Archive for October, 2009
If Utopiacare passes, a whole new cottage industry will emerge to game that system
This is something we talked about briefly in the Open Thread today, but perhaps it warrants a separate article of its own.
If Democrats in the Senate and House use procedural means to ram Utopiacare through, without ever bringing it to an actual vote, then it truly appears a new cottage industry will emerge, largely Internet-fueled, to game the ridiculous system the Left puts into place.
We have no idea what that will be, largely because Utopiacare itself is so nebulous and ill-defined, but we do know this: people who never thought much about their health coverage and what they were actually paying in premiums are suddenly paying a whole lot of attention to what they’ve got, afraid it’s all going to be taken away from them and redistributed to others.
The Left doesn’t seem to understand that adding 30 million new people to the healthcare system, as well as granting coverage to illegal aliens, will cripple it. Doctors and nurses won’t suddenly drop from the Motherships, ready to heal the sick, cure all diseases, and do their level best to conceal their true reptillian faces under cheap plastic masks. There will be nursing and doctor shortages in the years ahead (which means it’s probably really smart for anyone with tenuous employment to start thinking about a new career in medicine…because whatever happens, if even a few million more people get added to the system under whatever Congressional measure passes, the demand for medical professionals will only increase…and even the lowest-paid nurses make a decent living with good job security).
Whatever happens, it feels like there is a real grassroots network sprouting for people to stay informed…and to do whatever they can to help each other find the information they need to weather this current administration’s storms.
We have three more years of this nonsense to survive together.
It was Republicans and Independents who sat the 2008 election out that got us into this mess…saying, “Oh, another Carter won’t be THAT bad…and afterwards we’ll get a new Reagan and everything will be splendiferous. So, I’ll park my big old butt in the Barkolounger on Election Day because McCain’s not Republican enough. That’s what I’ll do, because I’ll show them!”.
Idiots.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to stop Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi from wrecking havoc on 1/6 of the US economy by bludgeoning the healthcare industry…but what we want to energize all of you to do is to start thinking about what you will do when this disaster comes.
Who are the people you know who will need the most help navigating whatever changes are coming?
What insurance do you have now?
What rules and guidelines are you following?
What do your policies actually say?
Can you answer all these questions? How up to snuff are you on all of this? What resources do you use to find out more information about healthcare that’s objective and propaganda free?
Really the only thing we can do right now is educate ourselves more. If you are reading this article, then you’re already someone who uses your free time to stay informed on all things political. That’s more than 90% of the people out there do. The next step is to take your personal education on healthcare up to the next level…starting with becoming an expert on what you already have. After that, it would be figuring out how much you personally have to lose under Utopiacare.
And then you branch out to help your friends, family, and neighbors to determine what they personally have in coverage and what they will lose under Utopiacare.
From there, you activate your communities and get other people to help you educate all those around you in the same way.
Few of you out there have ever done anything like this before, we imagine. We’ve never really done anything like this before either, aside from working the 2008 campaign and educating those around us about Dr. Utopia and what he is really all about. None of this is any fun, and it takes an awful lot of work, but an educated public is the current White House’s worst nightmare.
It’s good to see people standing up to the Left at Town Hall meetings…but it would be even better to see people highly informed and able to speak articulately on every topic, instead of just voicing their frustration and anger. Pelosi, Reid, Frank, and others lampoon the emotional outbursts at the Town Halls…but they stand there like deers in the headlights when intelligent and informed people stand up and directly question the push to socialism and healthcare redistribution.
We hate to borrow anything from propaganda central NBC, but “the more you know” the better things will be for all of us.
We will do our part by continuing to focus on this, and to ask you to push yourselves further. And you can help us by spreading the word on other sites that people need to start educating themselves on healthcare. Together, we can start a grassroots pushback on all this the likes of which has never been seen.
Together, we could actually end up saving this country from disaster…and could take back this government from the Left in 2010.
Who’s with us?
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Monday Open Thread: October 19th, 2009
What’s on your mind today?
