Oh, yeah that's me all right! Maybe in my youth.
I've been polling my precinct and McCain is ahead, with no Ron Paul supporters to be found. I think Peggy Noonan's right - the average R voter thinks McCain's okay enough. "Not conservative enough" doesn't cut it with most people.
so whom should I vote for, hmmm?
Happy Birthday, cassandra!
Dorothy Parker may be laid.....to rest, but we have cassandra and that comes pretty close - maybe even better perhaps because she is a smart conservative. (oh, quit whining, you left leaning scolders!)
...and I'm just going to come right out and say it - I loved watching Cimino's 'Heaven's Gate'! If a film is as beautiful, sensual and breathtakingly shot as it was, I can forgive a lot!
Happy Birthday, Cassandra!
damn. If I knew you were right here, cassandra, I would have said 'we have you!'...
"smart conservative?" Don't be redundant, Dana!
heh.
Happy birthday Cassandra!
I always thought you were brilliant, doug!
Look at the post again. I included two of Dana's exquisite photos as another tribute to cassandra, and just for their own beauty. Clicking on the rose takes you to Dana's phlog.
Neat photos. Dana does your camera have image stabilization (and do you use it)? My pix come out blurry due to shake no doubt.
That's one fine feline too.
I've been meaning to see Heaven's Gate & forgot - will look for it.
That rose looks like a "Double Delight." They are both beautiful and smell, well, delightful.
You'll like , maybe love "Heaven's Gate". Amazing, but 2008 is a 1978 moment in Hollywood; "there Will Be Blood" is our present day Heaven's Gate, and there was a moment of rare seriousness (if, hey wattya know, lefty seriousness) that year; even stuff like "Heartbeat", "The Warriors" and "The Buddy Holly Story" had real Hollywood power that transcended the original material, as the best films always do.
Though we do lack 1978's "Grease".
And its "Superman". Anyone else here old enough to remember the simple, delighted shock laugh the smooth comedy and effortless-looking effects got from cynical 1978 audiences that expected junk?
What passed for great popular art back then? Woody Allen's "Interiors". Joseph Losey's "Mr. Klein" (pretty damn good). It's hard to remember today that "The Deer Hunter" was treated like the arrival of Hemingway, Eisenstein, Freud and Mark all in one, but more, and with Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro, the ultimate auteur handcrafted film in the height of the director-worshipping era...Tarantino's revolting apotheosis fifteen years later was nothing as compared to the sudden discovery of Greatness, and then...
I see hellscan has to be accessed directly.
ei:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...s/cathyfans/
298
I clicked on the comments previews on the left and got in..after some cursing.
My back is all whopperjob after sitting here with the laptop for too long..
"Revolting apotheosis" would make a good name for a rock band.
Is HaloScan back on the air?
Yes! (Grabs the mike) Hello Rangoon! Is this thing on?
Glad to be back on Cassandra's birthday evening!
Did you fix it, Bradley? If so, thanks! If not, thanks just the same...
Nay, Sir Gary, 'twas no action of mine. HaloSatan cured itself into being our familiar HaloScan.
Where's allan?....
Up to my neck in work and market stuff. Not a complaint, love it all. But it has cut into my frivolousness. But on a quick peek into the stomping grounds, I see whopperjob gots the birthday bash going. Add my happy to that, C note.
Actually, I stopped by to offer up this little interesting something I snipped out of one of my newsletters that might stimulate some discussion here, in that it starts you off with some movie chat and then heads off into UK bizarreness. Kind of a Swampy two-fer.
Okay, back to the salt [gold] mine for the remaining hours of the night...
"...In Blade Runner, the replicants locate and force one of the Tyrell Corporation’s genetic engineers, J.F. Sebastian, to arrange a meeting with the company’s master designer and patriarch, Dr. Eldon Tyrell. What transpires at that meeting, I won’t spoil here. But what I will mention is what Sebastian has surrounded himself with in his own home. Being a genetic designer, Sebastian has created a spacious apartment full of genetically aberrant pseudo-humans whose only purpose in life is to amuse and befriend him…
They’re like pets. And they are engineered not to be free of defect — but to be more entertaining or endearing than typical humans by virtue of their defects. They are abnormally sized, have abnormal voices and mannerisms, and are clearly less intelligent and coordinated than typical humans. Sebastian dresses them up in cute little costumes, teaches them to say trite catchphrases in greeting as he comes home from work each day, and poses them around his home like stuffed animals.
This, in my opinion, is the most terrifyingly prophetic aspect of Blade Runner: The notion that needy, greedy, maladjusted, corrupt, agenda-driven or just plain lonely people could one day implement the awesome power of genetic creation on a whim and without due concern for its ramifications — like a kid who finds his dad’s pistol in the bedside table and shoots up the neighborhood just to hear it go “bang.”
