1/ Frank Rich with the political fallout, implications and what really happened with this week's Syria machinations.
The master commentator on current events with a very good article.....
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Obama makes a plea for action on Syria, and Bill de Blasio triumphs as the anti-Bloomberg.
President Obama reiterated his case for a U.S.-led strike in Syria last night, asking Congress to postpone voting on military intervention while the administration pursues a diplomatic solution. It appears unlikely that the House will approve the use of force. Did Obama really think his speech would swing votes? Or was there another aim?
The last time many of last night’s viewers tuned into President Obama en masse, he was imploring the nation in much the same terms and tone to join him in stopping the grotesque slaughter of innocent children. On that occasion — Newtown — many Americans were in grief and, according to polls, on his side. But we saw the results from his pitch for new gun-control legislation: zero. So let’s at least hope that he didn’t really think he would swing votes with last night’s mishmash of an address. The notion that it (or any speech) would bring around a citizenry and a Congress that are both overwhelmingly opposed to intervention in Syria’s civil war is preposterous — though no more preposterous than anything else that has happened over the past week. And Obama’s brief speech was nothing if not of a piece with what came before. He started with a call for military action, then veered into a prayer for diplomacy before trailing off into an inchoate “stay tuned” denouement. I guess this proves that if you mate a hawk with a dove, you end up with the rhetorical equivalent of turducken. I’d like to believe there was some other aim, but what could it have been? A humanitarian preemption of ABC’s The Bachelor? This address should have been put on hold by the White House the moment the attack was put on hold because the urgency of the appeal for force had evaporated. Now, if the Hail Putin Pass proves a Russian-Syrian bluff or some other form of mirage, the president can’t give the same speech again, minus the diplomacy part. One prime-time strike to sell the country on air strikes, and you’re out.
The last time many of last night’s viewers tuned into President Obama en masse, he was imploring the nation in much the same terms and tone to join him in stopping the grotesque slaughter of innocent children. On that occasion — Newtown — many Americans were in grief and, according to polls, on his side. But we saw the results from his pitch for new gun-control legislation: zero. So let’s at least hope that he didn’t really think he would swing votes with last night’s mishmash of an address. The notion that it (or any speech) would bring around a citizenry and a Congress that are both overwhelmingly opposed to intervention in Syria’s civil war is preposterous — though no more preposterous than anything else that has happened over the past week. And Obama’s brief speech was nothing if not of a piece with what came before. He started with a call for military action, then veered into a prayer for diplomacy before trailing off into an inchoate “stay tuned” denouement. I guess this proves that if you mate a hawk with a dove, you end up with the rhetorical equivalent of turducken. I’d like to believe there was some other aim, but what could it have been? A humanitarian preemption of ABC’s The Bachelor? This address should have been put on hold by the White House the moment the attack was put on hold because the urgency of the appeal for force had evaporated. Now, if the Hail Putin Pass proves a Russian-Syrian bluff or some other form of mirage, the president can’t give the same speech again, minus the diplomacy part. One prime-time strike to sell the country on air strikes, and you’re out.
2/ A good Paul Krugman column, which basically says Republican politicians truly have no grasp on reality, and live in their own bubble. In this bubble is the myth that Obamacare isn't working, a disaster etc etc.
They are really believing their own BS.....
The Wonk Gap
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 8, 2013 767 Comments
- GOOGLE+
- SAVE
- SHARE
- REPRINTS
On Saturday, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming delivered the weekly Republican address. He ignored Syria, presumably because his party is deeply conflicted on the issue. (For the record, so am I.) Instead, he demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act. “The health care law,” he declared, “has proven to be unpopular, unworkable and unaffordable,” and he predicted “sticker shock” in the months ahead.
Connect With Us on Twitter
For Op-Ed, follow@nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
So, another week, another denunciation of Obamacare. Who cares? But Mr. Barrasso’s remarks were actually interesting, although not in the way he intended. You see, all the recent news on health costs has been good. So Mr. Barrasso is predicting sticker shock precisely when serious fears of such a shock are fading fast. Why would he do that?