Here’s an interesting read at Redstate.com, about how delusional the Left is in terms of healthcare reform. The author puts it in very interesting terms we had not thought about before, but s/he’s right on the money with this: under the Utopiacare scenario, people would be penalized something like $10-15 a month if they do not buy healthcare. If a person gets cancer, has an accident, or otherwise suddenly needs healthcare, at any time that person can pay for coverage, and start forking out $100-150 a month while they are getting the treatments they need. The insurance companies will be forced to pay for the treatments of all preexisting conditions.
Then, when the person’s better again, they drop their insurance and go back to paying the $10-15 a month in penalties until they need the insurance again.
This will collapse every insurance carrier in very short time…drive them right into the ground. Which is, of course, Dr. Utopia’s plan, because the only entity left standing will be the federal government, which will be the single payer system Dr. Utopia wants.
Now, Leftists are delusional because they don’t believe people will “game the system” and pay the cheap penalties until they need care, then pay the real coverage while they need treatment, and then drop down to the penalties when they no longer need it. But, if you think about it, that’s exactly what people are going to do. In the interest of full disclosure, that’s what all of us here would do under Utopiacare. If we had the chance to pay $10-15 a month until we actually needed to see doctors for something, and then knew we could start paying $100-150 a month and have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of treatments if we suddenly ever had a medical emergency, you better believe we’d take that deal.
It’s the best deal in the history of the planet.
But, not for the insurance companies, which would of course cease to exist.
What’s really interesting here is that this is a juncture in which the Left really is exposed for what it is at its core: delusional dreamers. If these people don’t see the fatal flaw in this plan, then they are truly living in their own fantasy world. ”Utopia” is a place that doesn’t exist, it’s all a big fantasy, so it’s apt the Left wants the nation to follow Dr. Utopia’s nonsense right off a cliff. Of course they believe rainbow feathered winged marshmallow Pegasus horses will catch us all and take everyone to Dream Town, but that’s because these people live in a childish world of their own design completely apart from reality.
We used to think they were crazy people, but that’s too simplistic a take on this. They aren’t crazy. They aren’t stupid. They’re just juvenile (and possibly autistic in some way).
There are a lot of people in business with the insurance companies, and a lot of industries, and thus jobs, that are tied into their success. It doesn’t seem possible that Utopiacare will ever be able to exist in an environment that knows what will happen to all those jobs once Utopiacare is enacted and its burdens start driving the insurers out of business. We just don’t see how the elderly, in particular, will sit back quietly while Medicare is ripped to shreds and they’re all lined up for Death Panels to decide whether they get to spend another 20 years in the nursing home — or whether they are mushed into Soylent Green.
But, stranger things happen every day in this the Golden Age of Hope, Change, and Unicorns.
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Here’s something that startles us, because we’re surprised they didn’t just give this award to Dr. Utopia, too, like his Nobel Peace Prize. There’s a prize for good leadership in Africa called the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership that’s supposed to go to someone in Africa whose shown good leadership…only the panel can’t find anyone in Africa who’s worthy of the prize. That certainly didn’t stop the Norwegians from giving their prize to Dr. Utopia, who has talked about doing things, and hopes to do things, so it’s funny this much lesser known panel isn’t using “hope” and “talking about things” as their criteria too. They seem to insist on actual accomplishments before they award a prize — and when they can’t find any accomplishments that merit a prize, they just don’t award the prize.
Imagine that.
They actually want their prize to mean something, so they only hand it out when they find people who’ve actually done things to earn it…so that nobody looks stupid and they don’t reward people who only talk a good TelePrompTered talk.
Will wonders never cease.
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Here’s something else that we’re watching: the demise of NBC.
Jay Leno, apparently, is driving the network into the ground, though NBC and its GE corporate parent won’t admit it. Jay Leno is New Coke at 10pm every week night and nobody’s buying it.
Why do we care?
Well, the networks of NBC are the most sexist, misogynistic, and vile on television. They employ Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. During the 2008 campaign they led the charge for Dr. Utopia and did everything they could to malign and berate Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin for daring, DARING, to stand in the way of the coming Golden Age of Hope, Change, and Unicorns.
NBC, MSNBC, and GE itself are on the same list with the Kennedy family, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Claire McCaskill, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and others who deserve whatever they get in this world.
If the flagship NBC goes down, we wonder what happens to low-ranked MSNBC, which consistently comes in last in all the ratings. Which will be first to go off the air if GE starts cost cutting?
