Merry Christmas!

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Talking Past Each Other" by Right Planet, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Ben Stein's post "God Help Us" over at The American Spectator.  Congrats!

My review of Brave

I finally got a chance to see Brave on DVD, and I have to say it was one of the best Pixar movies I've ever seen...  not just in terms of the animation, which was of course spectacular, but all the attention put into getting the story and characters just right.  And what a cast of voice actors... you might recognize a few of them, but even the ones you don't are perfectly cast.  It was a well-crafted movie from top to bottom... I'd put it right up there with some of my other favorites like Up and The Incredibles.

Brave is about Merida, a very headstrong princess in ancient Scotland... her mother is constantly coaching her on how to act like a proper princess, but Merida would much rather be riding her horse through the forest practicing shots with her bow and arrows.  Her parents try to arrange for her to marry one of three potential suitors from rival clans, but Merida wants none of this.  After fighting with her mother about it, Merida races off into the forest and finds a witch who she convinces to do a spell for her, a spell that will change her fate... it does change her fate, but not in the way she expects, and she spends the rest of the movie trying to undo the awful curse that she inadvertently puts on her mother.

Billy Connolly provides the voice for Merida's father, King Fergus... Connolly's silliness comes through at times, but the movie hardly makes her father out to be a buffoon as so many movies unfortunately do with fathers these days.  You know right from the opening scene what kind of man Fergus is when he bravely defends his family from the demon bear Mor'du, losing one of his legs to the bear in the process.  And the conflict between Merida and her mother is not overblown to the point of making her mother (brilliantly voiced by Emma Thompson) into a one-dimensional character... you can see both sides of it.

I also enjoyed watching the movie again with commentary from the writers and directors... it was very interesting to hear them talking about all the various story ideas they tried out before settling on the scenes that made it into the final version of the movie.  I found myself really hoping these people get together again to work on something else very soon.

There was a short film included on the DVD that explained the backstory of how Mor'du became Mor'du, but all that information is in the movie anyway, so it seemed a bit unnecessary... but there was another short film included called La Luna, which was utterly adorable.  La Luna has nothing at all to do with Brave, but it's still worth watching if you get a chance to see it.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Boehner and Cantor’s ‘War on Conservatives’ Causes Exodus of Conservatives from the GOP" by VA Right, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Arsen Ostrovsky's post "Rejection and terror: Same old Palestinian choices" over at The Commentator.  Congrats!

The End Is Nigh!

Lots of people are freaking out because December 21, 2012 is supposedly the date that corresponds to the end of the Mayan calendar... but if you take leap years into account the world should have already ended several months ago, so I don't really expect the world to end tomorrow.

That's not to say I'm optimistic, though... after all, Obama will still be president tomorrow, the media will still be full of lying assholes, and most of the voting public will still be stupid and/or crazy.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "‘Palestine’ – A Celebration At The Funeral" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "Waiting for the GOP’s Populist Turn" over at Defining Ideas.   Congrats!

And the band played on...

I've had this song stuck in my head all day for some reason:

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "The Next Islamist Domino – Jordan" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "War is the Answer" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

Where have the 2004 voters gone?

I don't remember any Republican in 2004 telling me that it would be the end of America if John Kerry won the election.  2012 was another story... it seemed like I was being told every single day that it was the most important election in our nation's history.  Yet Mitt Romney still fell short of Bush's vote tally by about two million votes, despite the stakes being much higher this time than they were back in 2004.  Where the heck did all those Republican voters go?  How on earth does someone show up to vote against John Kerry but stays home when a president with a record worse than Jimmy Carter's is asking for a mulligan?

Republicans already have enough of an uphill battle winning over all the stupid and/or crazy voters out there... why make it any harder?  If you watched Romney wiping the floor with Obama in that first debate and came out of it thinking there was no difference between those two men, then you need to get your head examined (preferably by someone other than Dr. Ron Paul).

Conservatives need to stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, or we'll be out of power for the next 40 years.  I'm not saying we should nominate nothing but squishy moderates, I'm just saying we shouldn't be so quick to tar everyone with the RINO brush.  We can't let ourselves get as hysterical as some of the freaks on the other side, and then let that hysteria turn into apathy if we don't get our way on everything... we can't afford apathy in the face of political zealots who are quite happy to destroy the country so long as the GOP gets blamed for it.

Update:  Hmmm... Ramesh Ponnuru has an interesting take on the so-called "purge of conservatives" from committees in the House that has so many people calling for John Boehner's head.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Freedom of Choice: Why Liberals Should Exercise Their Freedom to Pay Higher Taxes" by The Razor, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Walter Russell Mead's post "America, Israel, Gaza, the World" over at The American Interest.   Congrats!

Skyfail?