Well, one likely answer is that he hasn’t heard any of the good news. Think about it: Who would tell him?
My guess, in other words, was that Mr. Barrasso was inadvertently illustrating the widening “wonk gap” — the G.O.P.’s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into Election Dayexpecting victory.
About health reform: Mr. Barrasso was wrong about everything, even the “unpopular” bit, as I’ll explain in a minute. Mainly, however, he was completely missing the story on affordability.
For the truth is that the good news on costs just keeps coming in. There has been a strikingslowdown in overall health costs since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, with many experts giving the law at least partial credit. And we now have a good idea what insurance premiums will be once the law goes fully into effect; a comprehensive survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that on average premiums will be significantly lower than those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office when the law was passed.
But do Republican politicians know any of this? Not if they’re listening to conservative “experts,” who have been offering a steady stream of misinformation. All those claims about sticker shock, for example, come from obviously misleading comparisons. For example, supposed experts compare average insurance rates under the new system, which will cover everyone, with the rates currently paid by a handful of young, healthy people for bare-bones insurance. And they conveniently ignore the subsidies many Americans will receive.
At the same time, in an echo of the Romney camp’s polling fantasies, other conservative “experts” are creating false impressions about public opinion. Just after Kaiser released a poll showing a strong majority — 57 percent — opposed to the idea of defunding health reform, the Heritage Foundation put out a poster claiming that 57 percent of Americans want reform defunded. Did the experts at Heritage simply read the numbers upside down? No, they claimed, they were referring to some other poll. Whatever really happened, the practical effect was to delude the right-wing faithful.
3/ Jon Stewart's back, and this is a good segment on his [and my] favourite topic - the idiocy of Fox news......
Five pretty good minutes.....
"Who cares how we avoided a war and got a dictator to give up his chemical weapons if we avoided a war and got a dictator to give up his chemical weapons."
Such was Jon Stewart's assessment of the news that Syria might relent and work with Russia to hand its chemical weapons over, avoiding U.S. military intervention.
On Tuesday, Stewart praised John Kerry for bumbling, Magoo-like, into the potential solution by proposing it off-the-cuff as a ridiculous scenario that could never happen.
But when Syria seemed to take the "dickish offer" seriously, there was no celebrating at Fox News. Instead, the network quickly went into shame-spin cycle, characterizing the development as embarrassing and giving Russia the upper hand in our never-ending global pissing contest.
This was apparently, quite enough for Jon Stewart, who launched into a breathless rant:
I get that Fox opposes the Syria peace plan because its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless, irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus like existence, BUT... sorry, I blacked out for a second I was saying something?
4/ Although this is quite amusing, it's also has an edge. Sarah Silverman takes up the Black NRA's cause of getting guns for black males......because they need them the most! Two minutes....
Since the NRA's stated goal is to ensure that all Americans have a basic right to firearms, isn't it about time that they spun off into the Black NRA to make sure all African-Americans can easily purchase guns? It only makes logical sense for the NRA.
Sarah Silverman, David Alan Grier, Deon Cole, Ron Funches and more star in thisFunny Or Die commercial for the Black NRA.
5/ Sometimes you just think this country deserves every bit of the environmental and other disasters that are coming down the pike - read this story about neighborhoods in New Jersey that are trying to protect themselves against the next Hurricane Sandy, but are stymied by some people who won't see the greater good.
You can't fix stupid.....
Trying to Shame Dune Holdouts at Jersey Shore
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
The Army Corps of Engineers has built high dunes in much of Surf City, N.J., but resistance from some homeowners has left a section with limited protection from storm surges.
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: September 4, 2013 420 Comments
- GOOGLE+
- SAVE
- SHARE
- SINGLE PAGE
- REPRINTS
SURF CITY, N.J. — Anchor Produce Market sells homemade mozzarella, its own fresh salsa and what many regulars swear is the best sweet corn on Long Beach Island.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
A sign on the glass of a meat case at Anchor Produce Market in Surf City lists the names of property owners who have not granted easements to build the dunes.
