Yesterday Eric Holder was unapologetic for the AP scandal claiming two things – the “leak” was the worst ( in the top 2 or 3) he has seen in 40 years, yet he also said that he didn’t know anything it. He claimed that that a underling handled the data grab. Odd that it was at the top of his list of awful moments, yet knew nothing about it. He and Obama apparently sharing Sgt Schultz talking points…
I KNOWWWWW NOTHING! I SEEEEE NOTHING
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I read an article about Rhiannon Pooler. Ms Pooler is 27 and at 27, still owes $160,000 in student loans. Pooler blames, not herself, but the “loans” for her predicament. I don’t have a bit of sympathy for her.
The short version is as follows:
Pooler is a native of Minnesota, yet she decided to attend Arizona State and got a degree in Sociology. A degree in Sociology ranks slightly above useless on a value scale. I’d like to know why she thought a degree in Sociology would help her get a job and I would guess she picked Arizona State because she wanted to wear flipflops in January. And with a debt of $160,000 at 27, she accumulated a lot more getting her degree. According to Pooler, she is (now) paying every cent she makes (at a minimum wage job) to pay down her loans, and her parents are throwing in $500 a month, as well.
Here are the numbers:
Out of State Tuition at ASU is 22K. In-State tuition at the University of Minnesota is $6,000 (or about what her parents are now paying toward her mountain of debt). Had she attended an in-State university her parents could have paid her tuition, and she’d be debt free at 27, and she likely wouldn’t be living her parents basement).
If one cannot afford to go to an out of state university, why burden yourself with a debt load that you cannot pay? Why universities still offer degrees in sociology is another story.
The pre-release promotion of “After Earth” has started to ramp up. It’s like cigarette butts it’s everywhere. I saw a floating mini-blimp at the Kings game advertising it. I’ve seen it adversities online and at the theater and on TV. They can advertise it for a 1,000 years, it will still be a bad movie. How do I know if it hasn’t been released? Just watch a trailer and tell me if your jaw doesn’t drop at how inconceivable and ridiculous it seems.
The concept first. Earth, a 1,000 years from now is inhabited by super predators. Mankind is gone. Giant… cat-like…cats, and giant hawks to name but a few. It Orrville Redenbacher evolution. Apparently evolution has microwaved earth’s animals to change species in the blink of an eye. Earth has been abandoned by people because… well we don’t know yet, but it might be because there are (apparently) constant storms the size of Asia. No, really the “official website shows a future Earth with a cyclonic storm that about 5,000 miles wide. And, Africa is no longer a separate continent – in 1,000 years it has drifted to connect with South America. Heck if you microwave evolution, why not microwave plate tectonics as well.
The actors ( I use that term with tongue in cheek) are few. Apparently most to the space rangers (no kidding that’s what they are) have dead in the space ship crash. The main character is Will Smith’s real-life son Jaden who plays his fake-life son Ranger Jr. and they both have fake English accents. Jaden looks to be about 100 lbs and 5’3” and couldn’t act well enough to get a part in a Middle School play, so casting him as the “hero” seems stupid and incongruous. But, he’s Will Smith’s son so he’s employable as an actor, even if he can’t act. When he’s not hurting my head with his bad dialogue , he’s avoiding super predators left and right. In one scene he outruns a pack of apes. In another he outflies a super hawk in a squirrel suit… no really
My prediction – “After Earth” will crash this summer at theater everywhere.
Sarah Jessica Parker has made a living as an actor and, apparently, convincing many that she’s attractive. I think she resembles a female incarnation of Mr. Ed.I’ve always found those praising her looks as either blind, and related to her in some form. Parker recently doffed a headdress for a celebrity event and, perhaps, she is embracing her inner equine.
With the face of a horse, she was wearing the mane of a Clydesdale…
stomp twice if you agree with me.
THE MOVIE, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN was dreadful
It’s like Die Hard – except this version I think was written and directed by a 12 year old in the middle of playing SOCOM. I won’t worry about giving away the plot — there isn’t one.