The guys at Red Letter Media have a review of Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie... it sounds like they both liked it quite a bit, but you have to get through about ten minutes of them goofing around before you get to the real review:

Quantum of Solace was a bit weak, but Daniel Craig is definitely one of the better Bonds... I hope his version of Bond will be around for a while.  His IMDB page already credits him with roles in two more yet-to-be-named Bond movies, so hopefully we can expect at least two more with Craig as Bond before they try to pull a switcheroo on us.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Taking DC By Strategy – A Battle Plan" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "Anatomies of Electoral Madness" over at VDH's Private Papers.  Congrats!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Traditions at my house are a bit different:

It's far better to eat Thanksgiving dinner than it is to be Thanksgiving dinner, I always say.  Here's to hoping that your Thanksgiving turned out better than this poor guy's did.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "A foreign policy/war powers law establishes that the unnecessary deaths in Benghazi were Obama’s responsibility" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Michelle Malkin's post "Obama gets his “revenge,” but conservatives must stand tall" over at her eponymous blog.  Congrats!

Our long national nightmare is NOT over

So... Obama somehow managed to win a second term, despite having a record that should have gotten him tossed out on his ear.  What happened here?  I mostly agree with Ace's list of things that hurt Romney, but what's going on beneath all that?  The root problem, as I see it, is that we have far too many voters in this country who simply can't be reasoned with.

Many people on the left are Kool-Aid drinkers.  They are firmly decided yet decidedly misinformed, the type of people who refuse to even speak to anyone that watches Fox News.  They tend to think of themselves as highly-informed voters, but they deliberately seek out only the most rabidly left-wing media outlets and completely shun all dissenting opinions.  If they even acknowledge that there is another side, it is only to present a cartoonish caricature of their political opponents... they don't have any interest in knowing what anyone on the right really thinks about anything.

For some voters, their problem is not so much willful ignorance as it is an overreliance on emotional thinking.  They like to think of themselves as having an open mind, but their minds are so open that their brains have fallen out.  They don't necessarily shun opposing views, but it can still be very difficult to reach such people... they don't process information in the same way that logical people do.  You can hit them over the head with cold hard facts all day long and not even make a dent, because they base their votes more on how they feel than anything else... if the facts hurt their feelings, you aren't going to get very far with them.  The only chance you have to win over people like this is with appeals to emotion... and the very next day the Democrats would probably just win them right back again by appealing to class envy, hurling false charges of racism or homophobia, stoking hatred of Christians or Jews, playing on imaginary fears of wars on lady parts, or arranging a well-timed photo op.

And then there are those who can't really be bothered to think at all.  They are the product of a failed school system that doesn't teach kids how to think critically.  They know all sorts of things, but they don't know how they know them.  They might not seek out overtly political stuff, but most "straight" media coverage they get from our corrupt media is just a watered-down version of the delusional crap they would get from MSNBC...  and even when they try their best to avoid that sort of stuff, it still finds them anyway in dribs and drabs thanks to all the left-wing talking points that permeate pop culture.  They might call themselves apolitical, but they are Democrats by default.  Some of these people can be converted, but they have to be mugged by reality first.  That being said, if seeing both 9/11/2001 and 9/11/2012, and suffering through the worst economic recovery in our nation's history aren't enough to wake them up, then I don't know what will.

These are all long-term cultural problems we face here, they didn't just suddenly crop up on us overnight.  And it seems to get a little bit worse every single year.  I still remember my first run-in with this sort of thing... it was something that happened to me way back in grade school, but it stuck with me.

Ronald Reagan was running against Walter Mondale, and my fifth-grade teacher polled the class on who we would vote for... she gave us some ballots to fill out, but first she gave us a twenty minute lecture on the awfulness of Reagan and the wonderfulness of Mondale.  I didn't know very much about politics at the time, but I was vaguely aware that my father was a Reagan voter, and I knew what my teacher was doing was very wrong.  This was a push poll... I didn't know the proper term for it at the time, but I could see it for what it was and it made me very angry.  As it turned out, I was the only kid in the whole class who didn't vote for Mondale.  You'd think the teacher would be satisfied with how successful her push poll was, but no... she spent the rest of our time in class trying to track down and expose the identity of the sole Reagan voter.  I stayed quiet, hoping she would just give up and get back to doing her job, but she didn't stop until she got every kid in class but me to fess up to who they voted for... she finally found me by the process of elimination.  Then she got in my face and demanded to know why I voted for Reagan... so I got in her her face instead and called her every name I could think of, chasing her right out of her own classroom.  I hated her guts from that day forward, and I never blindly took the word of any teacher again... any respect they got from me they had to earn.

That was 1984.  I can only imagine how insufferable the teachers in that school are today, now that we're living in the Age of Obama.  We can argue about Romney's strategery all we want, but what are we going to do about all these other problems?  This isn't just about the next election.  I fear this will take generations to fix, assuming we haven't already reached some sort of tipping point.

Update:  Of course, folks on the right can be just as hard to reason with sometimes.  Apparently some people were so butthurt about how the primaries turned out that they stopped identifying themselves as Republicans, which was part of where all the confusion about the polls came from.  Also, by the sounds of it, Project ORCA turned out to be nothing short of a GOTV fiasco.  Oh well.  Maybe next time we'll somehow manage to get our act together, if the country lasts that long.

