the life of those who know and are not afraid to face their rights and their wrongs is what should be highlighted in this election, because the results clearly were amoral and ungodly.
as always, your insight fills many cups. when you help someone, when you help so many, that feels better and gives more than any wealth. enjoy your millions, billions and trillions of blessings. tks, mhb
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familia
pls join me when u hava chance in a special prayer for the protection and healing of all children, especially those abused physically and sexually. this week has been awful in that department with the news from Stamford, though by stats and calculation, child abuse happens every roughly "Every 32 Seconds" and the suffering, well, that could take a lifetime to fade away. i'm asking for this favor in gratitude to my dearest friend Tita, she guides a group of us to help heal others with her knowledge and her brave heart; Tita, we all hope you're healing each moment of the way too. Your soul is so soft and so strong: it's an amazing soul.
I saw this message on another board and felt the need to share it here.
Tanya
*************
Please read. All women need to be informed about this. Men need to be equally concerned as it affects their wives and daughters.
Subject: Hager FDA appointment
President Bush has announced his plan to select Dr. W. David Hager to head up the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. The committee has not met for more than two years, during which time its charter lapsed. As a result, the Bush Administration is tasked with filling all eleven positions with new members. This position does not require Congressional approval. The FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee makes crucial decisions on matters relating to drugs used in the practice of obstetrics, gynecology and related specialties, including hormone therapy, contraception, treatment for infertility, and medical alternatives to surgical procedures for sterilization and pregnancy termination. Dr. Hager, the author of "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now." The book blends biblical accounts of Christ healing Women with case studies from Hager's practice. His views of reproductive health care are far outside the mainstream for productive technology. Dr. Hager is a practicing OB/GYN who describes himself as "pro-life" and refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.
In the book Dr. Hager wrote with his wife, entitled "Stress and the Woman's Body," he suggests that women who suffer from premenstrual syndrome should seek help from reading the bible and praying. As an editor and contributing author of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality Reproductive Technologies and the Family," Dr. Hager appears to have endorsed the medically inaccurate assertion that the common birth control pill is an abortifacient. We are concerned that Dr. Hager's strong religious beliefs may color his assessment of technologies that are necessary to protect women's lives or to preserve and promote women's health. Hager's track record of using religious beliefs to guide his medical decision-making makes him a dangerous and inappropriate candidate to serve as chair of this committee. Critical drug public policy and research must not be held hostage by antiabortion politics. Members of this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and medicine, rather than politics and religion. American women deserve no less.
There is something you can do. Below is a statement to be sent to the White House, opposing the placement of Hager.
(1) Please copy and paste (DON'T forward) the entire email into a fresh email; then sign your name below. After you sign, SEND THIS TO EVERY PERSON YOU KNOW WHO IS CONCERNED ABOUT WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
(2) Every 10th person who signs the list (i.e., #10, #20, #30, etc.) - please forward the entire e-mail to president@whitehouse.gov.
We oppose the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Mixing religion and medicine is unacceptable in a policy-making position. Using the FDA to promote a political agenda is inappropriate and seriously threatens women's health.
Members of this important panel should be appointed on the basis of science and medicine, rather than politics and religion. American women deserve no less.
EuroWeb Article
THE RU REPORT / NOVEMBER 11, 2004 / VOL. 4.05: Daniel Sunjata: One Hell Of A Brother, Loews Turns 100, Roseanne Barr Comes For Star Jones, Don King Has Music and More
By Karu F. Daniels (New York, NY)
E-mail to a friend | Printer friendly (November 11, 2004)
Id be nothing if I couldnt sing my song!
BROTHER MAN: The old adage tells us that good things come to those who wait.
And getting some talk time with Tony Award nominated actor Daniel Sunjata was a living testament that the saying rings true.
Ive been in hot pursuit of the actor since I first saw him bare his all on the Broadway transfer of the critically acclaimed play, Take Me Out. But because of some unsavory tactics from a flak working the controversial Richard Greenberg-directed show, nothing materialized.
A year later, the 32-year Mr., Sunjata has morphed into a TV star and has a much lauded movie project hitting theaters across the nation.
So I couldnt have had better timing. (Im sticking my tongue out to that evil doer.)
In the Rodney Evans-helmed cinematic gem, Brother To Brother, the Champaign-Urbana, Il-reared Mr. Sunjata plays the legendary literary great Langston Hughes. For several flashback sequences in the impassioned film, Mr. Sunjata is at one with the lens in a dynamic performance that can make any thespian take notice.
