The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Tale Of Two Reviews

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

Emphasis mine throughout.

John Nolte is just a little bit gushing about the Dark Night Rises:

But unlike so many who disguise their resentment and hatred for America through the lie that criticism somehow equals patriotism, Nolan’s love for this country is without qualifiers and symbolized in all its unqualified sincerity in the form of a beautiful young child sweetly singing a complete version of “The Star Spangled Banner” — just before “Occupy” attempts to fulfill its horrific vision of what “equality” really means.
Nolan’s genius as a filmmaker is without question. The pacing, editing, performances, and humanity of “Rises” will be talked about for decades. But his real genius is in how he expresses his vision and theme. While all of Hollywood embraces nihilism wrapped in irony, Nolan moves us with an inexpressibly touching faith in humanity. While all of Hollywood embraces CGI, the shaky-cam, and hyper-editing, Nolan sets his story in the real world and allows us to see what’s going on. And as all of Hollywood embraces hollow, artless, left-wing tripe, Nolan delivers crowd-pleasing, thematically-driven classical art that ennobles the human spirit and while doing so breaks box office records.

Meanwhile, former Rolling Stone editor Kurt Loder offers a yawn:

The film is thick with politics of an obliviously nonsensical sort. In an attempt to lend the tale contemporary resonance, the script (by director Nolan and his brother, Jonathan) positions Bane as a self-declared revolutionary, come to liberate Gotham from its oppression by the city’s wealthy upper crust (the One Percent, if it need be said). But Bane is so clearly a vicious nihilist—he empties the municipal prison, arms the freed inmates, sets up kangaroo courts—that it’s not at all clear why the inexplicably angry populace (they’re living in a city scrubbed crime-free after the death of Harvey Dent—what is their problem?) would so ecstatically rally to him. Members of the real-world Occupy movement may bristle at being thus depicted, even at second hand, as witless sheep.

It sounds as though the film could be a case study in confirmation bias. Will I give up three hours of blogging to go see this flick? For some reason, I just can’t park myself long enough to watch things I know I need to see.

Category: Movies

In the 17th Paragraph, She Mentions That the Corrupt Mayor Is a Democrat

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

Kate Zernike of the New York Times:

TRENTON — To measure the decay here in New Jersey’s capital, residents could have counted the unfilled public pools, the shuttered libraries and police stations, the block after block of boarded-up stores and homes.
But they did not need to go that far. The city was falling apart from the top.
It started just a month after Mayor Tony F. Mack took office in 2010, when his housing director quit after it was revealed that the official had being indicted on charges of forgery and theft. Two months later, one of his judicial appointees quit over bad checks and unpaid debt, and his business administrator — the second of seven, during just nine months — resigned, having stolen from a Congressional campaign.
Then the mayor’s half brother was indicted on a charge of using city resources to do private work. And the chief of staff who Mr. Mack promised would finally bring order resigned after the police said they found him near City Hall with heroin.
So it was momentous but not surprising when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided City Hall on Thursday morning after descending with search warrants the morning before on the homes of the mayor, his brother and one of the mayor’s chief donors. . . .

Keep reading and you’ll eventually discover that the corrupt incompetent mayor is, in fact, a Democrat.

Category: Corruption, Democrats, New Jersey

A Chick-Fil-A Gun? Pluck Poultry Pistols!

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

The Mayor of Boston is firm in his devotion to protecting Beantown from the ravages of Christianist hate-mongers:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston — possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail — after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”
“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

This is kind of like the commitment to protecting citizens that fellow mayor Rahm Emmanuel is showing in Chicago where gun control is a deal of Biden-esque proportions:

The streets of Chicago are officially more dangerous than a war zone: Homicide victims in the Windy City outnumber U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year.
While 144 Americans have died in Afghanistan in 2012, a whopping 228 Chicago residents have been killed, and the murder rate is up a staggering 35 percent from last year. That’s a rash of homicides quadruple the rate of New York City’s, and police and crime experts fear it may only get worse.
This week, Chicago announced it will allow police in the cash-strapped city to work overtime at time-and-a-half pay in order to put more officers on the street.

The Chick-Fil-A menace must be restrained!

This blog commends these fine American Mayors for their commitment to civic safety, and the right of consenting adults to put chickens wherever they want to, without fear of derogation from some dude in a suit and his Christianist minions.

Also, you had better not pray for rain!

Update: rampant anti-Statist Bill Quick suggests banning Mayor Bloomberg, to improve public safety in the Rotten Apple. Reached for comment, Mayor Bloomberg’s tea cup suggested that San Francisco should force Quick to write out all of Nancy Pelosi’s speeches, longhand, 50 times. Or until the moment that Quick’s mind ‘splodes, whichever comes first.

via Twitchy

Category: Illinois, Massachusetts

The Daily Disgrace

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 30 Comments

The front-page headline in this morning’s New York Times:

GUNMAN KILLS 12 AT COLORADO THEATER;
SCORES ARE WOUNDED, REVIVING DEBATE

The headline is different in the online version of the story, but the “debate” the editors have in mind is referenced in the fifth paragraph, which declares that “once again . . . the nation was plunged into another debate about guns and violence.”