We never much liked Jay Leno, but if his nightly yawnfest helps take down the worst sister-networks on the air, more power to him.
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Because NBC hates the show Glee so much (since NBC hates anything that’s awesome, especially when it blows its own middling offerings out of the water), we’ll talk about Glee now and something pretty amazing we noticed today.
On EW.com, there’s an article about someone we never heard of coming on Glee to play a “male diva” (a divo, not a miva, no matter what portmanteau EW tries to create for you). The actor in question is besties with the actress who plays Glee club diva Rachel on the show; his character will be the lead singer of rival group Vocal Adrenaline, and he’ll be yet another love interest for Rachel on the show.
Well, here’s the thing that makes us smile: read the comments on EW’s story and see how people are insisting this new character should be a love interest not for Rachel, but for KURT, the gay character on the show.
Great Merciful Zeus, we’ve come a long way baby.
People are actually rooting for the gay character to have a love interest, and disappointed a new addition to the show isn’t intended for him.
Now, we’re all in our mid-30s here. We remember Steven Carrington on Dynasty, and how ABC made all of his lovers crazy or had his father Blake accidentally or on purpose kill them (except, in the end, Bart, who ended up with Steven in the 1991 reunion special…and was miraculosly not murdered in the least). We remember Jack on Dawson’s Creek and how the WB wimped out and cutaway from his first on-screen kiss. Fox did the same thing with Matt on Melrose Place.
But, since then we’ve had Will & Grace and Queer as Folk, not to mention Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the likes of Project Runway (the latter being shows not necessarily about being gay, but featuring so many gays in a fun way that Americans just got used to us being around, as normal average people…who make everything around them more fabulous). The whole Bravo network, itself, is a great example.
in the 80s, 90s, and even for most of the 2000s we don’t think people would have been rooting for Kurt to have a boyfriend.
And it’s awesome to us that this is exactly what people are doing on the EW site.
It’s also awesome LGBTQ teens are coming out much, much earlier than they did when we were growing up. The average age for any of us here was about 19-20, while in college. But, we know so many kids in high school who are open and honest about who they are, with parents who support their kids no matter what.
We know it’s not the case everywhere, but in the instances where that support exists, we couldn’t be prouder of the parents.
And we’re pretty proud of EW.com readers today too. Not holding our breathe for Fox to really give Kurt a boyfriend, but here’s hoping they find some cool Broadway vet for him too, if Rachel manages to get so much unrealistic play.
Then again, Fox let Glee put Kurt in Spandex and lipsynch to Single Ladies, so the sky might be the limit in what they let him do.
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Judge rules that former Governor Rod Blagojevich CAN appear on NBC’s next Celebrity Apprentice. We kind of feel he’ll be booted really early on, but he’ll get to appear on the show and make some money…which the guy desperately needs for his defense.
Sunday Open Thread: October 18th, 2009
What’s on your mind this Sunday?
How do you think things will play out for the Heene family in Colorado? It looks like, as of now, they’re only going to be charged with a misdemeanor “reporting a false emergency”…but their Balloon Boy stunt cost taxpayers over $2 million statewide, as well as all the costs to Denver International in terms of closing down the airport briefly when everyone thought a child was in that homemade aircraft. Somehow, a misdemeanor does not seem appropriate for these people…who the Balloon Boy in question admitted to CNN “did it for the show”.
What do you think the longterm fallout will be from CNN gleefully using madeup accusations against Rush Limbaugh to destroy his chances of being part-owner of the Rams? This is one story we don’t believe for a minute is over yet…and we wonder how Rush is going to strike back, and at whom. Are Al Sharpton’s race-baiting days, and the whole Race Industry’s days, numbered?
What political themed costumes are you hearing people talk about for this year?
If we were you, and we didn’t have costumes for Halloween yet, we’d seriously go with something patriotic and encourage others to do the same as well.
That’s just a money-saver, because if you want to wear some patriotic George Washington, Betsy Ross, Statue of Liberty, etc. gear to any Tea Parties in the coming years then why not spend the money now and use it for Halloween costumes too? You can also wear these costumes to Fourth of July and other American-themed parties and events. So it’s a good investment.