I love it and I think its a really, really important film, Mr. Sunjata told The RU Report. I think Rodney did a great job writing it and then directing it and it was obviously a labor of love for him and continues to be. Hes got a great group of people together and it was a great experience.
Brother is a feature-length drama channeling the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance through the memories of Bruce Nugent, who co-founded the revolutionary literary journal Fire!! with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman. As an elderly man, Mr. Nugent meets a young Black gay artist, played by the impeccable Anthony Mackie, struggling to find his voice and together they embark on a dreamlike narrative expedition through his inspiring past. Its many things. While screening the film, I had to walk away from it because it was too intense.
With flashes of genius, the movie has been garnering high marks from the critics and winning a string of coveted awards and honors, including the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize. The feedback has been nice to hear, offered Mr. Sunjata. I think the movie as a whole was very, very tight.
Many TV fans first took notice of the dashing Florida A&M alum when he played a randy sailor trying to sweep Carrie Bradshaw off of her feet a couple of years ago on HBOs hit series Sex & The City. But the Tisch School of the Arts graduate has an impressive body of work including the television adaptation of Anne Rices Feast Of All Saints, and more smart TV fare such as Law & Order and Ed.
Ive had to do some fluff, Mr. Sunjata admitted, but Ive been very fortunate to do some pieces that I feel that are important to people today.
Hes referring to work like Take Me Out, in which he starred as Darren Lemming, a multi-racial baseball superstar who reveals to the world that hes gay. For his critically acclaim turn in which he appeared full-frontal nude in a few homoerotic scenes (leaving hundreds of theater goers hot and bothered), he garnered a Tony nod, and a handful of theater awards including the Lucielle Lortel Award.
Socially relevancy, he said, draws him to the roles he goes after.
And about the nudity, which was bandied about in the New York media for weeks, he said: You know its not an easy thing to be either physically or emotionally naked in front of people but with the physical nudity, I felt was more supported by the thematic underpinnings of the piece.
Indeed.
I guess it helps when you look good doing it, too.
So with Take Me Out and Brother To Brother, the heterosexual bachelor has somewhat of a penchant for playing gay quite convincingly. And hes earned his stripes a gay icon, to some degree. He takes it all in stride. As an actor, I dont have any trepidation about representing 360 degrees of humanity, and various sexual orientations are a part of that and I think thats great, and wonderful and beautiful and it should be celebrated and not shunned away from.
And as secure as he is, hes cautious about typecasting. He admitted that he and his management team had to pump the breaks slightly with the gay roles; too many too soon. Very often the casting community sees you as the last thing that youve doneand I think its important for me, if I want to be able to show my range as an actor, I dont want it to be every time they need a gay guy, they want to call Sunjata. I think Id rather much show other aspects to my ability and maybe return to that later on.
Mr. Sunjata is of German, Irish and African American lineage. He revealed to us that he was adopted when he was two-months old after his biological mother abandoned him. His adoptive mother, a world history professor who died in 1996, gave him the middle name Sunjata, which he uses as his professional surname. It literally means hungry lion and its Malian for named for the king who founded the empire of Mali in about 1100 A.D.
Named one of People Magazines 50 Most Beautiful People last year, Mr. Sunjata.has two other films due out this year; Woody Allens Melinda and Melinda and Noel, starring Robin Williams, Penelope Cruz and Paul Walker. He can also be seen weekly as Franco Rivera on FXs Rescue Me centering on New York City firefighters who are dealing with post-traumatic stress post- 9/11. The second season of the show, starring Denis Leary as the lead, has been picked up and filming resumes in New York in February.
And then hes in final negotiations to star as the lead in the forthcoming biopic on late, great soul music maestro Marvin Gaye.
What can I say? The man was such a fixture for both the sacred and the profane but at the same time, he made such a significant contribution to music in general, to music period. Hes just a really important musical personality whose life has yet to be depicted cinematically. I think its a wonderful opportunity and I hope I can do him justice, he concluded.
Considering all of the other great work Daniel Sunjata has done, theres not a doubt in our mind that he can pull of this one.
Caught Up In The Rapture
Maya: Sending prayers and the light to all in need and all that aid those in need like your friend Tita. Returning your blessings tenfold.
Secret: I'm glad you found the joy.
Daniel: I went to a Sunjata movie festival this weekend. I saw Brother to Brother and Noel. I must say that Rodney Evans has put together a very interesting and layered piece of cinema. It was a story that definitely needed to be told. You guys did a great job with the acting in the Renaissance scenes and my only complaint was there should have been more of those scenes because it was quite a compelling storyline to watch (with the creation of Fire and the dissention in the Negro community).
