In the early afternoon I decided to take a walk outside in the frigid Wisconsin country. So I bundled myself up with boots, gloves, coat, scarf, ear protection, and my i-pod and went forth! Well I was doing pretty well; the sun was shining, and the sky was pretty clear. However, there was this increasingly biting wind blowing right into my face, which after a few minutes of walking directly into it, I decided to turn around and walk the other direction. This worked very well until I had decided that I had gone far enough and decided to turn back and return to base. I pulled my scarf up over my face, and just as I did that my i-pod died. The boots I had chosen apparently were too small and a blister of sorts began to form right up against the toes on my right foot. So I with purpose hurried back to the warm interior of the house and relaxed. While I wrote my political drama, I watched Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on blu-ray, and even if you dislike George's approach to the film, I cannot argue with how incredible everything looks and sounds. Granted, I am only a layman when it comes to such cinematic science, but I have seen all of the Star Wars films several times, and I can certainly see the positive differences. I also found a few things here and there that were inserted for the blu-ray edition; one of which was Anakin's mother screaming for him while he was having a nightmare, and other other one that I noticed was how differently the film was cut when Count Dooku escaped. I then looked at some of the blu-ray bonus stuff, and nothing really stuck out, except the menus were done very, very well. Keep in mind that Episode II will come out in 3-D in September of this year and then Episode III in October; should be fun to relive some old memories. Eventually I continued my road through American Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt (they were cousins I believe). My goodness both of those men were quite the power hungry fiends at times that really took Presidential power to new levels and extremes, although I think it was F.D.R. who took it to it's lowest with Japanese internment camps during WWII, and T.R. to it's highest with the incredible amount of land conservation he enacted. Next up is Truman to Obama. One of the things that I am learning as I discover more about past American Presidents is that although a single President can be powerful and influential, he or she is passing while Congress remains. Interestingly enough, the Presidents who are remembered the most: (up to 1945) Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, and F.R. Roosevelt were the ones that really utilized unilateral, centralized executive Presidential, and at times sweeping power completely sidestepping congress. For the record Lincoln and T. Roosevelt were Republicans, while Jackson and F.D. Roosevelt were Democrats, so both parties do it, which is something I find interesting when they both accuse each other of overstepping the bounds of the Presidential office. Today's Washington D.C. politics are no different than they were a hundred years ago, or even further back than that. Those things will never change probably, and that might be for the best ironically. So far, the United States of America has maintained this experiment in democracy for 236 years, so I think we're all doing something right.Emperor trailer (looks like it could be good)
A brief history of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