It starts with the Secrete Service agent in charge of the presidential detail being exiled to the Treasury Dept, after saving the president’s life. Yeah, that’s right he’s “disgraced” because he did his job. Ok, with that in mind, the cartoon action really went into overdrive.
North Koreans fly a C130 (with quad 40MM Gatling guns, 2 mounted on both sides). Apparently no one noticed a missing C130 (maybe it was rented at a local airport) and it flies into the heart of Washington DC, like its on a tourist sight-seeing run. How they came into possession of a C130 isn’t explained – because that would stop this train wreck before it started. Two intercepting Raptors, intercept it about a mile from the White House ( the pilots must have been on a lunch break) but are quickly shot down by the C130 after they ask it to stop (no, really). Then, the stolen Gunship does a half dozen strafing passes at the White House, killing everyone in sight, and for good measure it chews up a couple hundred civilians in the street.
The president is whisked into the presidential bunker, but the president was meeting with the South Koreans when the attack started and he orders the Secret Service to ignore protocol and allows foreigners into the bunker. Ridiculous enough? It gets “better”
A suicide bomber opens a hole in the White House fence and 40 North Koreans pour in, armed with everything, but a nuclear weapon. They kill everyone in sight ( except the hero) and take the White House.
So, the “South Koreans” aren’t really good guys, they are bad guy-North Koreans and the chief bad guy is there for a super secret code called “Cerberus”. This super secret code is intended to destroy American nukes in flight (if there been a mistaken launch – you know like “damn it, who pushed the red button!!”) No kidding, thats the reason Kim Jung Evil and his band of 40 have destroyed the White House and taken the president. He wants the three top officials who hold the cyphers to give them up. I was looking around the room wanting Dr Stranglove to say:
“my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious”.
Ok – these “codes” once entered, apparently cannot EVER be called back – Cerberus can’t be turned off, and apparently only three people know the code, and it can only be entered from the White House bunker… No… really. I don’t know how that works – “ok Mr. President, here’s the code – memorize this and eat the paper…. ”
So Kim Jung Evil intends to input the codes and blow up the nukes in their Silos. Nukes don’t work that way – an external explosion doesn’t detonate a nuke, but whatever thats just inconvenient physics. Mr. Evil is however, thwarted by the hero who… (ok you will never guess, so I’ll tell you)…disarms the failsafe code with… wait… seconds on the clock.
The movie Lincoln was written by Tony Kushner. Kushner is nominated for an Oscar. Kushner wrote into the final act, the raucous violently and hotly dramatic house vote on the 13th amendment. In it, Kushner had two Connecticut delegates voting against the amendment. That’s historical fiction- as all 4 delegates votes “yes”. Owing to the fact that the vote was close. He could have used actual, real-life people who voted against it. There really was no need to falsify history to create drama – yet he did.
A Connecticut rep noted that Kushner placed half of his State’s reps on the opposite of right, and on the wrong side history, and he told Kushner. Kushner responded in the Wall Street Journal. He didn’t man up and admit a mistake, he lashed out at the rep – apparently Kushner doesn’t like being told he did something stupid and unnecessary – kinda like being caught cheating on a test you were going to get an “A” in anyway. But, because Kushner is a Hollywood writer, he had to write – and write he did. “I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters.”, wrote the petulant Kushner.
Apparently lost on Kushner is, inventing characters, imagining encounters, and making up dialogue is expected in historical drama, but altering actual history is not. One does not write historical drama and portray, for instance, Nathan Hale as a Torrey or Robert E. Lee leading the Union Armies. One does not change history to show Nazis as invited guest in Poland. Bin Laden wasn’t Gandhi and James Earl Ray wasn’t a freedom marcher, but according to Kushner that sort of historical trickery is ok, if the message remains intact. If Kushner writes a movie script in the future (again turning history on its head) he should expect to get called on it. And Kushner to act like a brat caught cheating on an exam. But no matter, he’s nominated for an Oscar, and Spielberg thinks he’s a genius…
President Obama and his crack team of sycophants released a photo of the new messiah “skeet shooting” at Camp David.