Now, for your Noel performance you were Hot! That scene with you and Susan was caliente and sexy. You look good on the big screen, baby. Own it!
"I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, defintions, and cultures uncontested. They are certainly not the property of a few Washington offiicials, any more than they are the responsibility of a few Middle Eastern rulers. There is a common field of human undertaking being created and recreated, and no amount of imperial bluster can ever conceal or negate that fact." Al Ahram, August 30, 2003.
Re: Rescue Me
I heard that its 13 weeks before the second season airs. Im assuming the second season will air around the same time as the first. So around April.
secret
Daniel Sunjata Cocoa Lounger
Posts: 64
(11/17/04 9:44 pm)
Re: Rescue Me
Published on Monday, November 15, 2004 by Zogby International
I Smell a Rat
by Colin Shea
I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.
The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio.
By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and handed us a printout.
"Zogby's calling it for Kerry." He smacked the sheet decisively. "Definitely. He's got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry column. Kerry only needs one." Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand.
The morning told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry--Bush had a decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian soldiers--next stop, Tehran.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics
I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida--all wrong. CNN's results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry.
Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust.
The first signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.
Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations in that county. They key phrase is "certain counties"--there is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations, but some differ wildly.
How to explain this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning.
The intimation, clearly, is fraud. Ballots are scanned; results are fed into precinct computers; these are sent to a county-wide database, whose results are fed into the statewide electoral totals. At any point after physical ballots become databases, the system is vulnerable to external hackers.
It seemed too easy, and Dopp's method seemed simplistic. I re-ran the results using CNN's exit polling data. In each county, I took the number of registrations and assigned correctional factors based on the CNN poll to predict turnout among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I then used the vote shares from the polls to predict a likely number of Republican votes per county. I compared this eexpected' Republican vote to the actual Republican vote.
The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the eactual' Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50--100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote--three times more than predicted by my model.
Again, polling can be wrong. It is difficult to believe it can be that wrong. Fortunately, however, we can test how wrong it would have to be to give the eactual' result.
I tested two alternative scenarios to see how wrong CNN would have to have been to explain the election result. In the first, I assumed they had been wildly off the mark in the turnout figures--i.e. far more Republicans and independents had come out than Democrats. In the second I assumed the voting shares were completely wrong, and that the Republicans had been able to massively poach voters from the Democrat base.
In the first scenario, I assumed 90% of Republicans and independents voted, and the remaining ballots were cast by Democrats. This explains the result in counties with optical scanning to within 5%. However, in this scenario Democratic turnout would have been only 51% in the optical scanning counties--barely exceeding half of Republican turnout. It also does not solve the enormous problems in individual counties. 7 counties in this scenario still have actual vote tallies for Bush that are at least 100% higher than predicted by the model--an extremely unlikely result.
In the second scenario I assumed that Bush had actually got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41% respectively). If this gave enough votes for Bush to explain the county's results, I left the amount of Democratic registered voters ballots cast for Bush as they were predicted by CNN (14% voted for Bush). If this did not explain the result, I calculated how many Democrats would have to vote for Bush.
In 41 of 52 counties, this did not explain the result and Bush must have gotten more than CNN's predicted 14% of Democratic ballots--not an unreasonable assumption by itself. However, in 21 counties more than 50% of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result--in four counties, at least 70% would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely.
The second rat
A previously undiscovered species of rat, Republicanus cuyahogus, has been found in Ohio. Before the election, I wrote snide letters to a state legislator for Cuyahoga county who, according to media reports, was preparing an army of enforcers to keep esuspect' (read: minority) voters away from the polls. One of his assistants wrote me back very pleasant mails to the effect that they had no intention of trying to suppress voter turnout, and in fact only wanted to encourage people to vote.
They did their job too well. According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the precinct in the last century or so.
In 30 precincts, more ballots were cast than voters were registered in the county. According to county regulations, voters must cast their ballot in the precinct in which they are registered. Yet in these thirty precincts, nearly 100.000 more people voted than are registered to vote -- this out of a total of 251.946 registrations. These are not marginal differences--this is a 39% over-vote. In some precincts the over-vote was well over 100%. One precinct with 558 registered voters cast nearly 9,000 ballots. As one astute observer noted, it's the ballot-box equivalent of Jesus' miracle of the fishes. Bush being such a man of God, perhaps we should not be surprised.
What to do?
This is not an idle statistical exercise. Either the raw data from two critical battleground states is completely erroneous, or something has gone horribly awry in our electoral system--again. Like many Americans, I was dissatisfied with and suspicious of the way the Florida recount was resolved in 2000. But at the same time, I was convinced of one thing: we must let the system work, and accept its result, no matter how unjust it might appear.