Readers’ Comments
"Federal taxpayers will be paying to protect these properties, but some homeowners want municipal money for lost 'views?' There is no sense of shame left in this country. "Jim N., Southport,CT
But, a sign on the counter declares, it will not sell anything to the owners of 63 Long Beach Boulevard, 7 Coast Avenue, 12 Sea View Drive South or 34 other nearby oceanfront properties.
Those owners have refused to grant easements to allow the federal government to build a massive dune along a 50-mile stretch of the Jersey Shore. Without the protective ridge of sand, engineers predict it is only a matter of time before homes, neighborhoods, even entire communities are wiped out by rising seas — a reality brought into stark relief by the devastation from Hurricane Sandy.
So until they sign the easements, holdouts should buy their groceries elsewhere.
These and other pressure tactics have been aimed at persuading the more than 1,000 seaside homeowners on the southern part of the shore who are refusing to allow dune construction on their properties, in many cases to protect their ocean views. The measures have transformed a philosophical battle of property rights versus public good into a bitter neighbor-versus-neighbor ground war all along the coast.
Towns have tried to shame holdouts into signing easements by posting their names on Web sites and sending them to newspapers. Defiant owners say they have received threatening e-mails and phone calls and had dog feces left in their mailboxes or thrown on their decks. Friends have stopped speaking.
Still, many homeowners remain resolute, having already resisted through two punishing hurricanes, public shamings — a tactic encouraged by Gov. Chris Christie, who said he had “no sympathy” for their concerns — and a decision by the state’s highest court that has encouraged towns to skip the easements and take the needed land by eminent domain. The Borough of Mantoloking, among the hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy, announced its intention last month to begin doing just that to deal with its five remaining holdouts. Other communities say they expect to follow.
“It seems entirely selfish,” said Mike Nichols, the owner of Anchor Produce, who considers himself “super lucky” because the storm last October washed four feet of sand into his home in nearby North Beach but did not destroy it. “The government doesn’t want to annex your property,” he added. “They want to build up dunes, protect everybody.”
Holdouts say that they are within their rights and that efforts at persuasion have become abusive.
6/ One of our alert readers said I should watch the America's Cup ocean race.......the only thing I know about ocean racing was that it was as exciting as watching paint dry.......
But.....look what's happened! Billionaires have taken over the sport with boats that go 50 mph, and see for yourself how challenging this looks in this two minute video.
Note - the New Zealand oligarch is leading in the America's cup......
7/ Music video - Pink Floyd with "Comfortably Numb".....this is basically a film about [I guess] a musician that has OD'd and is having flashbacks to his childhood.....it's very well done, the song is familiar and still brilliant even though it came out in 1979!
Enjoy the Floyd's music, and this mini-movie....a classic .......
8/ A new documentary "Mission Congo" is coming out soon, and it's about the Rev. Pat Robertson's drive in the 90's to get funds for Rwanda, but it turns out the money was really used for Robertson's investment in a diamond mine in the Congo.
As we surf past the religious loonie TV channels, you wonder who are the idiots sending their money to the hucksters and charlatans like this despicable POS Pat Robertson. But then I am reminded of the quote "a fool and his money are soon parted"......
Note - the "church" is suing the makers of this movie......
‘Mission Congo’ Alleges Pat Robertson Exploited Post-Genocide Rwandans For Diamonds
by Marlow Stern Sep 7, 2013 5:00 AM EDTThe documentary ‘Mission Congo,’ which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, alleges that televangelist Pat Robertson’s charity in Zaire to help refugees that fled from post-genocide Rwanda, Operation Blessing, really served as an elaborate front for his diamond mining operation. Marlow Stern reports.
AP; Getty
Pat Robertson has said some awful things in the past. He claimed “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays,” should take part of the blame for 9/11, that Hurricane Katrina was due to America’s pro-choice policies, and that the 2010 Haiti earthquake was because Haiti’s founders had sworn “a pact to the Devil.” But if the allegations in Lara Zizic and David Turner’s documentary Mission Congo—which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival—are true (and there is a mountain of evidence presented that back up the filmmaker’s claims), then Robertson is much, much worse than even his fiercest detractors imagined.