Think this couldn’t happen? Think the sole purpose of human genetic engineering science is to accelerate evolution, prevent chromosomal imperfections, ensure better health and eradicate disease? Think we humans are too moral and noble of spirit to intentionally create less-than-perfect children?
Think again.
Right now, in the U.K., a pair of deaf-rights organizations — the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People and the British Deaf Association — are lobbying to give deaf prospective parents (and presumably, hearing parents as well) the right to genetically engineer deaf children. Their efforts are focused on amending a bill currently passing through the legislative process in the House of Lords, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which currently would prohibit the screening of embryos for the purpose of choosing one with an abnormality. According to the U.K.’s The Sunday Times, a broader coalition of organizations representing people with disabilities will also begin campaigning for this amendment to the bill, starting this month."
Forgot to credit the author...Jim Arnheim.
allan zooms in, classes up the joint, leaves us with a thought, and vanishes in a cloud of cyber-incense.
It's still tough to get into thread #299 for some reason. I do want to compliment Dana for her photography, particularly that cat with red leaves. DE, check it out; it's worthy of "Red Desert". Rotunno. Coutard. Ondricek.
There Will Be Blood is everythign Heaven's Gate wanted to be but forgot in its quest for being seen as "Great Important Art." It was all dressed up to go somewhere but lost the map in the glove compartment. There Will Be Blood knows where it's going from first to last. So when DDL yells "I'm finished!" he's speaking for P.T. Anderson as well.
Allan,
WHAT THE HECK? What sort of idiot would want to inflict a disability on a child? How stupid, how selfish, how retarded. Morons.
BTW - Welcome back, you've been missed.
I've been unable to access journalspace since entry 289 on January 26 - Grrr! Fortunately, I've been able to read the comments via Haloangel. Belated birthday wishes to Messrs Fikes and Webster as well as Cassandra. It's good to see Nancy and Ody are keeping an eye on TFS.
Cassandra, I enjoyed your firsthand account of Montanan politics - the description of the McCainista with the pants of 13 buttons had me chuckling. American Presidential politics is such fun, the outcome is never a forgone conclusion, there's regular changing of the parties and despite the rhetoric, no one ever gets killed for supporting the wrong candidate.
The only Americans in our valley, a black family of lifelong Democrats from East St. Louis, informed me that, for the first time in their lives, they would be voting for the GOP. McCain is their man.
From politics to nautical history, hands up all those of you who knew that during the American Civil War a Confederate ship the CSS Alabama fought a sea battle against the Union ship the Sea Bride off the coast of Cape Town? To this day the battle is commemorated annually during our carnival, with the singing of a folksong Daar kom die Alabama. (There comes the Alabama) During her 75 000 mile voyage she sank 64 ships, some as far away as Shanghai. The Alabama was finally sunk off the French coast at Cherbourg. You too can astonish your friends with useless nautical information if you read WOLF OF THE DEEP By Stephen Fox.
Here's wishing all a relaxing week ahead - I believe there's a game of Football on today. Have fun and don't drink too much.
Gather round the Swamp Kitchen for a new post brakfeast! HaloSatan is having problems, so to comment go right heah.
Charlotte,
Sorry to hear about your Journalspace access problem! Is it because of the Internet outage due to that cable being cut? Or some other reason?
Bradley I'm trying Opera, Safari and IE, yet still nada.
I'm able to access all the other US websites except Journalspace.
DRAT!
Charlotte,
That is a puzzlement. Why would Journalspace alone be affected? I will post the text of my posts in the comments sections until this passes. And I suggest the other posters, including new poster LEWIS FEIN, yay!, do the same.
Here you go!
Charlotte, that's fascinating about the Alabama. I with Miguel Little Feather were around to comment on it.
I with he wath, too. Because I for one would be quite interested in finding out how the Confederate Navy could sink 60 plus ships around the seven seas...
I couldn't wait, so I did the google and found out the Alabama was a "screw sloop-of-war" built in England expressly for the Confederate States of America. Interestingly enough, its demise at the hands of the USS Kearsarge came days after the Bama boys had pulled in for repairs and au pairs in Cherbourg, France. Well, that would explain the screw part of the sloop classification.
Since I have dinged Iain Murray for misleading reporting, it is only fair to give him credit for correcting a phony statement attributed to Bill Clinton (emphasis his)
Jonah, that video is actually (and again, I can't believe I'm saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton. The biter bit, you may say, but I don't believe this sort of manipulation by the media is in any way helpful. The clip is out of context. What Clinton actually said was:
And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren.
