Books, movies, politics, and whatever I want

Archive for August, 2014

Monday Book Pick: Black List

Monday, August 25th, 2014

Black List by Brad Thor

A modern techno-thriller about shadowy government agencies fighting one another. One agency is trying to take out another so they can hatch their plan to take over the Internet and generally reduce the level of freedom in America to pretty much zero. The plan doesn’t work when they try to take out Scot Harvath (the hero of the series, of which this is book 11). After much killing, computer hacking, and other spy craft stuff, the good guys win (not much of spoiler there, I’m betting Mr. Thor is working on number 12). A good, entertaining read, and with more reality thrown in than is comfortable to think about.

Monday Book Pick Archive

Friday B-Movie Pick: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel

This is a film fan movie. Wonderful cast, and tight writing that just cranks the dry humor to eleven and keep it there. I nearly fell off the couch laughing several times during this movie. Most of the movie is set in the 1930s and is the story of concierge of a famous Alpine hotel and his protege. The acting was wonderful, given the cast (Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Geff Goldbulm, Jude Law, Edward Norton, and more) this is not surprising. The film was also carefully crafted, nailing you with the next joke before you had a chance to recover from that last one.

Friday B-Movie Pick Archive

Cover Songs

Wednesday, August 13th, 2014

Let us review a Rock n’ Roll Classic: I Want You to Want Me

The Cheap Trick version is probably the best known version, complete with many, many screaming Japanese teenagers.

Dwight Yoakam’s version has a nice twang to it.

Ela provides a pop version

Gretchen Wilson covers this classic on her Under the Covers album.

Chris Isaak’s cover is one of my favorite examples of this song.

Gary Jules’ cover is way too laid back.

Letters to Cleo does a bouncy pop cover.

 

 

Quote of the Day

Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

“…the sheer “I won” in-your-face immaturity of the Obamaites — remember the “Hey, Hey, Goodbye” chant to Bush at the inauguration — ensured that people would be angrier than normal. And they did that on purpose because a sharply divided nation suited them politically. Now Ron Fournier wonders if Americans would rally behind Obama after another 9/11 the way we rallied behind Bush, and I think the answer is no — because Obama has spent his entire time in office flicking boogers at half the country.

As I’ve said before, the reason why presidents traditionally act “presidential” isn’t because they’re stiffly formal, it’s because acting presidential, rather than purely political, lets you appeal to the whole country in ways that a pure partisan can’t. Obama doesn’t care, and we may very well pay for that, too. But elections have consequences, and when you elect a guy like Obama, the consequences are bad ones.”

Glenn Reynolds

A shining example of a modern progressive congressional democrat

Monday, August 11th, 2014

As reported recently,  democrat congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee stated, on the floor of the House, that the democrats never tried to impeach President G. W Bush, despite her being a co-sponsor a bill the democrat controlled House passed to impeach President Bush.

The staff of democrat congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee then not only refused to answer a reporter’s questions about her claim and her sponsorship of the bill, they threatened him with an IRS audit. Not exactly what you expect from a member of the “Peoples’ House” dedicated to Constitutional principles, like the First Amendment. Pretty typical for a modern, so called “progressive” democrat though.

On the other hand, you can understand why her staff is so protective of their meal ticket. SJL appears to be out to unseat current Vice-President Joe “Plugs” Biden as the gaffe master of Washington, D.C..

Her previous deviations from reality include: While observing images from a Mars Rover at the JPL, asking if the rover would pass by where Neil Armstrong planted the American flag; and giving an impassioned speech on the House floor describing how North and South Vietnam are able to work together and how that should be an inspiration to us as well.

For that Mars/Luna mix up, she was voting on the NASA budget at the time. No wonder we have to outsource getting our Astronauts in and out orbit to the Russians.

Round Up Post

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

Reality can crack the leftist spin central of HuffPo every once in rare while.  Former MA congresscritter and far left extremist (yes, I’m being redundant) Barney Frank is shocked to discover that our Dear Leader lied to the American People.

Nobody should be shocked to find out that Lois Lerner, of the Obama IRS department, who deliberately, and illegally, targeted conservative groups for unwarranted IRS investigations in order to deny them their constitutional first amendment rights, called those she targeted “crazies” and “a–holes.” What is even less shocking is that the so-called “mainstream” media doesn’t care.

Texas democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee lied to the American people on the floor of congress.  OK, to be fair, given her track record of underwhelming intellectual performance, she may have just not remembered that she was the co-sponsor of a bill to impeach President George W. Bush, that the democrats in the House passed.

On the international front, Japan gives Vietnam six navy ships amid regional tension.  To put it more bluntly, the Japanese government is giving something other than a twitter hash tag to Communist China. By doing so, Japan demonstrates that it has more balls than Barack Hussein Obama, who is mostly phoning it in these days.

Going back to the domestic front, is it a real ‘crisis’ or merely a leftist talking point the democrats can use to steal money from the gullible rubes who wouldn’t recognize real science even it gave them frost bite. 

Truesbury, a “…satiric re-imagining of Doonesbury as it would be if the Washington Post and G.D. Trudeau had as much fire in the belly for illuminating the transgressions of a Democrat White House as they did for one run by the GOP.”

Quote of the Day

Monday, August 4th, 2014

“Sure, Lois Lerner was a registered Democrat who hated Republicans and hoped for a job at an Obama campaign organization, but that doesn’t prove she was political. And with all those emails gone missing, we may never know the true story, but whaddyagonnado?”
Glenn Reynolds

Quote of the Day

Sunday, August 3rd, 2014

“What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long. ”

— Thomas Sowell