In the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people, one million Rwandans fled to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Many of the refugees were stashed in camps with little to no shelter, running water, or medical supplies. One of these refugee camps was in Goma.
So Robertson, sensing an opportunity, took up the cause. He began pleading on his TV program The 700 Club, broadcast by the Robertson-founded Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), for viewers to pledge at least $25/month to Robertson’s non-profit organization, Operation Blessing International (OBI), to help.
9/ This is different - a 6 minute mini-film called "L'Agent" which is a brand of sunglasses that see through women's clothes.....male fantasy, right? But it's directed by Penelope Cruz, and has a cameo from Javier Bardem at the end......
So I guess watching the dozens of ladies in lingerie in the video has a deeper meaning.......so I had to see it a few times to get the point. And ladies, the hero is sort of hunky.....
Note - a little racy......
10/ According to Fox News, if you're an atheist you "don't have to live here".
Like the USA is only for Christians who are the only real Merikans.....
Freedom of belief doesn't appear to be important to Fox News host Dana Perino, who suggested that if atheists don't like having "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, well, "they don't have to live here."
Massachusetts' highest court is currently hearing a case against the Pledge brought by atheist parents, who feel that due to its religious wording, atheist children "are denied meaningful participation in this patriotic exercise." The case specifically involves the phrase, "under God," which was not actually a part of the original phrasing of the Pledge.
Regarding atheists, Perino said during a live segment, "I'm tired of them."
11/ An oldie but a goodie.....the US Navy vs. the Spanish.......a radio conversation........3 very good minutes.....
12/ Floriduh - "Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care" award.......
You know when an environmental problems hits the Times it's serious, and the Lake Okeechobee discharge of excess water has killed the St. Lucie estuary in Stuart, heavily Republican territory. So action might be taken.....except there are no good or easy solutions.....
In South Florida, a Polluted Bubble Ready to Burst
J Pat Carter/Associated Press
Protesters greeted Gov. Rick Scott as he toured the newly polluted areas. More Photos »
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: September 8, 2013
- GOOGLE+
- SAVE
- SHARE
- SINGLE PAGE
- REPRINTS
CLEWISTON, Fla. — On wind-whipped days when rain pounds this part of South Florida, people are quickly reminded that Lake Okeechobee, with its vulnerable dike and polluted waters, has become a giant environmental problem far beyond its banks.
Multimedia
Edward Linsmier for The New York Times
Lake Okeechobee is bordered on the south by agricultural fields and communities that depend on them. After heavy rains this summer, officials decided to release some of the lake’s polluted water into estuaries rather than test its dike.More Photos »
Beginning in May, huge downpours ushered in the most significant threat in almost a decade to the bulging lake and its 80-year-old earthen dike, a turn of events with far-reaching consequences. The summer rains set off a chain reaction that devastated three major estuaries far to the east and west, distressing residents, alarming state and federal officials and prompting calls for remedial action.
With lake waters at their limit, there were only two choices, neither of them good. One was to risk breaching the 143-mile dike, a potential catastrophe to the agricultural tracts south of the lake and the small communities that depend on them. The other was to release billions of gallons of polluted water into delicate estuaries to the east and west.
Following its post-Hurricane Katrina guidelines, theArmy Corps of Engineers chose the estuaries, rather than test the dike’s vulnerabilities.
As a result, the St. Lucie River estuary in the east and the Caloosahatchee River estuary in the west, which depend on a naturally calibrated balance of salt and fresh water, were overwhelmed. The rush of fresh water from the lake and the estuaries’ own river basins, along with the pollutants carried in from farms, ranches, septic tanks and golf courses, has crippled the estuaries and, on the east coast of the state, the Indian River Lagoon.
