Brian De Palma, director of “The Untouchables,” “Carrie,” “Scarface,” and “Mission: Impossible,” has a new film coming out: “Redacted.” Quote:

["Redacted is"] about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family. [...]Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across. [...]

“The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war,” [De Palma] said.

Should be interesting to see the likely media frenzy around this film, especially from those at Fox News, if they even talk about it.

Found this story over at ThinkProgress: Fox News blasted Katie Couric for traveling to Iraq to report on the war because she’s a single mother and is thinking about her career more than her children.

Ok, time out. Katie Couric is a journalist. Iraq is where the story is. So, she’s going there to do her job. The people at Fox News and in the Bush Administration should take note and see how serious people actually do their jobs, because these two groups seem to forget they have a job to do.

Fox News is one of the biggest culprits of “not covering Iraq with the intensity it should.” As a recent Project for Excellence in Journalism study showed, the network consistently covers the war in Iraq roughly half as much as its rivals.Fox has attacked journalists for covering Iraq too much. In February, John Gibson accused CNN’s Anderson Cooper of “news-guy snobbery” for his complaints that the death of Anna Nicole Smith was saturating the news when “there’s a war on.” Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has claimed “CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting” often on Iraq.

Just out of curiosity, how many single mothers are in the military fighting in Iraq in harm’s way? Why isn’t anyone making a big deal about these brave individuals? Is it because they’re in the military and doing a “patriotic job” while Couric is in the press and is getting in the way of this administration? Just a thought.

Today is Karl Rove’s last day at the White House. Too bad he’s not taking his friends with him. I would like to take this time to thank him for his patriotic service to this country, largely creating the 51% – 49% bitter divisiveness we’ve seen over the last several years. Thanks, buddy, for all your hard work.

(Photo: Wikipedia Commons)

In 1979 and 2002, Phoenix had a record 28 days of 110° or more. Well as of yesterday, this year we’ve had 30!

Reminds me of a quote from “Family Guy”:

The gap between how much CEOs of companies receive in compensation versus how much everyone else receives continues to grow to alarming and outright ridiculous proportions.

United for a Fair Economy has published their annual report entitled “Executive Excess 2007.” Quote:

Last year, CEOs of major U.S. companies collected as much money from one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year. These CEOs averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, according to an Associated Press survey of 386 Fortune 500 companies, the equivalent of over 364 times the pay of an average American worker.

I realize CEOs have very important and often tough jobs, but this is outrageous. Same thing with professional athletes. Why anyone deserves or needs this super exaggerated compensation is utterly beyond me.

This is especially true when the CEO receiving this gross compensation is head of a company that’s tanking. Take Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally, for example. For only FOUR MONTHS work, he received a grand total of $28 million. $28 MILLION! Quote:

Struggling Ford Motor Co., which posted a record $12.7 billion net loss in 2006, gave its new CEO Alan Mulally $28 million for four months on the job. [...]

The details of the compensation packages and costs come as Ford moves ahead with plans to close plants and cut more than 30,000 hourly positions from the company in an effort to stem losses.

“Stem losses”? How about lose the CEO? There’s a start.

How Edison are you? Wow. No more words necessary.

(Nod: Cass)

It’s hot. That’s what life is here in the summer. But there’s always A/C and swimming pools to keep cool.

Not too much to report thus far. I’ve been trying to get settled and organized with the things I brought in the car. Early next week, likely Monday, the moving truck is supposed to come with the rest of my things, so I’ll be doing plenty of unpacking and organizing next week.

We’ve had a couple of nasty storms this week. Being out in the desert, you assume it doesn’t rain too much. Well that’s true—it doesn’t rain, it monsoons. You see driving on some streets that have dips in them not to enter when flooded. Any normal day the signs seem like a joke, but they really aren’t a joke. The rain comes down so hard and so fast it has no place to go but in the streets and low-lying areas.

One thing about the area, there’s no shortage of things to take pictures of!

The day started off with the car being repaired:

The fuel pump was replaced, but the great thing about it was that it was free. We walked out of the dealership with a bill for zero dollars and zero cents. Apparently when they inputted the part into the computer to see if they had the part and to see how much it cost, some kind of flag came up indicating the part would be replaced at no cost to us (it was like a recall, but not actually a recall). The mechanic said otherwise, we would have been looking at an $800 bill. So if any good was to come of our stop-over in New Mexico, this was it. Oh, and the other good thing was the super friendly and personable staff at the dealership. Incredibly nice people that definitely made the ordeal smoother.

Saw this sign traveling through New Mexico—anyone know how to pronounce this town?

In New Mexico, all the highway construction or repair projects had signs posted informing the public of the contractor and the cost of the project.

At the divide:

The final state of our journey, and apparently you can’t park here:

Just off the highway was the Petrified Forest National Park, so we took a three-hour detour and did some sightseeing since we had time to.