It would also be an interesting, quiet protest in a way….if all these people out on Halloween were dressed up as patriotic-themed characters, there’d be a very pro-America vibe out there, on a night when everyone’s usually just being silly and ridiculous. But that spirit would still be there…and for those of us who know what’s up, it would be a way of seeing each other out there too.
If we didn’t already have our costumes finished, this is what we would do this year. Wish we had thought of it sooner.
Saturday Open Thread: October 17th, 2009
What’s on your mind this Saturday?
We heard a couple more interesting Halloween costume ideas the last few days, all centered on 80s pop stars, but with a twist.
One group of guys we know is going in drag as Madonna through the years: Borderline Madonna, Like A Virgin Madonna, Vogue Madonna, Blonde Ambition Madonna, and Music Madonna.
Another group is giving Cher the same timeline treatment: I Got You Babe Cher, Academy Awards Bob Mackie Cher, Turn Back Time Cher, and Believe Cher.
And a group of white women, ironically enough, is doing the same thing with Michael Jackson: Jackson Five Jackson (shortest in the group), Can’t Stop Till You Get Enough Michael, Thriller Michael, Billie Jean Michael, Dangle Blanket Michael, and Zombie Michael.
That’s something we haven’t seen before…taking a person and showing them through the various stages of their lives. It’s an interesting take for a group costume.
Of course, we’re also still seeing lots of guys dress up in bad drag, going as “slutty school girl” or “slutty nun”. We’d love to launch a crusade to get gay men, in particular, to be more creative for Halloween. Drag, if you want to know the truth, is actually an art form. When done right, it’s a magical thing. Done the way it’s usually done, it’s just ugly sad men in dresses. There’s an element of misogyny to some of these costumes too: men dressing up as women, badly, and acting bitchy…like they are channeling all the women they think are bitchy in their lives, and for that one night they get to dress up like them and act like them. It’s really, really childish if you think about it.
The thing we notice women doing most often is taking something male and making it “sexy” for a woman. The classic examples are things like Captain Hook, the Tin Man/Lion/Scarecrow, etc. But, lately women have been sexifying really obscure male characters, or historical figures. One girl we know is dressing as “Sexy Orville Reddenbacher”. Another is going as “Babe-ra-ham Lincoln”. Her friend is going as “Teddy Roosevelt”, wearing a skimpy fur collared teddy, clutching a little soft bear.
Straight guys seem to gravitate towards simple store bought costumes like “Fart Machine” (incidentally, what some people, like Oprah, are 365 days of the year. Unfortunately). Giant condoms, Mammogram Machines, One Night Stands, etc. None of these things are particularly clever or funny to us, but to straight guys, apparently, they’re hilarious. That reminds us of going back to Cleveland or Pittsburgh and realizing everyone there is about three years behind the styles and fashions in New York, LA, or Chicago…or seeing tourists from Germany or Britain and realizing they’re 5-10 years behind us…with some of them still looking for raves or underwear parties and wondering where they can buy glow sticks.
We’re curious to see how many gay guys take swipes at Sarah Palin this Halloween. We also want to see how many people make political statements of any kind, how many buy Dr. Utopia masks, if any drag queens go as MEchelle, and are thus proud of Halloween for the first time in their adult lives.
Another really smart costume to do this year would be something patriotic: Statue of Liberty, George Washington, Sam Adams, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Betsy Ross, etc. All of these costumes can be reused throughout the year at Tea Party events in the days ahead.
We have a feeling there’s going to be a lot more of those as we slog through the next three years, so it might be smart to put your money to good use and invest in a costume you can wear again and again for various things. If we hadn’t already gone with our own Greek Mythology theme this year, that’s what we would do.
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We think this is really interesting. All-black, all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta is cracking down on cross-dressing. We could write PAGES on how hilarious this is, but let’s just boil it down to this: the people who most RELISH cross-dressing are the very same black men who’d most likely attend Morehouse College. On the down-low. And the fact there was so much cross-dressing going on that they had to BAN IT speaks volumes.
But, isn’t it interesting when a black school bans something, with a heavy taint of homophobia to it, nobody says boo. But, if anything related to the black community or culture was banned, Al Sharpton and Henry Gates and Jesse Jackson would be apoplectic, railing and rolling and wailing in the streets.
