io9 - Movie Based On Asteroids Game Will Boggle Your Mind - asteroids movieCome to think of it, even w/no plot, it might do pretty well...Though Hollywood excels in making plotless movies, the sale of Asteroids to Universal breaks new ground. The people who are bringing you GI Joe this month are about to make a movie about a triangle shooting a bunch of blobs.
J.
When you're a political party - you would, I think, want an attractive figurehead. You'd want leadership that's at least SOMEWHAT charismatic and memorable.
And, let's face it - the Democratic Party's been falling down on the job in that respect. There's no visible figurehead at this point, nobody that actually is the 'face' of the Democratic party like Obama and Pelosi. And the faces that are being put UP on the news representing Republicans...
Sigh. It's a bit odd that Sanford's now the 'face' of the Republican party. Bizzare, isn't it?
Think quickly - who, aside from McCain, would you picture as being emblematic of the Republican party? Gingrich? Cheney? Bush? (Well, the last two aren't exactly major players in the political scheme of things now...)
How about Palin?
Oh, wait - we can't use her...
McCain's Camp Praises Sanford and Trashes Palin?I'm really starting to think that the subculture inside the DC Beltway's so toxic and so dedicated to maintaining the status quo that they can't see the damage that's being inflicted by the petty games they play.There something wrong, very wrong, when Sarah Palin, a bright, shining light for conservatives remains the prime target of the existing Washington machine, while Mark Sanford and other hypocritical liars are serenaded as getting a raw deal by the very public daughter of a defacto leader of the party.
Let's see - McCain lost, so it couldn't be he was out-charismaed by Obama and outmaneuvered by the Chicago political machine writ large in ACORN's tactics - no, far better to blame 'Caribou Barbie' for the loss.
Frankly, I think if it hadn't been for her he'd have lost by a much wider margin. I felt a lot better about voting for McCain because he picked her as a running mate.
The Republican Party badly needs to reinvent itself - and clean out a lot of the entrenched deadwood. It needs new ideas, it needs new faces. (And so does the Democratic party. Really, who would you rather listen to all day - Pelosi or Palin?)
But hey - what will actually happen is most likely the status quo staying quo - because nobody wants to upset the system that gives them their goodies...
J.
It's interesting looking at the expressions on the faces in this video.
RealClearPolitics - Video - CBS, Helen Thomas Challenge Gibbs On "Controlled" Town Hall MeetingChip Reid was getting a bit exasperated at the stonewalling by Robert Gibbs. Gibbs was treating it all as a joke. Helen Thomas was, by my estimation, getting pretty annoyed at how Gibbs was dancing around the question.CBS' Chip Reid and Helen Thomas double teamed Robert Gibbs today at the daily press briefing on the "tightly controlled" town hall meeting President Obama will hold on health care. Gibbs kept saying lets have this discussion AFTER the meeting. Helen Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press." She said almost all White House/Obama events are "prepackaged." She accused the White House of not "having any answers."
I think she'd better be careful, though. Puppets are replaceable - and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear she's 'retired' in the next couple of months. She's asking question that aren't in the script.
This video is an interesting look at what we're not being told. I'm wondering if the press corps is starting to think they've grabbed the wrong end of the rope...
J.
Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich - WSJ.comYou ever notice that when 'fair' enters the picture, other considerations just seem to vanish?With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we're seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget: Soak the rich. Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates on the top 1% or 2% or 5% of their citizens. New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50% increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the "fair" way to close his state's gaping deficit.
Oddly enough - the rich are vanishing also. You see, they're not fixed resources like a coal mine or an oil well - they're living, mobile, and have the resources to pack up and bug out when conditions get unfavorable.
I don't think it's much of a coincidence that California, New Jersey, and New York are all losing people, (pardon, losing productive people...) while the economic state in Illinois and Delaware could best be described as 'iffy'.
Well, we'll see - but I think that the states that do this will end up losing more than they're gaining. Perhaps they ought to try cutting back the expenses instead of 'soaking the rich' for a quick buck.
J.
The Associated Press: $50M in stimulus will help fish farmers buy feedSo the stimulus is going to feed fish.OSAGE BEACH, Mo. (AP) — The United States is about to spend $50 million in stimulus money on fish food to help fish farmers who have been struggling since feed prices jumped 50 percent last year.
The money could provide algae to nourish clam and oyster larvae along the Pacific coast, fill the bellies of tilapia in Arizona and feed catfish, trout and gamefish in the Midwest and South. (Note the 'could' there?)
Supporters say many fish farms are in already poor areas. They say the money will help keep the farms going and preserve jobs in areas hard hit by the recession and lacking other industries.
Much of the money is likely to end up in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas — the nation's largest catfish producers. Catfish accounts for one-third of the nation's $1.4 billion aquaculture industry.
Sigh.
We've got some real winners in Washington these days, don't we?
J.
Realistically, that's what it's amounting to.
Obama implores Senate to pass climate bill - Yahoo! NewsThere's a contradiction between economic growth and taxing the hell out of the country in the guise of 'investing in clean energy'.WASHINGTON – Hours after the House passed landmark legislation meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions and create an energy-efficient economy, President Barack Obama on Saturday urged senators to show courage and follow suit.
The sharply debated bill's fate is unclear in the Senate, and Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to ratchet up pressure on the 100-seat chamber.
"My call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this," he said. "We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don't believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth."
The Club for Growth has 15 reasons to be against this.
1. An extra 'tax' on energy of about $3000/yr/family. Don't know about you, but I'd rather use that money on something else.
2. Makes the recession worse, costing millions of jobs and devasting the economy.
3. In some years, the national energy tax will cost about 2.5 million jobs.
4. Rural areas get screwed, money will go to CA, WA, and NJ. Big surprise, eh?
5. Emissions reductions (remember, the real cause of all this?) won't be reduced... if the rest of the world doesn't sign on. And China won't.
6. Spain's tried this. 2.2 jobs were destroyed for every 1 'green' job created, and 9 out of 10 of THOSE were temporary.
There's others - but the real reason that this is so beloved -
"Bloated Bureaucracy: The bill establishes a myriad of new federal agencies intertwined between at least 21established agencies with the mission of reallocating trillions of taxpayer dollars in a supposedly fair and efficient manor. According the U.S Chamber of Commerce (PDF), the bill will impose 397 new federal regulations that require traditional agency rulemakings."In essence, Obama - in a time of recession - is asking the country to voluntarily commit economic suicide.
And the reason - to help curb 'global warming' seems to be kind of moot at this point. (Never mind the fact that the science is far from settled, and we may be in for global COOLING for the next decade or more, due to a low-output period from the sun...) All this bill does is shuffle money around to a point where it can be skimmed out of the system, and then in ten years when nothing's been done, the economy's cratered, and energy prices are through the roof, the 'progressives' (a name which seems to be completely contrary to their actual results) will insist that MORE sacrifices need to be made, that MORE must be demanded from the 'rich' - which will probably be anyone who is actually still employed by that point.
Hope for change, baby. That's about all we're going to have left.
Obama's got a grand vision for the US. More and more it seems like he wants a pretty corpse in a coffin, something he can point at and go "Doesn't it look healthy?" while not even paying attention to the fact it's no longer alive and kicking...