The Painted Desert:

Etchings from past inhabitants of the area:

“The Teepees” rock formations:

Petrified wood — although it looks like regular wood, the wood has turned into stone. The trees lived some 225 million years ago:

We hiked a trail down into some rock formations and forest remnants. We were the only people down in the area, which was pretty far from the road. The setting was amazing—not only was the scenery awesome to look at, but there was absolutely no sound anywhere. Dead silence. The only sounds we heard were the ones we were making. Incredibly peaceful and serene.

In this particular sample, the rock has crystalized:

Local wildlife:

Back on the road, we saw this dog enjoying the ride:

Northern Arizona has a forest-like climate, much different than the desert Phoenix area:

Almost there:

The saguaro cacti are finally in view:

I almost missed this sign coming in on the highway, but you get the idea:

Overall, the drive was very good. Definitely not as boring as I thought it was going to be, probably because I’ve never been through any of the places we drove through. I’m glad we arrived safely, if only a little late, but that allowed us time to spend at the national park.

Now it’s time to settle into my new home.

It’s about 10 till midnight here. We arrived in Phoenix earlier, but I’m too pooped to post anything big right now. I’ll have the final day’s update tomorrow.

It’s 6:10 in the AM here in New Mexico. We’re going to grab some breakfast at the hotel and take the car to be repaired. The repair is supposed to take a couple hours, so we’ll be very late getting on the road. Hopefully we make it to Phoenix today!

Well day number 2 has come and gone for us. We had hoped to be in Phoenix tonight, but our plans changed. Our driving was going too smoothly thus far. More on this later.

Leaving Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh-klahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain, we were treated to a gorgeous sunrise. I thought it would be a good idea to both be driving and taking pictures at the same time:

The second state of the day, the “proud home” of the president:

I’ve never seen this before—a speed limit for the day time and one for the night time:

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and so are the steaks. Finish this 6-pound bad boy in an hour and it’s free:

The third, and unfortunately final, state of the day:

Traveling through:

So, we were traveling through New Mexico, almost to Albuquerque and having traveled about eight hours on the day (at this point it’s about noon). As we were going up a hill, the car started jerking slightly. A little more and I asked my dad what that was. He didn’t know. I didn’t know. Then the car started jerking very badly. Going up another hill, the car lost all forward power and we came to a halt. He thought we might have filled up with some bad fuel, so he put some fuel additive in the fuel tank. We started back up and continued on for a few more miles. Then the jerking returned, this time with the “check engine” light illuminated. Luckily, we were just coming up to a rest area, so we crawled off the highway to the rest area.

We called AAA, told them our troubles, so they dispatched a tow truck, saying the truck would be there within an hour. Well, the truck didn’t come until two-and-a-half hours later. In the mean time, I took some more pictures:

Finally the truck arrived, and of course at this time a thunderstorm rolled through:

We were towed to a Ford dealership about a half-hour down the road. From the description of what went wrong, the tow truck driver and the mechanics at the dealership all said the fuel pump needed replaced. The heat in conjunction with pushing the car hard driving can cause the fuel pump to fail and cause it not to feed the car any fuel, hence the chugging and forward-power failing. Luckily, they have a part in stock, but they can’t work on the car until tomorrow morning. So now we have nothing to do and no place to go.

The mechanics told us we could still drive the car, but just not too far, so we found a hotel and that’s where we are now, about 50 miles outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.

While we wanted to be in Phoenix tonight, we’re stuck in New Mexico, but at least we’ll get a good night’s rest tonight! Here’s to an uneventful driving day tomorrow.

Well here I am at the end of travel day #1. It was a long, long day driving as we ended up driving a little over 1,000 miles, or about half-way. Here are some highlights:

Leaving Ohio:

State #3—notice the silhouette of Abe?

Really big cross:

Show-Me State:

Gateway Arch:

Trying to be creative while in a car and passing things at 60 mph:

These billboards were everywhere:

And so were these (with some in close proximity to those above!):

Driving through Missouri:

Final state of the day:

So all this traveling has put us in Oklahoma City for the night. Updated travel map:

Well it’s about 4:30… just about ready to go. Car’s all packed… just have to add the computer!

In a few short hours, I will begin the second leg of my trip from Rochester, NY, to Phoenix, AZ. This past week I’ve been in Ohio after moving from Rochester. The trip is supposed to take about 31 hours driving to Phoenix from Ohio, but we’ll see how long it actually takes.

Here’s the route below. The red is territory covered, the blue is territory remaining:

I hope to have internet access along the way so I can blog my way to Phoenix. If not, I shall return a Phoenician.

Congress on Sunday rolled-over yet again and gave the president exactly what he wanted, giving the president power to spy on Americans. So much for the Democratic promises to change things and stand up to the president when they took power in Congress. Inexcusable.