FROM BRAD BALFOUR'S CONVERSATION WITH SPIKE LEE:

"G21: YOU WERE CONSCIOUS OF THE TIMING OF THIS FILM'S RELEASE?

SPIKE LEE: We knew this film was going to come out before the election, but [screenwriter] Michael Genet and I thought of it almost a year and a half ago. It just seems that the stuff we thought about just happens to come out in the headlines right before the film's opening. You look at [what happened to] Ken Lay and Martha Stewart, and [then there's] President Bush trying to add the amendment to the constitution, which was shot down, thank God, banning the same sex marriage. Michael and I, have ... I don't know if you want to call it a crystal ball .. intuition, or whatever or just plain luck, maybe. ..." READ MORE


DC STULTZ ON HURRICANE CHARLEY: " ... Wednesday evening we watched the local TV news and the weather channel with alarm. Charley was going to come up the west coast of Florida and the predictions for landfall ran the gauntlet from Ft. Myers to Tampa. Then we saw that the local officials were taking it very seriously and that schools would be closed Thursday and evacuations started. Our choices were to get up early the next morning and head home to prepare our house for a hurricane or to leave immediately and hopefully miss the traffic.

We decided to leave immediately. We loaded the van in record time and were on I-75 by 10 p.m. It was a good decision. Very light traffic on the interstate -- in fact, I put the cruise on 75 and never had to brake until the Sunshine Skyway bridge toll booth 105 miles later.

We arrived home at midnight waking our daughter that was house sitting for us.

Thursday, was a sweating frustrating day. A trip to the grocery for "essentials" of canned goods, bottled water, etc. And we faced the task of somehow shoe-horning into the garage and Florida room all of the stuff that decorates the yard -- windchimes, birdfeeders, statues, benches, swing, trash cans, potted plants. We repackaged some sand bags we'd had from a storm scare a few years ago to try to keep water from seeping under the rear patio sliding doors. The wife was upset to learn that the plywood we'd had for the patio doors from that long ago scare were used to make the two workbenches in the garage ... " READ MORE


DANNY WELCH ON THE DEMORAT OCCUPATION OF BOSTON: " ... Poor Boston. $60 million on security, and 0 income for tolls. By the second day, the secret started to leak that our charming provincial capital had become somehat of a ghost town. Of course, there were dissenters in the streets: Veterans for Peace and the Boston Social Form held their own conventions, and United for Peace and Justice, Black Tea Society, Food Not Bombs and many other groups made their presence known as usual. Of course, many activists--including many of us who tried in vain to yank the Democratic Party out of its pro-war stupor--were also convinced to stay home, or run the gauntlet of the Protest Pen, a court-sanctioned cage for protesters designed to make the effort of free expression so unpleasant as to suppress it completely. No tear gas, no riots--the perfect "democracy."

Of course, local merchants were also treated to the blessings of the Security State. The culture of fear, originally peddled by the would-be party of free markets, was embraced wholeheartedly by planners in Democratic Boston. Closed roads, rerouted traffic, and a bored and sleepy cop on every empty corner--all take their toll as shopkeepers reported business off as much as a whopping 50%. Signs screaming "Welcome to Boston," and "Welcome Delegates," couldn't compete with the opposite message conveyed by the stranglehold of security ... " READ MORE

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