Update:  Ugh... I'm really amazed that I'm still arguing with brainwashed Dems who are 100% certain that Mitt Romney's position on abortion is identical to Todd Akin's, while also having to take crap from people on the right who see no difference between Romney and Obama.  It's almost enough to make me want to just say screw it and start picketing somewhere with some "Obama=Akin" signs.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Obama Agonistes: The Fiction Cracks On Benghazi" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Andrew McCarthy's post "The Real Foreign Policy Failure" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

666 Park Avenue

I'm a big fan of Terry O'Quinn, so I thought maybe 666 Park Avenue would be worth checking out... I've seen the first 5 episodes so far, and I'm not too impressed.  Terry O'Quinn is great, but his character seems poorly written to me... he's an all-powerful Devil one minute, then he's just as scared and confused as everyone else is the next.  And several other characters seem to have a serious case of the stupids, which can be really annoying.

The whole show is a bit all over the place, really.... so many different things are going on at once, but hardly anything ever gets resolved in any meaningful or satisfying way in any single episode.  It's a bit like watching a fantasy version of the X-Files, but one that's way too heavy on the "mytharc" stuff and way too light on the standalone monster episodes.  And there's a lot of random weird shit happening that doesn't seem very connected to anything, such as the evil suitcase that contains the smoke monster from Lost, or something.  This makes the pace of the show feel very, very slow... it takes about three episodes to give you one episode worth of meaningful stuff actually happening.

Also, a recurring theme of the show seems to be that money is the root of all evil... I think that would really start to grate on my nerves after a while, but your miles may vary.

Update: Well, the powers that be over at ABC have decided to pull the plug on the show, so I guess I can stop whining about it now.  I just hope Terry O'Quinn ends up in something better next time... his talents seemed a bit wasted on this, in my opinion.

A few predictions for election night

I predict Romney will win with at least 53% of the popular vote.  What that will mean in terms of electoral votes, I have no idea... but I will say that I think he'll win at least one state Bush failed to win in the 2004 election.  And I predict meltdowns galore on MSNBC, culminating in at least one of their hosts openly accusing Romney of stealing the election somehow.

Update:  Well, I guess zero out of three ain't too bad, huh?

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Heart Of Darkness – The Real Benghazi Coverup" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Bing West's post "First, Aid the Living" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

Only five days left until Election Day...

Pay no attention to worthless polls based on 2008 turnout levels.  Don't let Obama distract you with his stupid, petty nonsense.  We can do this.  Get your game faces on:

(Found via Moe Lane.)

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "False Benghazi Narrative Exposed, Bizarre Finger Pointing, a Leaderless White House" by The Independent Sentinel, and the winning non-council entry for the week was a video of Lara Logan's speech "We're Being Lied To" over at YouTube.  Congrats!

Thoughts on the final debate

I was hoping that Obama would get clobbered on Benghazi in the foreign policy debate, but that didn't happen.  Romney's strategy seemed to be to just make himself look like a plausible commander-in-chief. I thought he succeeded in doing that.  Not only was he plausible, I thought he looked much more presidential than our current commander-in-chief.  Obama was behaving more like an internet troll than a sitting president.  If Obama's only goal was to show independent voters what a petty little creep he is, then I'd say it worked beautifully.

This was supposedly Obama's best moment:

All I got out of Obama's condescending answer was that he likes to substitute snark for substance.  At no point did Obama attempt to explain why the Navy was wrong to ask for the 350 ships that Romney was talking about.  Also, I doubt Obama's snark will play very well in Virginia.

I thought Romney's best moment came when he was talking about Obama's Apology Tour:

Obama didn't really have an answer for that, other than to lie and try to hide behind the corrupt media's skirt.  And he won't have an answer for all the coverage Benghazi gets over the next two weeks, either.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "The girl’s guide to visiting the USS Makin Island" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Findalis' post "Muslim Persecution of Christians: August, 2012" over at Monkey in the Middle.  Congrats!

Romney's best town hall debate moment

Tuesday's town hall debate was mostly a wash.  Romney won on substance, but Obama won on style.  And by style I mean interrupting constantly and telling outrageous lies in that stupid voice that sounds like he's trying to do an impression of Fred Armisen's Obama impression.  

This was Romney's best moment:

Obama got a lot of shots in, but he didn't have any single moment in the entire debate that even came close to being as effective as that moment of Romney's.  Romney completely laid waste to Obama's pathetic record and all Obama could do was just sit there and take it.  What was supposedly Obama's best moment came during an answer to a question about Benghazi... but after the debate was over even Obama had to concede to the questioner that Romney's point was correct.  I have a feeling this point will be revisited in the next debate, which will focus on foreign policy issues.  Hopefully by then Romney will also have a better response ready for Obama's faux outrage.  And in the meantime the rest of us will be talking about Benghazi:

The Man Who Laughs

I really don't think Joe Biden's maniacal laughter during the VP debate did Obama any favors:

It's hard to take someone seriously when he's acting like such a clown during a serious discussion about Iran's attempts to get nuclear weapons.  Lots of people keep making comparisons to Jack Nicholson's portrayal of The Joker... it actually made me think more of Nicholson's performance in The Pledge, the scene where he is sitting there all looking disheveled and muttering crazy thoughts to himself.  But speaking of The Joker, did you know that a film based on Victor Hugo's novel The Man Who Laughs was the original inspiration for The Joker?

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Infiltration, Treason, Jihad – Welcome to The Project" by The Noisy Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Ace's post "The Normative Power of Law and the Emotional Power of Drama" over at Ace of Spades HQ.  Congrats!