When will fair be fair?
Balloon Boy was a giant hoax meant to launch a new reality series for Heene family
H/t Perfunction for taking the time to piece together some video that show what a hoax the whole Colorado Balloon Boy nonsense is.
Oddly, we almost never watch the Wife Swap show, but did actually catch the Heenes when they were on a while ago. They were some of the strangest people we’ve seen in a while — and only kept watching because they reminded us of the crazy people in that old Helen Hunt tornado movie. And we only really liked that because of all the Wizard of Oz references because, honestly, we’re gay and the love of all things Oz is as encoding in our genes as our appreciation of all things Gyllenhaal.
It probably cost the state, the feds, and local authorities over $2 million scrambling helicopters, diverting flights, and mobilizing emergency response teams when they believed a 6 year old boy was trapped on an uncontrollable makeshift aircraft.
When things like this happen, we wonder how many people die on the ground because paramedics and other emergency staff are occupied elsewhere. We know from experience that 5 minutes is a long time for a heart attack victim, for instance. We have a friend who suffered a massive coronary and had medical help arrive in 3 minutes. We was saved, but the medics said later that if they had gotten there even minutes later the result might have been different.
So, we don’t have much sympathy for people who cause stunts that take emergency responders’ eyes off their work for even a moment. ”Baby Jessica Down the Well Syndrome” manifests every time there’s a small child in a bizarre situation, where everyone and their mothers want to come running to help the poor tyke in peril…so when it turns out the child’s parents are attention-starving whackadoodles and the little boy very honestly says “this was all for a show”, then someone in Colorado needs to stand back and look at what sort of penalty the Heenes need to pay to settle accounts for this.
At the very LEAST, the Department of Child Services needs to evaluate this family…for the safety of the children. Even if this was a hoax, it doesn’t seem to us that living in close proximity to experimental aircraft that can so easily be launched is the best environment for children. We know people whose children were taken away because of much, much less than that. In one case, it was because the mother insisted on keeping a very large dog in the home…and DCS took her kid away.
Giant flying saucer balloons sure feel more dangerous than a mangy, 10-year old rottweiller.
After the MSM tires of this story and it floats off over the rainbow, we wonder what the authorities’ follow-up will be. It would be interesting if you help us keep our eyes on this…and see if the Heenes suffer any sort of consequences for what very much seems like a giant publicity stunt.
What does it mean to be a Democrat today?
This is a questions we’re asking ourselves more and more lately, upon witnessing the utter travesty that’s taking place in Washington these days.
What Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are doing in Congress is illegal, criminal, treasonous, and unconstitutional. We’re talking, of course, about the plot to ram through Utopiacare using backdoor, secret, reconcilliation means instead of voting this important, world-changing legislation up or down properly in the House and Senate.
We’re lifelong Democrats around here…whose faith in the party was first shaken by the way the DNC backed Dr. Utopia and used all its resources to bring down Hillary Clinton last year. The final straw broke our backs on May 31st, 2008 around 5pm or so when we heard news the DNC had awarded Dr. Utopia some of Hillary Clinton’s Michigan delegates. That outrage will never be forgotten. They actually TOOK delegates away from a woman who earned them because they wanted to give them to a black man who did absolutely nothing for them. How the Democrats have behaved since taking over all three branches of government has been stomach-turning. If it weren’t for the Clintons, who we will always be loyal to, we’d no longer call ourselves Democrats. We’d be independents, or members of the new Tea Party that’s forming…whatever that ultimately turns out to be. Not Green, not Libertarian, not anything that exists currently, but something else…something PUMA-flavored that’s still brewing.
But, as long as the Clintons are Dems, we’re right there with them. Some of you out there can’t understand our loyalty to them, but the Clintons have always been good to all of us, and we believe in them like no other family on the planet. Bill, Chelsea, and most of all Hillary, will ALWAYS be the public figures we support most and back no matter what. Many of us year spent every cent we had in 2008 helping them, and never regret one bit of that. It is our most sincere hope in this world one of them runs for elected office again so we can once more be boots on the ground under their banner. The three of them wake up every morning doing whatever they can to make this country stronger and life here better for all Americans…and for that, we can get up each day and work hard following their example as best we can too.
