Books, movies, politics, and whatever I want

Archive for October, 2009

Monday Book Pick: Stranger in a Strange Land

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Another classic by the Grandmaster of Science Fiction. Valentine Michael Smith, born during, and the only survivor of, the first manned mission to Mars. Raised by Martians, he looks at Human society through a very different perspective than the rest of his species. Heinlein takes on sex and religion in a most irreverent fashion.

Monday Book Pick Archive

Let’s look at some average Obama voters…

Monday, October 12th, 2009

The other nominees…

Monday, October 12th, 2009

There has been a lot of chatter about our Dear Leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize for completing Jack and Squat, including some flat out laughter from George Stephanopoulos, so I’m not going to focus on that.

Instead I want to look at the other people who were in the running for the prize.

Ingrid Betancourt. She was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on 23 February 2002 and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later on 2 July 2008. The rescue operation, dubbed Operation Jaque, rescued Betancourt along with 14 other hostages (three Americans and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers). In all, she was held captive for 2,321 days after being taken while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green. She had decided to campaign in rebel controlled areas despite warnings from the government, police and military not to do so. Her kidnapping received worldwide coverage, particularly in France, because of her dual French citizenship.

Dr. Sima Samar,  she practiced medicine at a government hospital in Kabul, but after a few months was forced to flee for her safety to her native Jaghoori, where she provided medical treatment to patients throughout the remote areas of central Afghanistan.

In 1984, the communist regime arrested her husband, and Samar and her young son fled to the safety of nearby Pakistan. She then worked as a doctor at the refugee branch of the Mission Hospital. Distressed by the total lack of health care facilities for Afghan refugee women, she established in 1989 the Shuhada Organization and Shuhada Clinic in Quetta, Pakistan.

After living in refuge for over a decade, Samar returned to Afghanistan in 2002 to assume a cabinet post in the Afghan Transitional Administration. In the interim government, she served as Deputy President and then as Minister for Women’s Affairs. She was forced into resignation from her post after she was threatened with death and harassed for questioning conservative Islamic laws, especially sharia law, during an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. During the 2003 Loya Jirga, several religious conservatives took out an ad in a local newspaper calling Samar the Salman Rushdie of Afghanistan.

Dr. Samar publicly refuses to accept that women must be kept in purdah(secluded from the public) and speaks out against the wearing of the burqa(head-to-foot wrap), which was enforced first by the fundamentalist mujahideen and then by the Taliban. She also has drawn attention to the fact that many women in Afghanistan suffer from osteomalacia, a softening of the bones, due to an inadequate diet. Wearing the burqa reduces exposure to sunlight and aggravates the situation for women suffering from osteomalacia.

Hu Jia is an activist and dissident in the People’s Republic of China. His work has focused on the Chinese democracy movement, Chinese environmentalist movement, and HIV/AIDS in the People’s Republic of China. Hu is the director of June Fourth Heritage & Culture Association, and he has been involved with AIDS advocacy as the executive director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education.

Thich Quang Do: He has spent his entire life fighting for freedom of religion in Vietnam.  He has spent the past thirty years being exiled, imprisoned, and persecuted.

HT to The Daily Fiona for the list.

BBC asks: What happened to global warming?

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Paul Hudson, the BBC News “Climate correspondent” asks an inconvenient question:

What happened to global warming?

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Well, to be honest, there were climate models that didn’t predict the rise of global temperature observed in the 1990s continuing, but there wasn’t a scam to run on the gullible using those models.

One thing that anthropogenic global warming Luddites don’t like to admit is that natural climate change is real and it has happened throughout the planet’s history, and will continue to do so.  Dudes, the planet will abide.

If you are still skeptical over the actual science involved, try this…FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Update: The movie the anthropogenic global warming Luddites at Stanford University don’t want you to see.

An advisor to Al Gore, who makes a lot of money selling so-called “Carbon Credits”, was warning the world about a man made Ice Age that was about to wreak global destruction back in the 1970s.