Predictions for tonight's VP debate

You should expect several obvious Obama campaign plants among the "undecideds" asking questions at the town hall tonight... they will try to put Ryan on the spot with stupid gotcha questions being asked by victims trying to play the absolute moral authority card.  At least one of these gotcha questions will end up backfiring on the Obama campaign in a major way, but they will be too dumb to realize it before it's too late.

Despite an entire week of debate prep, Joe Biden will still be Joe Biden.  He will say a lot of very dumb things but he will say them all with the utmost confidence. and the media will do their best to declare him the winner no matter how badly he does.  Biden will loudly blurt out some idiotic lie about Republicans, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation... and then he'll put a big shit-eating grin on his face afterward.  Most of the media will call this absurd lie the best line of the night and the moment that Biden won the debate.  A few of the smarter lefty media folks won't even bother trying to defend Biden's awfulness, they'll just try to downplay the overall importance of the VP debate.

Paul Ryan will do great.  He'll make a lot of really great points, and back up what he's saying with a lot of facts and figures.  The media will do its best to portray Ryan's proficiency with math and familiarity with the budget as some sort of gaffe... they will try to say his reliance on numbers makes him seem cold and without empathy, or some such nonsense.  They will also try to find some terrible problem with Ryan's body language, even if there is nothing to find.

Update: Doh!  The VP debate wasn't the town hall debate, so you can scratch my first prediction... though I think that prediction will still hold true of the next debate between Obama and Romney.

Update: Lots of folks on the left want to think Biden won the debate.  I think it's very telling that so many Democrats seem to think being a good debater means loudly interrupting and acting like a clown.  He may have won the hearts of Democrats with his buffoonery, but I don't think he did himself any favors with independents.  I was right about Biden throwing up his hands and blurting out a stupid lie about Republicans... he did that when he tried to put 100% of the blame for the "Great Recession" on the GOP, despite the fact that Democrats controlled both houses of Congress when it happened.  I'm sure most Democrats loved hearing that sort of garbage, but I have yet to find one who's willing to call it the best line of the night.

Update: I was right about them trying to call Ryan cold.  WaPo's Richard Cohen calls Ryan "cold", "plastic" and "too actuarial"... but Biden was somehow both "real" and a "hack with heart", whatever the hell that means.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Shoot The Messenger – US State Dept Blasts CNN For Revealing Its Misrepresentations On Libya Attack" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Mark Steyn's post "Bowing To The Mob" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

Romney 1 - Obama 0

I've seen Mitt Romney debate before, so I knew what to expect... but based on Barack Obama's pathetic performance in last night's presidential debate, he must have been expecting to debate John McCain all over again.  He was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Obama's never really been challenged by anyone his whole life.  Now he had to suffer through one actual debate and he completely fell apart.  I can't wait to see how badly he does in the next one.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Islam and Not Islam: Fantasy Vs. Reality In The West" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was DiploMad's post "We Are Not at War... Just Under Attack" over at The DiploMad 2.0.  Congrats!

BREAKING: Obama voters are dumb

It's amazing how strongly people can feel about things they aren't even really trying to understand:

And then there's this bold fresh piece of humanity:

Good lord... yes, be sure to vote because we needs to keep Obama in president.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning entry for the week was "The Mosaic Of War" by The Noisy Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Michelle Malkin's post "Chicago thuggery personified: Meet Chicago Teachers’ Union president Karen Lewis" over at her eponymous blog.  Congrats!

Creepiest campaign manager ever...

Here is Barack Obama's super-genius campaign manager posing in the creepiest campaign photo that I've ever seen in my entire life:

What the hell was he/she/it thinking?  Yeah, tell me again how weird and out of touch you think Mitt Romney is.  Meanwhile, Obama's campaign manager is so creepy looking that anyone who sees him immediately has to reach for the brain bleach afterwards... he looks like he should be the President of NAMBLA or something, and yet he really thought it would help the Obama campaign to put this picture of himself out there.  Self-awareness is definitely not his strong suit.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "The Dilemma Of Jewish Democrats And This Year’s Anti-Israel Party Platform" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "The Terrifying New Normal" over at Works and Days.  Congrats!

How Obama chose to spend 9/11

No, this isn't some stupid Obama impersonator playing a joke, this actually happened today:

 

What the hell?  This is the only interview he gave today, and they don't even mention that it's the anniversary of 9/11.  Yeah, tell us again how weird you think Mitt Romney is, Mr. President.

And if that's not enough, there's the administration's utterly pathetic response to the events that took place in Cairo and Benghazi today... not to mention the pointed snub of Benjamin Netanyahu.  Sadly, John Bolton's description of Obama as the first post-American president becomes more and more apt with each passing day.

Last Ounce of Courage

I keep seeing ads for the movie Last Ounce of Courage showing on FNC over and over again, but the ads don't really tell me much of anything.  At first I thought maybe it was some Truther nonsense or something, so I looked it up and found this interview on the movie's website:

And even now I'm still not sure what it's about.  A guy's son dies so then he gets himself arrested for trying to put a cross up on a building?  Huh?  But it does come with the Chuck Norris seal of approval, so there's that.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Democrat gaffes, nastiness, and sheer ignorance – just a few highlights from the Democrat side of the aisle" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was P.J. O'Rourke's post "Of Thee I Sigh: Baby Boomers Bust" over at World Affairs.  Congrats!

