Friday, April 29, 2016

Perfect

Saw this on Facebook.

I'm sure I've used "your" when I should have used "you're" many times... But surely if I was making a poster for the internet...

But perhaps today's standards are different and I'm being a grammarphobe or something.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Quote of the Day

"Trump is certainly not the answer for our mess, but he is not the cause of it either. His supporters are not saints, but they embrace the argument that elites promote policies in the abstract whose negative consequences in the concrete always fall on someone else less wealthy and well-connected. Their anger at those hypocrisies deserves to be heard with respect. For the most part, they are supporting a candidate who, by the standards of a debased age, is no more disingenuous or disreputable than he who currently sits in the White House or she who will likely sit there in 2017."

--Victor Davis Hansen

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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Look Who's Back

A time traveler in military uniform wakes up on a sunny Berlin afternoon in 2011, looking up at a blue sky without enemy aircraft overhead. He hears no shelling, explosions or sirens.  You know his name. You know his face.

I love Netflix... No Madison Avenue, and I get to watch movies that I would never otherwise get to see. 

I recently suffered through the subtitles of a German film named Look Who's Back, which places a time travelling Hitler in modern day Berlin.  Much of the movie is played for comedy, but the underlying theme is a people frustrated with immigrants coming into, and changing their country... And this strange man saying the things they've felt about the situation but never expressed.

A German television station finds him, and believing he is an actor and comedian, enlists him to come and drive up their ratings.  The first time he appears on live TV he just stands there for a full minute, silently looking at his audience, just as Hitler did before his speeches back in pre-war Germany.



At the end of the movie, film is shown of right wing hate groups protesting along with clips of the time traveling Hitler riding through the streets... And he exclaims, "I can work with this."

I recommend the film.  It shows how when a government is deaf to the concerns of its citizens, the way is paved for the ascendance of the most outrageous characters...

(If you're not thinking about Donald Trump by now... you may be a Trump Zombie.)

I'm sure it was meant to be a left wing warning against right wing extremism in Germany, but the overwhelming popularity that the film has enjoyed may suggest an effect that is something contrary to the filmmaker's intent.

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Wednesday, April 06, 2016

How a Contested Convention Could Save Us

I watched MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning because I simply couldn't stomach another episode of Trump and Friends over on Fox News.  Well, I did peek for a few seconds and predictably it was all about how Cruz's victory in Wisconsin would effect Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination.

Call me crazy, but with the Supreme Court on the verge of becoming the Supreme Beings... the secular version of Iran's Council of Guardians... I'm thinking Republicans should be focused upon winning the election in November.

And when over half of his own party's voters consider Donald Trump scary (see Wisconsin exit polls) he isn't going to win in November.

My hope is that come convention time we will all take a deep breath,  look at the polling,  and nominate someone who has a chance to win.  That someone may be neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz. 

I'm fine with that.

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