A breeding ground for marine life, estuaries are crucial to the ecosystem. As algae caused by pollutants quickly spread and fresh water overpowered saltwater, oysters died in droves. Manatees, shellfish and the sea grasses and reefs that help sustain the estuaries all were badly hit.
“These coastal estuaries cannot take this,” said Mark D. Perry, the executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society, based in Stuart. “Enough is enough. This cannot continue to happen. These estuaries are so important to us, our environment and our economies.”
The damage to the estuaries has been so profound and the clamor from local communities so intense that political leaders have pledged action. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, visited the affected areas last month and proposed spending a total of $130 million for two separate projects.
One is intended to ease some of the pressure on Lake Okeechobee by allowing more water to go south into the Everglades, where it should flow naturally. The water will flow under a series of bridges that will be completed over the Tamiami Trail. By law, the water flowing into the Everglades is filtered and treated, unlike the water that heads to the estuaries.
South Florida was expressly engineered to prevent too much water from moving south, which is why most of the flow from the lake is pushed east and west. Canals to the south were dug to make way for agricultural fields, mostly containing sugar cane, and for urbanization. The little water that is released flows around those areas.
Environmentalists have fought for decades to correct the flow into the Everglades, a gargantuan and costly undertaking.
A second project would clean more of the polluted water in the St. Lucie River Basin that flows into the river. There are plans for a similar storm water treatment area on the west coast to help curb the damage.
“Every drop of water that we can send south and keep out of the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries is a win for Florida families,” Mr. Scott said recently when he proposed $90 million for one of the projects. “My message to families being impacted is that we will not give up on you.”
13/ Floriduh #2
Our unspeakably awful Governor Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi have launched another brainless lawsuit designed to please the extreme right wingnuts.....
Fred Grimm in the Miami Herald goes into all of the other BS they have litigated on your behalf, and your cost.....
Another loser challenge from Florida
BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Pam and Rick were hanging out in Tallahassee last week, putting our government priorities in order. They wondered, “What can we do to improve the lives of Floridians?”
Of course, you already know the answer. Couldn’t be more obvious. We’ll trick out 18-year-olds with handguns.
Yes, indeed. We who can not abide the notion of an 18-year-old bellying up to the bar for a Budweiser sure as hell want to spend taxpayer money to insure the same knucklehead can buy himself a Beretta.
So Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has committed state resources to that great cause and joined yet another quixotic lawsuit, this one against the United States government. Bondi added Florida to a list of NRA subsidiary states seeking to overturn a 45-year-old federal law that forbids licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to anyone under 21.
It’s another likely loser of a case. Like Rick and Pam’s futile attempt to overturn the Affordable Health Care Act. Over the last few years, the Scott years, we’ve frittered away hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in court defending an ideological agenda. State lawyers and pricey outside law firms have been dispatched to state and federal court to defend, without much success, the privatization of prisons, drug testing of welfare recipients, drug testing of state workers (though not state legislators or the governor) the shifting of pension costs onto state workers, and election laws designed to tamp down turnout among minority voters.
Our lawyers are still fighting, on behalf of the NRA, that mindless violation of the First Amendment known as Docs-versus-Glocks, a state law that severely limits what doctors — even pediatricians and psychiatrists — can discuss with their patients about firearms.
Last week, after the state lawyers were pummeled first in U.S. district court, then the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the state did, finally, give up defending a blatantly unconstitutional state law that would have barred any company that has done business with Cuba or Syria, or was vaguely associated with a company that has done business with Cuba or Syria, from competing for public contracts in Florida. Of course the law, contrived by Miami’s Sen. René García and Rep. Michael Bileca, was nothing more than a sop to Cuban-American voters. Gov. Rick Scott, even as he signed their bill into law last year, noted that it was legally indefensible.
This little exercise in political theater was not cheap. Aside from the state’s own considerable costs to defend an unconstitutional intrusion into a federal domain, we’re now stuck with a half-million-dollar bill to cover the legal fees run up by Odebrecht USA, the construction company that challenged the ill-considered law.