The bold section is what ABC chose to highlight in that video, plucked from the middle of words that have the opposite meaning. That's not good journalism in any sense.
Let's give Murray a hand for being honest to the other side.
You know this happens more and more all the time, Bradley. The media hones in on select "bites" and completley ignores context. When called on it they act dumb. It was amazing to hear Leslie Blitzer in that "debate" the other night misinterpret with both Hillary AND Obama had said just seconds before. For what they actually said was "off script" as far as he was concerned.
David E.
You know this happens more and more all the time, Bradley. The media hones in on select "bites" and completley ignores context. When called on it they act dumb.
Perhaps because they are honestly that dumb. Or sloppy. But I often call the media out on it, and will continue to do so. And since Iain Murray went against his ideological proclivities by pointing out the error, I think he deserves kudos. I may write about this tomorrow.
Well I know you do, Bradley. The thing is the more I look into it the more I see it's not always ideological -- at least in the specific sense. The media traffics in "bites" of information -- and rigidly enforced sterotypes. When Clitnon and Obama said they wanted to have the Bush tax cut on top-tier incomes lapse, and use the money to fund health care, Blitzer immediately accused them of taxing the middle-class. Now where do you find a tax on the middle-class in that porposal? Nowhere. But he's got this notion lodged in his brain somehow and he's going to spit it out no matter what.
David E.
You got it. Political reporters like cheap and easy stereotypes because the stories almost write themselves. And media companies are perplexed why readership is falling, while shovelling out this crap.
On the Republican side, Representative David Dreier of California understood the white-tie anxiety. “Just the idea of tails — it’s not comfortable,” Mr. Dreier grumbled
I'm sure he'd prefer a jockstrap.
Here's Jake Tapper's similarly uninformed take on Clinton's global warming statement. He likewise wrenches one sentence out of context and makes it say the opposite of what Clinton meant.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
I don't really think there's much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?
He went on to say that his the U.S. -- and those countries that have committed to reducing greenhouse gases -- could ultimately increase jobs and raise wages with a good energy plan..
So there was something of a contradiction there.
Or perhaps he mis-spoke.
Or perhaps this characterization was a description of what would happen if there isn't a worldwide effort…I'm not quite certain.
* * * * * * *
My respect for Tapper's cognitive abilities just went through the basement. Does the pre-requisite for reporting for a major news organization involve a lobotomy?
And here's a sensible reply on Tapper's blog:
A silly report, as usual, from a hopelessly superficial and naive press. Although it's true that global warming alarmism has trumped sound thinking Bill Clinton's legitimate point was that it costs about 1-2% of GDP to slow warming. Most people in the world favor that approach (I don't). But Clinton's statement reflects economic sophistication on the issue. Growth or expensive environmental fixes? Only *naive* people think we'll be able to do both. We won't.
Sheesh, the economy's slowing down all on its own anyway. We should have a chance real soon to see how it affects carbon emissions.
That Tapper piece is the talk of Greater Blogistan, Bradley. He's getting ripped for it all over the place.
David E.
I just left a reply at Tapper's follow-up post. We'll see if it gets published.
Mr. Tapper,
Why don't you just admit that you made a basic error of interpreting plain English? Making a mistake is not nearly as bad as pretending you didn't. If after thoughtful reflection, you still don't know how badly you erred, I'll have to re-evaluate how much you can be trusted to be accurate on anything else. This is Reporting 101.
The longer you go in denial, the worse it will get for you. This will make a great post for the growing list of accounts on my blog about media errors. (And I'm a reporter, btw.)
One of the comments to Tapper's non-apology pointed out that even other MSM outlets are getting in on the fun of showing how he screwed up.
Tapper appears to have gotten the story backwards. He wrote that Clinton "characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: 'We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.'" Clinton actually argued the opposite.
But Tapper's mistake is spreading quickly.
Clinton actually argued the opposite
Sure, but no matter. The selected but out of context quote rules.
doug,
After reading the reactions from the blogosphere and even the NYT and CBS, I'd have to say that this time, the fake-but-accurate quote gambit is backfiring spectacularly.
Jake Tapper got caught spreading a 180-degree misinterpretation of what Clinton said. Bloggers are going to constantly bring this up unless Tapper apologizes and admits without qualification he was wrong.
The thing is, apologizing in the right way wins you points. From my own experience, I know people are often honestly shocked when a reporter promptly admits error and corrects it without whining. People don't expect reporters to be free from errors. They do wish that reporters would be conscientious about correcting errors brought to their attention. Tapper failed the test.
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