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who has waged a national campaign for stricter gun laws, offered a political challenge. “Maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly radio program, “because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

A separate article on page A13 carries the headline, “In Columbine’s Wake, Colorado Has Become Key Player in Gun Law Debate”:

The news of the horrifying armed assault in Aurora, Colo. — just a half-hour drive from the site of the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 — has a freakish resonance in a state that has long played an unsought role in the national debate over gun laws and firearm rights.

Again, the online version of the story has a different headline, but the point is the same: The editors of the New York Times are eager to turn this crime into a debate about gun laws, and we know what side of that debate the editors of the New York Times are on, don’t we?

The New York Times wishes to “debate” gun control in the same way that teenage boys want to “debate” oral sex while they’re parked at Moonlight Lake with their dates, and the invitation to this “debate” is tendered in a remarkably similar spirit.

UPDATE: Mayor Bloomberg’s “national campaign for stricter gun laws” notwithstanding, there were nearly 500 murders and more than 1,400 shooting incidents in New York City last year.

UPDATE II: The accused gunman James Holmes is described by neighbors and teachers as quiet and studious:

In high school, Holmes won a competitive position at a rigorous science boot camp and an internship in neurobiology at the prestigious Salk Institute.
Tom Mai, who lived next door with his family for a decade, remembers James as smart, quiet, polite.

This makes us dumb loud rude guys feel better about ourselves. And isn’t feeling good about yourself really the most important thing in life?

Category: Colorado, Crime, Media Bias, New York Times

Theological Question

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

In a 2010 NYT editorial “We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change“, Al Gore said:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.

The Apostle Paul:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;–Romans 3:23

Question:

Through what mechanism do individual sinners, forming a government, achieve that which they cannot accomplish individually?

Related: The Parable of the Misguided Tea Partier

Category: ManBearPig, Troglopundit

Whittle Putting BHO’s “You Didn’t Get There On Your Own” In Context

Posted on | July 20, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

It’s already the defining moment of the campaign, but Bill Whittle slices like a hammer here, casting Captain Collectivism’s remark in a biographical context that makes it abundantly clear: #OccupyResoluteDesk is intellectually incapable of viewing reality in any manner than the one which liberty-loving Americans are busily deriding:

Category: PJTV

DaTechGuy Was With Mitt In Bow, NH

Posted on | July 20, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Da Tech Guy brings you Fedora on the ground reporting from NH. The Romney event was solemn, beginning with the invocation:Lord rest the victims, strengthen the survivors, and point toward justice for the perpetrator.
Mitt sounds truly Presidential here:

In Florida, President Obama:

“Even as we learn how this happened and who’s responsible, we may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this,” Obama said. “Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason. But while we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the life of another, we do know what makes life worth living.”
“I know many of you came here today for a campaign event,” Obama continued at the event in Fort Myers. “I was looking forward to having a fun conversation with you about some really important matters we face as a country, and the differences between myself and my opponent in this election. But this morning, we woke up to news of a tragedy that reminds us of all the ways that we are united as one American family.”

Thanks, Pete: even on a tough day like this one, you’re a champ.

Update: Da Tech Guy’s full post here.

Category: Barack Obama, Da Tech Guy, Mitt Romney

‘Higher Education Bubble’? Colorado Shooter Is Medical School Dropout

Posted on | July 20, 2012 | 10 Comments

Larry McShane of the New York Daily News reports:

The suspected Colorado movie mass murderer was a loner and a medical school dropout who described himself last year as “quiet and easy-going” on a rental application.
James Holmes, 24, withdrew abruptly last month from the University of Colorado Medical School, spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said Friday.
She did not know what prompted his decision just weeks before Holmes snapped, killing a dozen people and wounding at least 50 others.
The suspect, who came to Colorado from California, lived in a third-floor apartment in the Denver suburb of North Aurora — about four miles from the theater where the killings occurred.
Neighbors told the Denver Post that Holmes was a reclusive type who ignored other residents when they said hello.
“No one knew him,” one neighbor told the newspaper. “No one.”

When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos rushed to find a Tea Party connection to blame for this evil deed, perhaps he never stopped to think that the suspect might be a grad student who suffered a mental breakdown, perhaps because of stress or academic failure.

Therefore, let’s cast a shadow of suspicion on all quiet reclusive types — dangerous loners! — pursuing advanced degrees, because that makes as much sense as blaming the Tea Party.

Me? I blame The Higher Education Bubble.

Category: Colorado, Crime, Education
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