14/ Floriduh #3
And speaking of Pam Bondi, did you know they postponed an execution so Perky Pam, the Attorney General, could attend a fundraiser? Shows her priorities, doesn't it.......
Let me start off by telling you a story: Earlier this year in a land littered with palm trees, pristine beaches and racists an Attorney General and Governor Skeletor pushed for a bill that would speed up executions. The bill, Florida’s Timely Justice Act, restricts ‘frivolous’ appeals by death row inmates and sets competency standards for lawyers. Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi, was one of the most staunch advocates for the bill’s passage and supported Skeletor’s decision to sign it into law. Opponents of the bill said that it could cause innocent people to be put to death. After all, sometimes it takes years and years for a person to be exonerated; Seth Penalver for example sat on Florida’s death row for eighteen years before he was set free. Bondi and other supporters of the law said that it is all about getting justice for the families. Nothing is more important than seeing justice done….well, nothing except campaign fundraisers, that is.
On August 19th Rick Scott informed the Florida State Prison Warden John Palmer that he would be moving Marshall Lee Gore’s execution 6 p.m. Sept. 10 to 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at the request of the Attorney General. On August 20th Molly McFarland, the deputy press secretary for the Attorney General’s office, said that the September execution date conflicted with a previously scheduled event but did not say what that was.
The event that Bondi felt was so important that she must delay the execution of a man convicted of murdering two woman was a ‘hometown campaign kickoff’ at a waterfront home in Tampa. Bondi’s press team was quick to explain away the rescheduling and try to make it seem like a responsible decision on Bondi’s part.
15/ Movie review
Guys - if you are in the mood for some ultraviolence and mayhem you could do a lot worse that the latest "Riddick" movie from Vin Diesel - it's set on some distant planet, and he's a baaaaaaad guy who can see in the dark.....and of course someone wants him killed.
Movies like “Riddick,” a satisfyingly primitive spectacle, help explain the unlikely ascendancy of Vin Diesel as a man of cinema. With his hypertrophied body and Barry White purr, Mr. Diesel — much like his more sweetly appealing brother in brawn, Dwayne Johnson — embodies a particularly salient caricature of masculinity, one that appears to transcend obvious racial identity to make him an ideal modern Everybrute. If Arnold and Sly became the cartoon emblems of Reagan-era might, Mr. Diesel has come into his own as a contemporary hero, one who suggests a postrace ideal, even as he affirms old-fashioned power with displays of annihilating violence.
This is the third live-action film in the “Riddick”series, which opened with the aptly grim and gloomy “Pitch Black” (2000), and immediately entered its decadent phase with the unintentionally self-parodic “Chronicles of Riddick” (2004). The series director and writer (sometimes co-writer), David Twohy, has smartly gone back to genre basics with this installment, which serves as an effective reboot. Gone are the silly costumes and wigs, the overstuffed plot and exotic-sounding villains like the Necromongers, the religious fanatics that Mr. Diesel’s character, the escaped convict more formally known as Richard B. Riddick, once battled. Now, there’s one man alone, stranded on a seemingly desolate distant planet with only his wits, his fists and his voice-over.
That voice-over is mercifully spare, the landscape atmospherically barren and the action nice and tight. If you didn’t see or can’t remember the last movie, no matter, because, after a few pro forma nods to “Chronicles” (cue Karl Urban in eyeliner and leather shoulder pads), Mr. Twohy gets right to it. Riddick is wounded and seemingly down for the count. “Don’t know how many times,” he growls, “I’ve been crossed off the list and left for dead.” Surrounded by craggy cliffs that evoke John Ford’s Monument Valley as reworked for the cover of a science-fiction pulp, he stares into the computer-generated void. Instead of vultures, dinosaurlike scavengers swoop down at his head; instead of wolves, he goes mano a mano with wittily conceptualized critters that look like juiced-up hyenas.
Riddick initially struggles just to survive, an elemental fight that has a nice metaphoric resonance for the series. It’s as if, having almost lost the character amid so much narrative bloat, Mr. Twohy were returning Riddick and the franchise to their origins, stripping them down to their genre bones. Riddick even undergoes a ritual purification, emerging from a pool of liquid like Martin Sheen’s psychotic warrior in “Apocalypse Now.”