So, in reality, we’re more Clintonites than we are Democrats.
And we hope to Olympus on high that what Pelosi and Reid are trying to pull with reconciliation leads to massive liberal defeat in 2010. We want all the moderate Dems siding with the Clintons to win, but all the Kool-Aid Kids in Dr. Utopia’s fold to go down with Harry Reid and lose re-election. We want it to be an absolute ROUTE. And we want that to lead to a full-on Democrat Civil War to take back our party from the loony left.
We hope moderate Dems and independents team up with Republicans in 2010 and create a tidal wave that makes the Contract with America rebuff of 1994 look like a Kool-Aid backwash.
It would be best, in terms of defeating Dr. Utopia in 2012, if Democrats just barely retain the House and Senate. This way, Pelosi and new-Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin have two years to make fools of themselves before the 2012 elections. If Republicans win the House and Senate, or either of the two, then Democrats have someone to blame for things for two years. We don’t want to see that happen. Harry Reid seems likely to be defeated no matter what, but it would take a miracle for San Franciscans to vote out Pelosi. It’s a safe bet she’ll remain Speaker, making cat videos or whatever it is she does all day, and that’s a large part of what’s needed to ensure Dr. Utopia’s a loser of a one-term president.
It was an odd position being Chicagoans who rooted for our city to lose the 2016 Olympics. We strongly feel that by losing those games, and suffering that humiliating Oprah and Mrs. Utopia-related defeat, that the city is stronger and better able to face the challenges of the future.
We also believe that as Democrats, true Democrats of the moderate vein, a strong defeat of the liberal agenda in 2010 and 2012 is needed if the party’s ever going to come back to the Clintonian center.
The DNC has moved so far into the alien territory of the Alinsky-Obama-Ayers Left that it’s unrecognizable to us.
The ONLY thing that’s keeping us around is that we can use the defeats in 2010 as an opening to take back the party and return Clinton centrists as our focus.
We don’t know how others out there feel, but that’s where we sit here in Boystown.
Friday Open Thread: October 16th, 2009
What’s on your minds this Friday?
Here’s an interesting post at Redstate on race-baiting hucksterism, mainly Al Sharpton’s cottage industry of shaking down corporations so that he doesn’t accuse them of being RAAACISTS. One fallout of the attacks on Rush Limbaugh for trying to buy the Rams could be FINALLY exposing Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Henry Gates, Spike Lee, Eric Holder, and the rest of their ilk for what they are — shameless manipulators of false grievances in what amounts to a Race Industry. Redstate has a list of corporations up who regularly pay off Al Sharpton so that he doesn’t bring protests and Henry Gates-styled wailing and screaming to their doorsteps.
It’s time the Race Industry ends, people. Race cards expired on January 20th, 2009 at 12 noon. Henry Gates’ antics were really the last straw in many people’s books, especially when the current president rushes to his race-baiting defense and calls police stupid before he even knows the facts. But, when dealing with the Race Industry and those who profit most from it — including hucksters like Sharpton and tenured “professors” who write and speak on the topic of grievances exclusively — facts are of little importance.
Facts like, oh, for instance, that Rush Limbaugh never said any of the vile things CNN accused him of saying…when CNN has no audio or transcripts of any of it…and despite 20 years of being on the air almost every day, there’s no tape of any of Rush’s shows making comments like the ones CNN claims he made.
It sure feels like a whole world of hurt’s going to be coming CNN’s way, and there will be no way to pay off anyone to keep it from happening.
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H/t Michelle Malkin for this one. It’s a rap about how much of a joke the Nobel Peace Prize is:
You get a Peace Prize if you:
* mow the lawn
* do the laundry
* stay in the house
* groom the dog
* do some dips
* are black
* make a sandwich
* eat the sandwich
* hope the sandwich is delicious
PEACE PRIZE
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File this one under hubris.
James Cameron’s spent $300 million on a movie called Avator, that’s a cartoon about people traveling to another planet and having themselves put into alien cat-people bodies so they can swing around in the jungle and ride giant monsters.
It truly looks like the single dumbest thing we have seen in a while.
