Why Libertarians Are Crazier Than Shithouse Rats, Volume XLIV

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YA HEARD!

Bye, Wade

If, as they say, a movie is a critique of another movie, the fast approaching summer has at least three or four hard-edged barrels of bloody insouciance, coming right up, to do the hard critical lifting for us. Between The Expendables, the A-Team, and the already released Kick-Ass (more vigilante superhero than mercenary, but bear with me) and The Losers, does a critic even need to do the job?

If only wishing made it so, especially if The Losers is any indication of what to expect in terms of self reflection. Oh, it's self-REFLEXIVE, all right, revealing the source of its central frustration. It's sad when a movie attempts ironic detachment but pulls off mostly slovenly detachment. Don't even get me started on the "slick" camera work and editing, and the terrible, washed out pallet of the whole endeavor. For all the money they've obviously spent here, the movie just isn't that much fun to look at.

What's really any fun at all about this thing is the two-thirds of the cast that seems to be not taking it too seriously. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Jason Patric, and particularly Chris Evans, all seem to know what kind of movie they're in. Evans's giddy sketch comedy and collection of t-shirt insta-commentary should be about the only thing you remember from The Losers two weeks later. Idris Elba, it should be noted, does not look happy in this at all.

The story can be summarized fairly succinctly. An elite team of special ops is framed, by a billionaire megalomaniac, for the killing of some thirty or so Bolivian children. Zoe Saldana shows up months later and gains Jeffrey Dean Morgan's trust by beating the shit out of him and burning down his hotel. It's kind of like the Comedian's death scene from Watchmen, only boring. Afterwords, they together convince the team to sneak back into the U.S. and find the billionaire, to exact, well, what exactly? Swift vengeance? Do they go to clear their names? Now, consider the scene here where a helicopter full of children is shot down. You'd probably think you're in for a serious revenge story, right?

Not the case. The tone of the movie kind of allows you to forget. It certainly doesn't presume you should care. Say what you will about Kick-Ass, whether you can sustain yourself through its sky-high level of violence or not, the stakes are always pretty emotionally clear. Deaths, kidnappings, beatings, atrocities, etc., are always felt and felt hard, in spite of the flick's cavalier tone.

The Losers seems to be approaching a similar revenge story, aspiring to the same level of hip, cool self reflexiveness. Kick-Ass succeeds wildly where The Losers seems not to try at all. I must stress this point: Thirty-plus children are brutally murdered onscreen in the first ten minutes of this flick, and by the end, they haven't really been mentioned again, and then the villain ESCAPES. Instead of retribution, we get some more goofball mugging from Chris Evans, which is entertaining, but more YouTube friendly than $10.50 a pop, right? It's sad to think they were setting this up for a sequel.

Opposite Day

"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans?"

Via Sullivan

At this point, the collective heaving sigh of millions of people, weary of the lunatic hatred, the fringey nuttiness and the charbroiled ideologies and the grandiose schemers, are just turning it all off. People who read blogs are people who read blogs (and newspapers). If you're one of the handful who reads mine, you'll still peer into this insanity from time to time.

But really, I feel a certain calm with this right now. Even if Palin or somesuch other wingnut wins in 2012, terrible though that would be, really, it's not ok, but something will rise out of its ashes. It may be the end of American politics if that happens, but its actual possibility (unlikely though that possibility may be), raises questions I will be asking anyone they pertain to come 2012:

- What does your party propose to do to solve our increasingly complex problems?

- What do you mean when you say you're "taking your country back"?

- How are things really going to be different or better for you under President Palin/Gingrich/Pawlenty?

- Do you really imagine that progressives, queers, lesbians, blacks, Hispanics, liberals, (actual) socialists, professors, scientists, doctors, writers, lawyers, the ACLU, Hollywood, anti-war activists, and on and on and on, will just pack it in and absolve themselves of the political process henceforth? Do you think the Civil Rights Act is going to wind itself back and rescind?

Especially if you galvanize us even harder with a politician as poisonous as her?

You really do live in The Outer Limits.

Citizenship

The whole interview is well worth it.

Attn Wing Nuts

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I wish you all would watch this video. Watch it. Become less appalling. You know who you are, but of course, it's my blog, so you're not reading this.

These people are out-of-their-minds fucking wailing-at-the-moon crazy. Who WANTS to use nuclear weapons? Mostly it's people who'd call 'em "nucular", that's who. Stupid is always out for power. I wish their flocks would goddamn watch something like this, but of course, they won't.

