False realities...

Quote from Al Gore who is promoting An Inconvenient Truth, the new documentary on global warming:

One can only attempt to create one's own reality for so long. Reality proper has a way of insisting itself upon you.

And speaking of creating your own reality, just saw Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. If you haven't seen it, it's a great look at the whole Enron scandal. I was particularly interested by the connection made between Chairman and CEO Ken Lay's close relationship with George W. and the 2001 California electricity crisis, which largely led to Governor Gray Davis' recall and Schwarzenegger's election. The federal government's refusal to step in and institute price controls when Enron, as was later discovered, was literally robbing the state of $30 billion had a significant impact on Gray's demise.

A verdict is expected this week in the trial of Lay and Jeff Skilling... as someone who sat through the rolling blackouts in 2001, I hope they spend a long time behind bars!

And then this... in Senate confirmation hearings for General Michael Hayden, Bush's nominee to be the new CIA director wouldn't answer Senator Feinstein publicly as to whether waterboarding qualifies as torture.

UPDATE

In light of the current controversy over NSA data mining of domestic phone call records, NPR reports on old ties between the NSA and the phone companies.

I was listening to NPR on Friday and amazed at how many people on the street don't seem to care that the government is monitoring their phone usage, with the predominant sentiment being that only people doing something wrong should worry about it. Can't help but think of Senator Padme Amidala's comment in Revenge of the Sith, "So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause." And this:

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

-- Bertrand de Jouvenel