No one could have?

In his DNC speech the other night, Bill Clinton tried to excuse Obama's failure by claiming that no one could have fixed this economy in only four years.  Hmmm... "Nobody Could" sure does seem like a strange reelection slogan for a guy who got into office with "Yes We Can", doesn't it?

If no one could have fixed it, then why the hell did Obama promise us that he could?  He even gave us this handy chart:

Obama's party controlled both houses of Congress from 2006 to 2010.  Once Obama came into office, he got his precious $800+ billion stimulus bill passed right away.  He got everything he wanted.  It didn't work.  Can we please have a president who doesn't hate Capitalism now?

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Is Israel Preparing A Fall Strike Against Iran?" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Andrew McCarthy's post "Egypt’s Military and the Arab Spring" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

Paul Ryan's RNC speech

Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention was pretty amazing... here's a snippet:

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Other than all that, what has Paul Ryan ever done for us?" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "The Most Divisive Campaign in American History" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

I can't argue with that logic...

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "Tom Friedman Beclowns Himself On Israel – Again" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor David Hanson's post "California: The Road Warrior Is Here" over at Works and Days.  Congrats!

Will Obama dump Joe Biden?

It's always amazed me how many people try to claim they voted for Obama because they thought Sarah Palin was too dumb to be president.  Really?  Joe Biden is a functional retard, and Obama can't be very bright himself if he thought Biden would be anything other than a tremendous embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Palin was the only person on either ticket in 2008 who had any executive experience at all, and she proved she could hold her own against Biden in a debate.  I relish the thought of Biden having to face off against Paul Ryan... we can surely expect Ryan to run circles around Biden, unless Obama dumps Biden to put someone else on the ticket.  But I really doubt that Obama is smart enough to do that or humble enough to admit it was a mistake to ever pick Biden in the first place.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "The Obama Media And The Unbelievably Negative Coverage Of Mitt Romney's Trip" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "Invaders From Outer Space" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

Obama lied, pensions died!

Ace brought the flaming skull out for this one.

Remember when the Obama administration tried to blame the PBGC for screwing non-union Delphi workers out of their pensions?  As it turns out, not so much... the PBGC wasn't even allowed to attend the meeting where this decision was made.  Aside from the unseemliness of Obama looking out for his union backers while making sure everyone else gets shafted, we also have the issue of whether or not Timothy Geithner's exclusion of PBGC was a violation of the law... the PBGC is supposed to be making these decisions, not merely acting as the scapegoat for decisions made at the Department of the Treasury.

By the way, did any of those non-union Delphi employees happen to have wives who later died of cancer?  I'm asking for a friend.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning entry for the week was "The Worst Thing You Can Do To An Egyptian" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was David Burge's post "You Didn’t Build That" over at Iowahawk.  Congrats!

Milton Friedman vs Phil Donahue on "greed"

Milton Friedman would be 100 years old today if he were still alive... here's one of his finer moments, taken from an interview he did many years ago with Phil Donahue:

Friedman slices Donahue's argument to pieces while Donahue can only just sit there and stammer.  No wonder the left still hates Friedman so much.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Mirra Eisenshtadt: the woman who leaked a Soviet state secret" by Simply Jews, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "The United States of Guilt" over at Sultan Knish.   Congrats!

The Dark Knight Rises, WBC hits new low

James Holmes is a fucking lunatic.  He murdered 12 people and injured many more, all because they wanted to see the latest Batman movie... and he took the trouble to boobytrap his apartment with explosives in the hopes that he could also kill some of the police.  He's so out of his mind he thinks that the Joker's hair is supposed to be red, not green.  (It's easy to see how someone as crazy as him might be involved with OWS, but let's not go spreading around photoshops and bad info... all that does is make conservatives look bad.)

He's so batshit insane that he has the Westboro Baptist Church solidly in his corner... that's pretty bad.  They say he was sent by God to shoot all those people, so they plan to protest at all the victims' funerals.  Wow, I never knew that God hated Batman so much.

I'm really glad that the "Batman Killer" moniker doesn't seem to be catching on.  Apart from the horrendous movies that Joel Schumacher made, I've always been a huge fan of all things Batman... I've especially enjoyed the first two movies in this rebooted Batman trilogy, and I really look forward to seeing the third.  Red Letter Media gave a pretty positive review of The Dark Knight Rises:

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Let’s do the time warp again — Progressives keep urging those failed economic policies" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "Is the Country Unraveling?" over at Private Papers.  Congrats!

Obama's poll numbers are in the toilet

The Obama campaign has thrown everything at Mitt Romney but the kitchen sink.  For weeks on end we've heard nothing but constant bitching and moaning about Swiss bank accounts and Romney's time at Bain Capital.  Romney has even been called a felon by these lunatics.  (Naturally, the people promoting insane conspiracy theories about Romney's time at Bain seem to have no problem whatsoever with Obama taking campaign donations from Bain.)

