Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79

Actress Elizabeth Taylor succumbed last night to congestive heart failure and passed away at Cedars Sinai hospital at age 79. She is most famous for such signature movies as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Cleopatra" and "The Taming of the Shrew". She made fifty motion pictures but got accadamy awards only for two, "Butterfield Eight" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf". In the latter movie she had to gain a lot of weight for the part and looked many years older than she actually was. Why she didn't get an Oscar for "Cleopatra" is beyond me. She was married eight times to seven husbands. But she wasn't one of these flakes like celebreties today. She was monogamus in nature. Her first five husbands were Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, and Richard Burton, whom she married twice. She matured early and got her first big role in "National Velvet" in 1945 because the director wanted a young girl with breasts. She played mature roles in the 'fifties when Marylin Monroe was still playing parts of ditzy blondes even though she was years older than Taylor. I liked her in "Suddenly Last Summer" in 1960 where she played the part of a woman who threatened to reveal the truth about certain things so others wanted her to have a pre-frontal lobotomy even though she was not vaguely insane. Of course in her later years she was known for her active role in Aids research. She was a close friend to Michael Jackson. She may be one of the few friends Jackson had who wasn't either a family member or a doctor. She also worked with Elton John on Aids. Actually she was about the same age of James Dean and costarred in "Giant" with him, even though most people think of James Dean as playing roles as teenagers. She was what you might call a woman of real substance in Hollywood. Now all we have left is Kate Roberts on "Days of our Lives". Like Taylor she liked being married to powerful men, and has many of Elizabeth's personality traits. She is one actress who will be sorely missed.

On the subject of Libya, the no fly zone imposed by the UN Security Council appears to be working. After just a few days of bombing RADAR instelations and other key sites, it seems that Kadafy has abandoned his air attack plans. There are none of his plains in the air, and his RADAR doesn't seem to be opperative. US, French, and British planes took part in this campaign, which began only last Friday but now they have gotten to the point where they can expand the No Fly Zone from the rebel stronghold in the east all the way to Tripoli, over six hundred miles away. There are people on the left and the right who are for this campaign, and there are people on the left and the right who are against this campaign. Hal Sparks and Randy Rhodes appear to be for this campaign and Thom Hartman appears to be against it. Many dislike the idea of "Starting a third war against a Moslem country in the middle east". Many on the other side speak of "Mission Creep" where the initial mission of just pressuring Kadafy to behave will be expanded to actively giving aid to the Rebels or even introducing ground troops to fight on Libyan soil. President Obama has already stated that he wants Kadafy gone, even though this mission is more of one of "leveling the playing field" so that the rebels have a decent shot at winning. Some of the people on the other side will complain either that this no fly campaign was adopted prematurely, or else that if we were going to do it we should have done it two weeks ago, when the Rebels were still winning and had not yet lost momentum. I don't see how both assesments can be simotaniously true. It might be as simple as the statement "We are all in favor of the killing of brown people; we just don't want a brown person doing it".

In terms of the Republican field of Presidential candidates, as far as I know, not one of them has openly declared for the Presidency. There is something wrong with almost every one. Ron Paul, who is led consistently in all the republican polls, is too libertarian, with a stance on foreign wars arguably "to the left of the President" as Hal Sparks says. Tim Pollente of Minnisota is "too green". In this case not inexperiance, but rather that he is too ecology minded and concerned about the environment. Newt Gingrinch has all this moral baggage from two failed marriage that might be an impediment to support from the Christian Right. Haley Barber is regarded as "coming off as racially insensive". I don't know anything about this Huntsman fellow, but somebody said he used to work for Obama. Then we have the governor of New Jersey. I haven't come up with anything wrong with him, yet. Mitt Romney is suspect because he's a Mormon and the Christian Right will never go for him. He's also vulnerable for being "too liberal" both on the Health Care issue, but also because John Mc Cain nailed him in a republican debate on the timetable withdrawal issue from the Iraq theater. That leaves Mike Huckibee, who off hand seems the nuttiest of the lot, and with some of the statements he's made lately, I think his own people would write him off as unelectable. I don't think Michelle Bachman really wants the job. Some have said that this could be the first "brokered national convention" since 1952 in this country. That might just worth be watching for its own sake. Clearly there are so many candidates and they all appear to be evenly matched, with no front runners, that the notion of having a candidate clearly leading the pack by next March appears very unlikely.

I would like to talk about former president Jimmy Carter a little. Hal Sparks was playing that July 1979 tape of Jimmy Carter talking about our impending energy crisis. He said that we had to phase out foreign oil now and adopt things like Solar power because for the rest of the century the energy crisis will only get worse. Some may say his observations were "premature". He was just a man who was ahead of his time. I didn't vote for him - - either time, and yet I have come to believe that Carter was one of our most moral, under-rated Presidents. Ted Kennedy actively undermined the President both on Health Care, and also on dealing with Moscow. Carter wanted to boycott the Moscow Olympics whereas according to the Heritage Foundation, Kennedy wanted to get really cozy with Brezhnev, and perhaps adopt some of Moscow's socialist policies here. Of course we hit "peak oil" in this country back around 1970. There was a chart on this on the internet. In early March of 1972 I wrote a fictional piece going into the future exactly two years to March of 1974 where I predicted we would have an energy crisis. Back in March of 1972 one thing that people were noticing was that stations were no longer having all these gas price wars like they used to. I picked up on this. Also ion the same writing I predicted my brother's divorce, who was not even married at the time. But had I actually been convinced to an intellectual certainty that the Divorce was coming- - - I would have actively done everything in my power to avert and prevent it. For a whole host of reasons. Jimmy Carter is a highly moral conscientious man. I think his book on Palestinian relations with Israel needs to be read by everybody. It's a real eye opener. Unfortunately Jimmy Carter remains the one living democratic president whom everyone on the right agrees was a bad president. Even Dr. Levy thinks Clinton was a good President. But everyone hates Jimmy Carter. You have to ask yourself- - - Why?