F A T

The final part of Red Letter Media's AOTC review. It works as a standalone bitch slap to George Lucas and is highly recommended:



Note: This clip contains the ultimate expression of devotion to The Empire Strikes Back

Bugbears

Here we find two of the most common pundit afflictions: (1) a compulsion to assert equivalencies even when they don't exist, and (2) a willingness to spout anything without doing the slightest work to find out if it's true. Douthat's claim about Maddow -- that "conservatives are only invited on [her] show when they have something nasty to say about Republicans" -- is completely false.

- From Glenn Greenwald, who is always clear and direct.

Somehow, a very real and understandable discontentment with the the red-state blue-state divide has managed to produce a moral equivalence meme, regarding journalists, pundits, etc. My Sullivan addiction notwithstanding, his essentially moderate views notwithstanding, I don't think he's even a symbol of this, with his Moore, Hewitt, Malkin, etc. awards. He's still, essentially, a moderate (who calls himself a conservative).

I don't blame the President, either, based on his 2004 "we're not red states or blue states" speech.

I think it's a more amorphous, insidious muddying of clarity that's afoot. You cannot sufficiently tell me that the left's most potent rhetoric has anything on the far-right's spitting on people and making fun of or screaming at Parkinson's sufferers. We have one side that uses words like "socialism" where in private they're using the epithets they wish they could still use in the open.

This separates them from perfectly helpless, small-C conservatives who have legitimate concerns on spending, the deficit, taxes, etc. I've never felt these were inherently shallow things to focus on politically.

Rachel Maddow, someone whose videos I've obviously posted here a lot, is not an example of a dismissable journalist, damnable on the basis of her partisanship.

She is absolutely indispensable, largely due to her bias. She is honest on where she stands. She has a worldview, a variety of left-of-center political stances, and an absolutely fearless willingness to challenge people's orthodoxies, on both sides. She is learned, articulate, and always backs up what she's got with some kind of factual representation. We must stop condemning people simply for the courage of possessing a worldview.

The right in this country developed all on their own the myth of the "left-wing media".
They've used that meme to essentially elevate it into its own reality. It took them forty or so years.

So which side, now that there are two warring journalist sides, is correct? The right-wing side has managed to hold onto their own base while disillusioning other people into thinking that both sides are "equally wrong". They're masters of this.

So don't let them win. If we start swallowing this idea that both sides are equally wrong, both sides are damnably biased, we're invariably receiving our genesis of that idea from a long outdated right-wing talking point.

And worse, we're acting like children. It's the media's job to present us with the facts, not all sides of every issue. For "all sides" read "conservative ideology".

Be an adult. Weigh and consider the facts you are handed. And fuck "balance".

He's Your President Too

I've knocked around Bill Maher a little bit in the past year, but I do still like the guy. He's right on this one, whether you like his atheism movie or not.

Get 'em, Roger

Does it make me a liberal if I believe Jefferson has been more central to American history than Calvin? That Lincoln was our greatest president, and Davis not our President at all? That the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs? No, it doesn't make me a liberal. It makes me an educated, rational being. Unfortunately, in some precincts of Texas that may appear to be nearly as bad.

(Via)

No Right Not To Be Shocked

I wonder how often this book will brought up in protest at my store.



(The book in question.)

5 Dollars

Roger Ebert, proud, lifelong 3-D hater.

via

RIP At the Movies

IN July

Oh, these. These are great.



The version I grew up with:




(Via)

Earth + Plastic

Some perspective. We don't have any voices like this one right now. This one struck down the din.

He wrote an excellent memoir, a great little history of our values, much like the work that preceded it.

Don't Wannnna Clooooose My Eyyyyes.....

Always Amazed

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That gun-toting, John-Birching lunatics have no doubt in their minds that they'll actually win a bloody fight against the National Guard, the police, the U.S. Army, etc., is a constant source of amazement for me. There's just no doubt at all that they'll triumph over "tyranny". And replace it with what? Haha, why, freedom, silly.

Choose symbols instead of well-defined concepts, and violence will be read upon them.

We ignore these stories at our peril.

Our Daily Mwomp

Popping in to share a wee little twitter moment between myself and the current frontrunner of breaksy-dom:



The chooooon under discussion:


Mr B - Little Acid People (Peo De Pitte Remix) by rogueindustries

Sorry, Comrade.

Better luck elsewhere.

Chastity Porn:

Made almost bearable by Rifftrax since its dvd inception:

79 Fucking Explosive

(Via)