And what does Obama have to show for this relentless campaign of dishonest attacks?  The latest CBS/NYT poll shows Romney in the lead for the first time... it's only a one point lead, but the internals of the poll look terrible for Obama.  And the latest Rasmussen poll has uncommitted voters giving Obama a paltry 29% job approval rating.

Please, give us more of your idiotic conspiracy theories, and keep telling small business owners that they didn't build anything... let's see if we can widen Romney's lead to double digits.  Then maybe Obama will start to tell us we should spread the poll numbers around because it's good for everybody.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Gettysburg -- A Fourth of July Long Ago" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Just a Conservative Girl's post "A Tale of One Tragedy and Two Campaigns" over at Potluck.  Congrats!

My very late review of Spider-Man 3

I finally got around to watching Spider-Man 3 the other day... I avoided seeing it until now because it didn't look very good to me, and none of my friends had anything good to say about it.

I guess it was watchable, but I can't really recommend it.  There were too many villains and not enough time spent on any one of them to properly develop the characters or explain what was happening.  The three main villains were Sandman, Venom, and the New Goblin... yet I think Sandman is the only one of the three to ever get called Sandman by anyone, and that was only one time.  Peter Parker refers to Harry Osborn as Goblin Jr. at one point, but I don't think the name New Goblin appeared anywhere except in the credits.   And I never heard anyone refer to Venom by name either.

Sandman's origin is not explained very well, and the sudden attempt to include him in the murder of Peter's uncle came off feeling a little too contrived and clumsy... and the conversation about forgiveness he has with Peter at the end of the movie ends up feeling a little too anticlimactic.

Some alien goo became a new suit for Spider-Man for a while, until he decided it was making him a douchebag so he found a way to get rid of it... then the goo attached itself to another douchebag named Eddie Brock and became Venom.  They had a scene where Dr. Curt Connors tried to explain the nature of this goo to Peter, but the whole scene seemed to be played more for laughs than anything... it didn't come across as very believable.  Also, the goo's mind-reading abilities are only hinted at, never really addressed directly.

Harry Osborn was out for revenge from the get-go, which was to be expected given everything that happened in the first two films, but in this one they had him bouncing back and forth so many times from bad to good to very bad to very good... it got a bit tiresome.

Another problem was that Peter Parker himself becomes a bit of a villain for a while before he finally sheds the black suit... well, he actually started acting like a bit of a douchebag before he has the black suit.  I was really annoyed by the attempt to make "bad Peter" look cool by giving him a really stupid emo hairstyle.  I was also annoyed that he never said a word to Mary Jane about the black suit, he just let her think he suddenly became the world's biggest asshole for no reason... I know they were trying to make a point about forgiveness and owning up to mistakes, but come on.

I really wish the same writing team from Spider-Man 2 could have been brought back to write this movie too, I think it would have turned out much better.  Even after stumbling a bit with this movie, they still could have brought back that team to write a fourth movie, but for some reason they tried using some completely new writers... nobody could agree on a script, and the whole thing fell apart when Sam Raimi backed out.  So now we will have a stupid reboot instead of what could have been a decent sequel.  Oh well.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Don't Ken And Josephine Terry Have 'Absolute Moral Authority'?" by Rhymes With Right, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Natasha Smith's post "Please God. Please make it stop." over at her blog.    Congrats!

Happy Independence Day!

Hey, remember what is was like to hear a real speech from a real president?  Here's President Reagan addressing the nation on 7/4/86:

Doh!

What a bunch of nincompoops the Swedish royal family are:

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Soviet propaganda: leaving Dr. Goebbels in the dust -- Part II" by Simply Jews, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Paul Weston's post "Multi-Culti Child Snatchers" over at Gates of Vienna.   Congrats!

Biden goes off message on the economy

Obama says the private sector is doing just fine... Joe Biden seems to disagree:

This is not a depression, or even a recession, at least not based on the standard way of measuring such things... the problem is, it sure feels like a recession to most people because the jobs still haven't come back.  Maybe we aren't supposed to call it a recession, but we sure as hell can't call it a recovery when there are no jobs.  So then, what do we call it?

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Syria-ousity" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "What Bill Clinton Knows" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

Red Letter Media reviews Prometheus

The guys at Red Letter Media give a semi-positive review of Prometheus with some spoilers:

Update: And here they are delving into a few more spoilery type questions that have been bugging them about the movie.

Happy Father's Day!

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels.  The winning council entry for the week was "Memorial Day Tribute: My Granddad" by The Right Planet, and the winning non-council entry for the week was George C. Gross' post "A Train Near Magdeburg" over at the Hudson Falls Central School District website.  (Yeah, you heard me, now go read it.)  Congrats!

Ugh... I'm still sick...

Sorry for the light posting here, I'm still recovering from a nasty case of the flu...  the worst of it seems to be over, but I just can't seem to shake this awful cough.  As long as my mouth has a continuous supply of menthol cough drops, I can keep myself from getting stuck in an endless loop of coughing and coughing and coughing... but even with the cough drops some nasty coughing fits still manage to slip through.  For those all I can do is blame Bush.

