Yes! It's Friday!

It's almost the weekend! Some funny things to start your Friday. I found the funniest video on CitizenSugar today. Sarah Silverman is doing her part in helping Barack Obama get elected. She's is reaching out on behalf of The Great Schelp, which "aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor. "

Remember Matt Damon speaking out against Sarah Palin? He said, "It's like a really bad Disney movie. The Hockey Mom. Oh, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she's president. She's facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's absurd."




Yup, someone made a movie trailer for it and CitizenSugar has the video posted.

Guilty Pleasure: First Daughter

Has anyone seen the movie First Daughter (2004)? I caught it on FX this past weekend. I have to say I was quite shocked by the "twist" in the plot. I totally didn't see that coming! (Perhaps, my sangria hangover had a part in that.) It sure made me miss Pre-Tom Katie. It's ironic that her problems with the paparazzi in First Daughter mirrors her real life now. She should have stayed with Pacey.

Check this movie out if you're a sucker for romantic comedies!

Nice to meet you Don Draper

The last well written show I've seen on television was Six Feet Under. I was sad to see it come to an end, especially with the gazillion reality shows flooding the airwaves. There are entertaining shows such as Pushing Daisies and Grey's Anatomy, but they don't have the dark characters and well-written story lines Six Feet Under had. Until now...Thanks to Don Draper and the rest of the staff at Sterling-Cooper, I've finally found a show to be obsessed with again. Mad Men takes place in New York in the early sixties and follows the life of an ad man, Don Draper. The show addresses societal issues we still face today, such as racism, sexism and homophobia. There are some who suggest that the show is misogynistic, which I can see if you watch the first season. But I have faith in the writers to flesh out each character and to hopefully see them grow as a person as time goes on. From the looks of this second season, I was right. Mad Men deserves all the critical-acclaim it's gotten and the Emmy it won was very well deserved.

Adding a Little Sugar to Politics

Some say this year's 2008 presidential election will be determined by women. There are a zillion political blogs out there and a number of them are geared toward women. One that I've found is CitizenSugar. Launched this past January, the blog is dedicated to the latest headlines and political news. The blog makes following politics easy and fun for women.

Some regular CitizenSugar features include:

• Check This: The scoop and analysis behind the headlines, a must-read for the beyond well-read.
• Hot Button: A forum that dares to discuss everything controversial.
• Now You Know: Background on the most talked about issues – from No Child Left Behind, to Darfur.
• Ad-rageous: The best (or funniest) campaign videos and ads.
• Yay or Nay: Daily polls on everything from bumper stickers to national policy and everything in between.

This is definitely a blog to check out.

O Non-Partisan Sites, Where Art Thou?

This past Friday night my friends and I were discussing politics over dinner. Many of them vented that they wish they knew of a place to get non-partisan political news. Are there such sites out there? It’s no surprise that I’m a liberal that would much rather get my political news from MSNBC over that horrible cable network that rhymes with Pox Mews. I’m an avid fan of The Huffington Post and I steer clear from sites like TownHall.com. Is it healthy for me to get all my news from liberal leaning media? Maybe I should check out conservative leaning media. Or not. However, I did find two sites that are genuinely “fair and balanced.”

The first is FactCheck.org. They describe themselves as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit, ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” They monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by both John McCain and Barack Obama “in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases.” Reading the findings from this site often brings me down from my liberal high horse. It has me focus on the real issues of the campaign instead of the mudslinging that is being thrown by both parties.

The second site is PolitiFact.com. In the same spirit of FactCheck.org, this site calls out the candidates on their exaggerations and lies. It’s a highly amusing site that offers a feature called the Truth-O-Meter. This feature rates the candidates’ claims and attacks and are given rulings (TRUE, MOSTLY TRUE, HALF TRUE, BARELY TRUE and FALSE). If a statement isn’t accurate and is completely ridiculous, the site rules it PANTS ON FIRE. Another amusing feature is Flip-O-Meter, which you guessed it, determines if a candidate has flip-flopped on an issue.

If you are true independent or just need a dose of un-biased “truth,” these two sites are for you.

I Dream of Arianna

Welcome to my blog. I owe it all to Arianna Huffington. Let me first explain that I’m absolutely obsessed with the 2008 presidential campaign. MSNBC is on at my house 24/7 and I constantly surf the Web to find the latest on the election. As a proud liberal, The Huffington Post is my favorite site. I’m on it multiple times a day. I’m so consumed by politics that last night I had a dream about Arianna Huffington. I won’t bore you with the details of my dream but it did get me to go to YouTube and watch all I can possibly find on Arianna. I have concluded that she’s a genius. Who knew that the idea for starting The Huffington Post stemmed from a viral campaign Arianna used when she ran for governor of California. Check out her Women@Google interview for more interesting tidbits on HuffPo, but I digress. Arianna inspired me. If she was able to get people who didn’t even know what a blog was to start blogging for her site, well why can’t I start my own. And that my folks is how Noticeably to the Left was born.