Cameron was told during the making of Titanic that he was doomed to go down in history as making the biggest flop. Well, everything we read and saw about Titanic made us believe it would be a huge hit. Every scrap we saw on it looked gorgeous, and the story had something people could instantly grab onto and run wild with on an emotional level. And it was the TITANIC. Something that’s a cultural touchstone, something we’re all familiar with, something that was just aching for a love story to be set aboard it.
But Avator? Really?
We expect it to be an epic failure on the Heaven’s Gate scale…and could possibly sink whatever studios are behind this. Cue everything people said about Cameron before Titanic, but apply it instead to this $300 million cartoon.
If we are missing something, then please tell us we’re wrong here, but we just can’t imagine people lining up to see this piece of garbage…and then walking out of the theater to get back in line and see it again.
Never in our lives did we think people actually did things like that, but we heard stories about people seeing the original Star Wars and then walking out and getting in line to see it again.
We actually did that with Titanic when it was released. The first showing of it was sold out one day, so we saw the James Bond movie that opened that day instead (Tomorrow Never Dies, we believe). After that, we got in line and bought a ticket to Titanic…and liked Titanic so much we actually got in line and bought a ticket to the next showing. We saw three movies that day, and cried like little babies all through Titanic both times…more so on second viewing because we knew what was going to happen (to the characters…not the ship, since that was a given).
Cameron’s boasting Avator will be bigger than Titanic…which seems like a challenge to the Fates to ensure that it’s not. Unsinkable is never unthinkable, Mr. Cameron, as you should most certainly know.
The Cleveland Olympics: 2020
Here’s something we’re going to be pushing for the next few years: the Cleveland Olympics in 2020.
The IOC should stop selecting major world cities to host the Olympics Games every four years. Developed cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Beijing, Sydney, London, Paris, and even Rio benefit little from the Olympics, because these cities are pretty great to begin with.
Just imagine how much good the Olympics could do if they were awarded, every four years, to cities that desperately need an infusion of life and economic stimulus…cities that are falling apart because there’s no money to repair their roads and build all the things they’d need to make a real comeback.
Cities like Cleveland, Ohio.
The Cleveland Olympics could be a truly transformative event. Instead of pushing Seattle, Dallas, Boston, or another major league American city for 2020, the US Olympics committee should turn its attention to a city that could be completely rebuilt from the ground up with the Olympics as an excuse to invest all that time and energy into a civic comeback.
Other contenders could be Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee.
But, Cleveland’s on our minds because it was just awarded the 2014 Gay Games — a decision we don’t agree with, despite our love for Cleveland (as some of us here were born there) and the fact Cleveland desperately needs those tourist dollars.
But, Cleveland’s not a gay-friendly city. It’s a very hostile place to be different from the norm in any way. There isn’t even a gay bar in downtown Cleveland anymore (now that the long-running Grid nightclub closed). We have no idea how the city’s going to react to the Gay Games five years from now…but hope with so much time to spend, the city will mount a massive reeducation campaign for its citizens…many of whom are still very fond of shouting “FAG!” and beating the living daylights out of gay guys (and we speak from experience, and more than a few black eyes, on that one).
But, the Gay Games organizers believe there’s enough time to “turn Clevelanders around”, so we feel if any city can be turned around by massive, well-monitored Olympics spending, it should be Cleveland.
From a public policy and urban development angle, this could be an interesting project to research and write about going forward — how to take a new approach to the Olympics and turn them into a real agent of permanent, positive change…instead of keeping them as the giant party and graft and corruption fest they currently are.
If Africa doesn’t mount a successful bid for the 2020 Games (the only continent besides Antarctica to never host the Games) then the 2020 Games should be held in America, since the US would not have, at that point, held the Games for 24 years. So, the cards seem stacked in America’s favor…and we believe whichever city we pick for our bid should be the one that can actually be improved dramatically by Olympics preparation, provided a sensible and well-thought out plan is in place for how to keep Cleveland running in the black after all those athletes return to their home countries, undoubtedly awed by the wonders of the American North Coast and Midwest.
$20 million intended for our troops instead diverted to Kennedy Family
The Kennedys of Massachusetts are unbelievable. As shameless and single-minded as spiders. The whole world’s their golden web, and we all are just hapless morsels for them to feed on.