In other news, did you ever notice Japanese people make a lot of really weird movies:

Hmmmm... I think maybe I'll skip that one.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Memorial Day: An Honest Man Versus A Liar" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Mark Steyn's post "The FaceBook Caliphate" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

RIP Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury passed away yesterday.  He was probably best know for writing The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but he wrote lots and lots of great stuff.  I was a huge fan of The Ray Bradbury Theater, which adapted many of his short stories...  the episode featuring Jeff Goldblum was always one of my favorites:

Scott Walker wins, the left goes nuts

Scott Walker won the recall election in Wisconsin, and by a pretty wide margin.  Naturally, some of the more unhinged leftists out there responded by openly calling for Walker to be assassinated.  Because, unless you have the right to kill everyone who disagrees with you, then democracy has died... or something.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "What Does Peace Mean Anyway?" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Robert Stacy McCain's post "Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland" over at The Other McCain.  Congrats!

Where's the stolen oil I keep hearing about?

I can't believe I'm still hearing the same stupid "war for oil" talking points now that I was hearing back when Saddam Hussein was cowering in his spider hole.  I was talking to some friends earlier today and had to listen to a few of them saying Iraq was a lie, it had nothing to do with liberating anyone, it was all about oil, it was all a big joke, blah blah blah.

Well, Iraqis are free, aren't they?  Their government is far from perfect, but at least it's theirs now.  And where is all the oil we stole?  Seems like we could sure could use some of it right about now.

The rape rooms are gone.  Iraqis aren't being shoved feet first into giant shredding machines anymore.  Saddam isn't funding terrorism anymore, or buying votes on the U.N. Security Council, or doing his best to acquire WMDs, or gassing his own people, or forcing droves of people to the polls at gunpoint to vote for him.  But it's really all about that oil we stole that we don't seem to have anywhere, right?

Whatever.

Who is Brett Kimberlin?

If you're wondering why you keep hearing the name Brett Kimberlin mentioned so much lately, this is why:

There's plenty more where that came from over at Lee Stranahan's website.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "The Fascist Boogie Fever" by The Noisy Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Mark Steyn's post "The Spirit of Geert Wilders" over at National Review Online.  Congrats!

The Happiness Index

President Obama promised us that passing his so-called stimulus bill would keep the unemployment rate below 8%... and how did that work out for everyone?  He got his bill passed, but we still ended up with unemployment stuck above 8% for three years straight, and the Misery Index has been above 10% since November 2009.

The recession ended in June 2009, but only in the most technical sense... when at least 76% of the population thinks we are still in a recession, that should tell you something about how weak the economy really is.  This hasn't stopped Obama from repeatedly trying to claim credit for bringing about some sort of miraculous economic recovery.  If this is what he thinks a successful recovery looks like, then I'd hate to see how bad things would have to get for him to ever admit failure.

As bad as unemployment has been and continues to be, the official unemployment rate leaves out several pieces of data that would paint an even bleaker picture of the unemployment situation.  The alternative ways of measuring unemployment have their uses, but the 1994 changes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics made to these methodologies can sometimes make it difficult to compare apples to apples.

I thought it might be interesting to see what would happen to the Misery Index if it could also account for those who have become so discouraged that they simply gave up looking for work.  Instead of trying to rejigger a new Misery Index by using the U4 unemployment rate in place of the standard rate, I decided to just turn the Misery Index on its head.  Instead of adding inflation to unemployment, I subtracted inflation from the employment-to-population ratio... I call this the Happiness Index, since it's a sort of Bizarro version of the Misery Index.  I averaged the monthly data for each presidential term going all the way back to Truman's second term, and then created this graphic to show the Happiness Index for each term:

Are you happier now than you were four years ago?

Obama's term is not yet complete, but I included his average so far just for the sake of comparison... you have to go back to Reagan's first term to find a worse number than Obama's, and Reagan was at least moving things significantly in the right direction.

Despite the 9/11 attacks and the bursting of the tech bubble, George W. Bush's first term still managed the second highest Happiness Index shown here... the numbers for Bush's second term are not as good as his first, but are still the fourth best.  While Bush was in office, we kept hearing the phrase "jobless recovery" over and over again, but so far it looks like the best Obama can do is not nearly as good as Bush's worst.

Update: Oh, so the lousy economy is all Bush's fault?  Fine... let's see what happens to the numbers when you take the first year of Obama's term and place it at the end of Bush's second term.  This would give Bush a slightly lower Happiness Index of 59.35 percent, and bring Obama's number down to 55.99 percent.  Why stop there?  Let's also place Obama's second year in office at the end of Bush's term and see what happens.  This would give Bush 58.94 percent and Obama 55.14 percent.  It seems like the more of a grace period we try to give Obama, the worse his numbers get.  This is because Obama's monthly Happiness Index didn't hit bottom until 2011, when it reached 54.53 percent in both August and September... you have to go all the way back to March 1984 to find a lower monthly number.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Inside Vladimir Putin" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was William Jacobson's post "Cruel irony in Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee saga" over at Legal Insurrection.  Congrats!

Ann Althouse: Ghost Hunter

Ann Althouse has been using her Kindle version of "Dreams From My Father" to analyze how often Obama uses certain words and in what context... here's a snippet:

Obama portrayed black people as having an inner white person, and he wondered "whether the bonds of community could be restored without collectively exorcising that ghostly figure that haunted black dreams." So that inner white person wasn't real. It was a ghost — a ghost that haunted dreams. The book is "Dreams From My Father," so it's quite significant to find the notion of dreams haunted by white people, and white people conceptualized as ghosts.