I think Obama is shooting at targets labeled “skeet”, but he’s not bustin’ his shooter at clay pigeons. Skeet targets are from what I understand, released from the “high” and “low” house – two different launching spots on the right and left. Either high or “low” the projectiles are launched into the air and horizontal to the ground. It looks like he’s at the “three” which would put him at the farthest spot – but still he would be aiming too low. I suppose it’s possible that he “skeets” like he bowls, in which case he may have yelled “pull” and thought it was “his” command to pull the trigger and in the process spattered one of the “houses” with buckshot. That or he’s just shootin’ his wad, aiming at nothing but Camp David air… for a photo op…
This really should bother everyone. This administration cannot be truthful, even with a simple thing like a photo (and what he is doing in the photo). With these people it’s all politics – reality rarely intrudes. Its rather clear that whoever released this photo to the media as “evidence” of Obama’s skeet shooting, wouldn’t know a clay pigeon from a claymore.
Obama shooting his wad
Scratch Lee Child off my list of authors. Child is the creator of the Jack Reacher series. I saw “Jack Reacher” the movie and liked it so I bought a Reacher book. “The Enemy”, was the random choice, and apparently the 8th in his series. I won’t buy another, nor will I finish this one.
I don’t mind fictional heroes with almost superhuman intuition and morals to match, but Child set me off with self-aggrandizement political insight that really wasn’t insightful – it was more like him “predicting” the past.
Within the first few chapters, Jack Reacher is speaking with his brother, who tells Jack that the Soviet Union was about to fail, that Poland will join NATO and an EU will form in short order, and create a standardized currency. I guess Child does this to set up how “smart” the Reachers are – I just found it annoying like Cloe the Mystic predicting someone has “five children” while looking at a family photo… Child already knows all of that actually happened – and it doesn’t add to the story, so why include it? Well, to make the Reachers seem, not just physically superhuman but predictors of the future is well – it’s annoying.
And, his style is like reading a Dragnet script… just the facts ma’am… Ok, I understand it’s a crime novel but good grief, do I have to read page after page of:
“I want your badge and gun on the table Reacher!”
“I said nothing”
“Badge and gun Reacher!”
“Are you stupid Reacher – badge and gun!”
“Reacher!!!”
I said “Yes?”
The story line is supposed to be about military downsizing, and the apparent internal struggle between the branches. An ironic theme throughout is “there’s always an agenda”, and indeed there is for this book. Child’s less-than-hidden agenda is: “gays in the military”. One murdered soldier, is a Delta Operator, and he’s gay. Biggest bad-ass has to be gay– right? . That plotline makes no sense and is gratuitous, but it allows Child (through Reacher) to engage in his PC speeches about gays. That was his point, and was the point I stopped reading “The Enemy”. Reacher claimed: “about a million” gays served during WWII – that would make his claim over 7% of all those who served were “gay”. Those sorts of percentages have long been debunked. No legitimate reviewed study puts the total “gay” population above 5% and most studies put it at about 2-3% (Including the CDC). Yet, Reacher and his willing Lt Summers engage in the standard gratuitous discussion about gays not being allowed to openly serve, and gays as the new civil right, and equating the “struggle” to racial desegregation. Either Child didn’t do his research or chose to ignore facts. I choose the latter as more likely.
The most villainous monster in the book is not the murderer who kills the gay Delta Operator – no, its Reacher’s commander Col. Willard. Willard is a sneering, short, soft tub-of -jackass gay-basher who in the course of one conversation uses every homo epithet known to mankind. Willard’s political a dim-light, fidgeting waste of human skin… and, of course he hates gays ( I can guess that Willard “comes out” around Chapter 12). That was enough for me. I stopped reading.
I was likely to have put the book down in any event because I’m not a fan of his style and I was growing bored, but the insertion of the fact-challenged gay speech was enough for me to lose all interest. No more “Reacher” for me.
POSTSCRIPT:
This ‘Reacher’ commentary (maybe its my comments about fact-challenged gay speeches) has generated a surprising amount of spam. Since I’m the moderator the attempts to crap on my blog won’t post. Sorry Reacher fans!
CAP COVER