The current outrage involving these would-be aristocrats is the latest defense spending bill, in which more than $20 million intended to buy food, ammunition, and armored protection for our men and women in harm’s way was instead diverted to the Kennedy Family, for the “Ted Kennedy Institute” — which we can only hope against hope does not include a driving school.
The Kennedys made their fortune running illegal booze and guns in the 1920s, and have amassed millions since by using the House, presidency, and Senate to fund their pet projects, enhance their name and reputation, and send lucrative government deals to their supporters.
They have more than enough millions to fund all manner of “Ted Kennedy Memorials”, on their own dime.
THey do not need to steal money from soldiers in battle to further Kennedy largesse.
When will enough be enough for these horsey spiders? When will any of them take time out of their busy days milking the public to see a dentist?
Thursday Open Thread: October 15th 2009
What’s on your minds this Thursday?
It looks like more of Dr. Utopia’s minions in Ohio are being brought to justice: a police contractor who assisted notorious Muppet-skinner and bougie villain Helen Jones-Kelley with illegal “research” into Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher in the closing days of the 2008 election is being criminally charged for his part in Jones-Kelley’s abuse of power.
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Hillary Clinton creams Dr. Utopia in the latest Gallup popularlity poll, reminiscent of the shellacking she gave The Lightbringer in the wonderful sates of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, and other states where even the best efforts of ACORN, the aristo-spiders of the Kennedy clan, and Oprah herself couldn’t game those primaries for him.
It’s a long shot, of course, but what happens in 2011 if Clinton’s in the 60s-70s in approval, and Dr. Utopia’s down in the 30s for overall approval, and in the 40s tops for personal popularity? If the liberals leave him, Dr. Utopia will always have racist blacks who’ll stand with him because of the color of his skin, no matter what. But, who else will he have left in 2011?
We would more than anything to see a primary fight against him. Not saying it will happen, but saying that’s what we’d love to see. To be in the trenches again for Hillary Clinton would be the greatest joy we could ever imagine.
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If you are at all religious, please pray for Justice Ginsburg.
Her health seems much, much worse than the SCOTUS lets on. It’s clear the MSM is covering up how bad it really is…much like they did with the murderer Ted Kennedy. His brain tumor was always fatal, but the MSM kept claiming he was heading towards recovery. Right up until the day he died.
What’s most disconcerting about this is that Ginsburg, as a SCOTUS Justice, should have the Rolls Royce of medical care…better than just about anyone in the world. So, if she’s getting “bad medicine” from the government, what kind of medicine would the government give to the rest of us mere meat bags under Utopiacare?
Serious consideration should be made right now to prep Ann Claire Williams to replace Ginsburg on the SCOTUS. We are strong supporters of Williams, and hoped she, not Sotomayor, would have been our newest Justice. Without Ginsburg, the Court will be down to just one woman…the “wise Latina”. The Court should have at least 4 women on it…so people like Williams should be the next ones to be installed on the Court.
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One of the great mysteries to those of us who weren’t born and raised in Chicago is the city’s obsession with Garrett’s popcorn. The old store on Michigan Avenue lost its lease and was closed for a while…now reopened in a new building. And it’s practically a holiday for most people. It’s just popcorn. When we first moved here, all we ever heard from people in their 40s and above was, “Have you tried Garrett’s yet? You have to try Garrett’s. It’s out of this world!”. No, it’s not. It’s very much of this world. It’s popcorn. They have cheese corn and caramal corn and they put them in the same bag and it’s kind of gross. Which is surprising, because we love sausage and marshmallow pizza from Pie Hole, so you’d think we’d be all about Garrett’s, but we’re not.
Now, older people we know in other states occasionally ask us to send them Chicago care packages with Garrett’s, Lou Malnati’s deep dish, and Frango Mints from Marshall Fields. So, we oblige. The Garrett’s employees are always rude, the lines are always long and full of tourists, and the popcorn is always just popcorn.
We’ve also been told Garrett’s is owned and run by a particularly nasty woman, who’s notorious for treating people badly. Just another reason we don’t think much of this place.
But, you would not believe how many people today are so excited that “Garretts is back open!”. We won’t begrudge them their fun…so we are happy they are so thrilled about the popcorn served up by rude people who work for a nasty troll. More power, and popcorn, to them.