Today’s Quotes

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Old tolerance; allowing others a differing point of view.
New “Liberal” tolerance; declaring certain views tolerant and others not, then refusing to allow certain views to be stated because one has already declared them intolerant (normally without making any attempt to understand them).

“Bruce Campbell is to crazy cool as Chuck Norris is to roundhouse kicks”

“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” — John Derbyshire

“At the heart of every liberal program lies the idea that we are entitled to something just because we have a heartbeat. Liberals tell us that we are entitled to these things not because we’ve earned them, worked for them, or sacrificed for them; we are entitled to them because we have a pulse. … Like the grasshopper in Aesop’s fable, liberals believe that the government owes them a living. It exists to meet their every need, regardless of their own efforts, or lack thereof.” — Rich Hailey

“You know, a huge drain on California’s economy is the illegal immigrants. We need to close the borders.” — Larry Flynt, Hustler publisher and CA democrat gubernatorial candidate

“Well, if I use Hispanic culture I get corruption and really good salsa music. If I use Chinese culture I get rigid thinking and decent Szechwan. If I use Islamic culture I get…not damned much of anything. And ditto for Africa although at least the rhythm is good and you can dance to it. But if I use Western European Culture I get industry, higher standards of living, longer lifespans and a generally “happier” society. Damn, I think I’ll just have to go with WesternCiv even if I do have to put up with the Lutherans.” — John Ringo

“Political Correctness is inverted McCarthyism.” — Dennis Miller

“[moveon.org] is about lies and a distortion of history.” — Simon Wiesenthal Center

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” — HL Mencken.

Spot on statement in reference to our Dear Leader

Friday, October 9th, 2009

By way of Leslie Bates comes this spot on observation:

We should stop the comparisons [of Barak H. Obama] to Hitler. At least Hitler got the Olympics to come to Berlin.

Friday B-Movie Pick: Frank & Jesse

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Frank and Jesse

Back in the early 1990’s, I worked on a project that produced the first commercial grade digitial video servers. One of our customers was the largest pay per view company in Canada. During the early days of their role out, we would digitize and preview their films for quality purposes. Needless to say, I saw a lot of B-Movies while working on that project. Frank and Jesse was one of those.

Friday B-Movie Archive

Monday Book Pick:

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Ya, ya, it’s Friday already.  Various technical difficulties slowed down posting this week.  Nothing major, and I’m back on track.  B-Movie pick will show up later….

Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck

That candy munching, round faced former acoholic is at again. This time, he’s dressing up as “the Book Czar” and telling you to buy his book. Fact filled and organized to counter the pretty consistantly fact free arguments of the typical leftiest. No wonder they hate this guy over at MSNC.

Monday Book Pick Archive.

Friday B-Movie Pick: Kill the Golden Goose

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Kill the Golden Goose

My old VHS copy of this movie has the title “Kill the Golden Ninja.” Not  one Ninja or a goose to be found in his flick. What you do find are two martial arts Masters in staring roles. American Kenpo Karate’s Ed Parker and Hapkido’s Bong Soo Han! A great 1970’s movie with some cool martial arts action.

Friday B-Movie Pick

Priorities

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

It’s clear to see where our Dear Leader‘s priorities are.  He has spoken with the General he personally place in charge of Afghanistan twice.  He has had over 30 meetings to try to get the 2016 Olympics held the crime ridden city of Chicago.

Why this mixed up set of priorities?  Simple, as the man who wrote the screenplay said, “Follow the Money!”

While the odds are that the city of Chicago is going to loose money hosting the Olympics, there will be people who get very, very rich off all the money that will be flowing through that city for that event.

Those people will be the political cronies of the Chicago democrat political machine.  The people who supported our Dear Leader going back to his days as a “community organizer” and they now have their hands out.  Paying off those political debts, with federal tax payer money, is clearly our Dear Leader‘s priority.