With this acceptance, we placed our implicit faith in the Bush Administration that it would not abuse its position: that it would recognize its fragile mandate for what it was, respect the will of the majority of people who voted against them, and move to build consensus wherever possible and effect change cautiously when needed. Above all, we believed that both Democrats and Republicans would recognize the over-riding importance of revitalizing the integrity of the electoral system and healing the bruised faith of both constituencies.
This faith has been shattered. Bush has not led the nation to unity, but ruled through fear and division. Dishonesty and deceit in areas critical to the public interest have been the hallmark of his Administration. I state this not to throw gratuitous insults, but to place the Florida and Ohio electoral results in their proper context. For the GOP to claim now that we must take anything on faith, let alone astonishingly suspicious results in a hard-fought and extraordinarily bitter election, is pure fantasy. It does not even merit discussion.
The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one--massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004 presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George Bush is still, and will remain, the eAccidental President' of 2000. One of his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother's watch, and engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.
Colin Shea is author of "The Freezer Box"
© 2004 Zogby International
Divine Power Cocoa Lounger
Posts: 27
(11/22/04 3:18 am)
Looking for StrengthGOD grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, COURAGE to change the things I can, and the WISDOM to know the difference.
---Hello everyone. I decided to post this quote because it is what I am needing at the time. I have been going through a lot of pain as of late ( one of my dogs passed away unexpectedly after an operation, months after I had to put another dog to sleep earlier this year ) and I cannot find peace in the situation.
For those of you who have pets ( instead of actual children--which I don't have ) you can relate to my loosing a second child in one year. For those of you who don't have pets---get one and you will understand. Love is love not matter who or what it is directed to. Love is the underlining factor.
I have read most of the post's dealing with the political connotation. I do have input as to what I have heard Bush speak upon, but I choose not to post my views because today, as well as previous days, he is not important to me. I do thank each of you for your post's (on Bush) because you all are helping me grow politically and to have knowledge of what is being spoke or written upon concerning his re-election.
May the quote above comfort you in ways that may be of help to you, as it is valuable to me for different reasons.
Edited by: Divine Power at: 11/22/04 3:48 am
Just a little note to let you know that I'm thinking of you. As a matter of fact I'm sure a few of the regulars here will join me even though they may not have posted yet. They're kind souls, that much I know.
I'm not trying to play down how you are currently feeling but I think the seasonal change is probably not helping. I don't know why but many people feel a bit depressed around this time. Last week I went through a small bout of depression for no apparent reason. I'm fine now but I think this is probably why you feel doubly overwhelmed now. That bad spell should be over soon so the grief will remain but hopefully it should be more manageable.
After all you're called Divine "power" for a reason, right?
I WAS LOST, NOW I FOUND YA....
Okay, someone slap me! I was still on the other Board. Did not know a new one opened up! But I did find it, yeah I'm slow, but catching up on all the posts is great!
Hi Daniel! Missed ya! Can't wait for another season of RESCUE ME to start!
Hi all!
I'm here now - so keep the good conversation going.....
Divine Power: Expat is correct, in that, an abundance of blessings are flowing your way. I am not a pet person but I can understand. I have a girlfriend who is experiencing the same thing you are. She is very fond of animals and her two dogs and a rabbit all made their transition this year and she has not been successful, up until this point, in finding another companion (shes looking for a dog). Just remember:
The light of God surrounds you:
The love of God enfolds you;
The power of God protects you;
The presence of God watches over you.
Wherever you are, God is
Anon
p.b.w.y.
Familia ... interesting month for learning about pain management eh! Well, add me to the list and thanks for posting so much Light for us Star. Fortitude awaits me and it's hard to let go and move on ... I'm moving on from my firm of 8 years, going from law to banking, but the feeling is that I'm leaving my friends and they're staying without me. Both hurt and both teach us volumes of ourselves when comfort is absent.
I wish you peace during your rough days, and I love that film "All Dogs Go to Heaven" though I've barely seen all of it. It just reminds me that sinc at least when I was 5 yrs old, my first g.shepard Lulu, my pekignese Bianca, my dalmatians Disney and Cindirella, my lab Blanca, my chow @ my hairy-furry cigar-stinking dauchsund - Mon Caramel - they are ALL IN HEAVEN.
Happiest of Turkey Days! GIVING THANKS FOR YOU!
and To Sunjata, D: a kiss for thee! MAYAZINHA
Edited by: MayasHeartBeat at: 11/23/04 6:32 pm
Daniel looks great as usual. 
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