She found 8 different examples of ghosts referred to in the book... very interesting stuff, go read the whole thing.

Happy Mother's Day!

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Pathological Politics -- Predatory Partners and Persecuting Patriots" by The Noisy Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Joel Kotkin's post "The New Class Warfare" over at City Journal.  Congrats!

What's a fair share? How much is enough?

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Yom Hashoah - Reflections On The Holocaust" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Raymond Ibrahim's post "How the Media Whitewashes Muslim Persecution of Christians" over at Pundicity.  Congrats!

Romney's victory speech in Manchester

Update: Heh... the RNC made a funny video comparing this speech to the ridiculous appearance that Obama made on Jimmy Fallon's show.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "The real threat that the Ann Romneys of the world represent to the statist left" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Michael J. Totten's post "The Lost City" over at Slake.  Congrats!

Happy Earth Day

Young Man Bites Dog

The left has been trying to accuse the Romneys of animal cruelty over the way they chose to transport their dog Seamus along with them on family vacations... good luck trying to make that case now that everyone is laughing about how Obama ate dog meat during the time he spent in Indonesia with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro.

People have been having loads of fun with this on Twitter, the hashtag #ObamaDogRecipes is still spreading like wildfire... I couldn't resist goofing on it a bit myself:

The years Obama spent in Indonesia were used to sell him as a multiculti Messiah, now he has to own up to the dogs he ate while he was there — A.J. Winkelspecht (@ajwink) April 18, 2012

It's unfair to criticize Obama for the crimes Bill Ayers committed, Obama was busy eating dog meat at the time. #tcot #nobama2012 #resist44 — A.J. Winkelspecht (@ajwink) April 18, 2012

I can't believe Obama's stupid autobiographies were ever considered a reason to vote for him: youtube.com/watch?v=OxuhQ5… #nobama2012 #resist44 — A.J. Winkelspecht (@ajwink) April 18, 2012

Wanna know the real reason Taco Bell stopped using that chihuahua in their commercials? Obama ate him... poor little guy. #ObamaDogRecipes — A.J. Winkelspecht (@ajwink) April 18, 2012

As if eating dogs wasn't bad enough, you know what part of the dog Obama likes best? THE ANAL GLANDS! #tcot #ObamaDogRecipes #ObamaEatsDogs — A.J. Winkelspecht (@ajwink) April 20, 2012

And here a few other tweets by people I follow that I especially enjoyed:

Something tells me Sarah McLachlan won’t be singing at the White House anytime soon. — Jimmie (@jimmiebjr) April 18, 2012

Obama's planned message for today: Obama takes on oil speculators ...Actual message of the day: Obama eats dogs #BullyPulpitFail — Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) April 18, 2012

Why are there no blue dog Democrats left? Obama ate them. — Kevin (@keder) April 18, 2012

There were some pretty funny photoshops too, this one is my favorite so far:

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Why There Are No Such Things As Unnecessary Tests" by The Razor, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "One Hundred Broken Mirrors" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

What if Jessica Rabbit wasn't just a cartoon?

Photographer Ryan Astamendi has put together a pretty amazing collection of photos taken of women who were made up to look like Disney characters... he did a great job of bringing them all to life, but I thought his take on Jessica Rabbit was particularly mindblowing:

Wowie zowie... I'll never look at Who Framed Roger Rabbit the same way again.  (No, that's not a photoshopped picture... if you don't believe me, then check out this video of the model Courtney Black being prepped for the photo shoot.)

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Silent Scream; The Sudan Ethnically Cleanses Its Christians" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "The New Anti-Semitism" over at Defining Ideas.  Congrats!

Happy Easter!

RIP Thomas Kinkade

Thomas Kinkade, the artist best known for all those glowy paintings that so many people loved to collect, passed away the other day.  Supposedly he died of natural causes, but he was only 54 years old, so it had to come as a bit of a shock to his family.

I was pretty bummed about the whole thing, until I stumbled across this:

Now I'm laughing my ass off.

Update:  Heh... this one is pretty funny too.

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Supreme Court Begins Hearing Arguments On Obamacare" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "It Doesn't Matter If You're Black or White" over at Sultan Knish.  Congrats!

Also, if you missed it, please head over to Joshuapundit's blog and check out his interview of me.

Awwwwwwww...

I never heard of Pygmy Hippos before, but apparently they are a real thing, and their babies are adorable:

April Fools!

The Council Has Spoken!

This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "AG Holder And The DOJ Strike A Blow To Help Voter Fraud" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Bristol Palin's post "Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?" over at Bristol's Blog.  Congrats!

Obamacare vs Romneycare

This comes from a rabidly pro-Mitt blog, but I think it makes quite a few good points:

Are there some similarities between Obamacare and Romneycare?   Sure, but there are some pretty big differences too, so I don't see why it would make Romney incapable of making the case against Obamacare.  With Romney at least we would have a chance to make that case, Santorum would constantly have us talking about all the wrong things and a real case against Obamacare would never get made.

( found via @keder )