OMG.....what a trailer!!! Got to see this one in Imax 3D.....
16/ Interesting TV
If you watch HGTV you already know about this show, but if you don't - this is the hottest reality show this summer......"Property Brothers"
It’s the crack cocaine of reality television. HGTV’s ‘Property Brothers’ are handsome twins from Canada who fix up dilapidated houses into real estate gems. By Itay Hod.
William Humphries, a 41-year old from Lubbock, TX, says he’s never been a home improvement kind of guy. He doesn’t care for furniture stores or interior design, and if he ever bought a house (he currently rents), it would be move-in ready. But when he stumbled on the HGTV hit reality show Property Brothers, he was hooked.
Jonathan Scott and Drew Scott of HGTV's Property Brothers. (Matt Harbicht/Getty)
“I just loved it,” said Humphries. “It was one of those marathon days. I sat through four or five of them and just kept on watching.”
That was back in March. Since then, Humphries estimates he’s racked up anywhere from 100 to 200 hours of viewing. “It’s my number one channel right now,” he said with a chuckle.
Humphries is not alone. Ratings for Property Brothers are, well, through the roof. Close to 19 million people tuned in last season, an astronomical number for cable TV. This year’s season premiere was watched by more than 1.6 million, making it one of the top shows on the network.
Promo for the show......
Todays video - the diner scene from "A History of Violence"....Viggo Mortensen owns a diner in a podunk town, and two kilers come in for coffee.....
This is an excellent movie if you haven't seen it.....
Note - this clip is quite violent......
Todays blind person joke
A woman goes into Bass Pro Shop to buy a rod and reel for her grandson's
birthday. She doesn't know which one to get so she just grabs one and goes over to the counter.
A Bass Pro Shop associate is standing there wearing dark shades. She says, "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me anything about this rod and reel?"
He says, "Ma'am, I'm completely blind; but if you'll drop it on the counter, I can tell you everything from the sound it makes."
She doesn't believe him but drops it on the counter anyway.
He says, "That's a six-foot Shakespeare graphite rod with a Zebco 404 reel and 10-LB. test line. It's a good all around combination and it's on sale this week for only $20.00."
She says, "It's amazing that you can tell all that just by the sound of it dropping on the counter. I'll take it!" As she opens her purse, her credit card drops on the floor.
"Oh, that sounds like a Master Card," he says.
She bends down to pick it up and accidentally farts. At first she is really embarrassed, but then realizes there is no way the blind clerk could tell it was she who tooted. Being blind, he wouldn't know that she was the only person around.
The man rings up the sale and says, "That'll be $34.50 please."
The woman is totally confused by this and asks, "Didn't you tell me the rod and reel were on sale for $20.00? How did you get $34.50?"
He replies, "Yes, Ma'am. The rod and reel is $20.00, but the Duck Call is $11.00 and the Bear Repellent is $3.50."
Todays bonus senior joke
SENIORS STILL NEED NEWSPAPERS
Todays redneck joke
The black guy whisks three cookies into his pocket with lightning speed.
The baker doesn't notice.
The black guy says to the redneck: "You see how clever we are?
You rednecks can never beat that!"
The redneck says to the black guy: "Watch this. A Redneck is always smarter
than a black man."
He says to the baker, "Give me a cookie, I’ll show you a magic trick!"
The baker gives him the cookie which redneck promptly eats.
Then he says to the baker: "Give me another cookie for my magic trick."
The baker is getting suspicious but he gives it to him.
He eats this one too.
Then he says again: "Give me one more cookie..."
The baker is getting angry now but gives him one anyway.
The Redneck eats this one too.
The Redneck eats this one too.
Now the baker is really mad, and he yells: "And where is your famous magic
trick?"
The redneck says: "Look in his pocket!"
Todays golf joke
A guy was getting ready to tee off on the first hole when a second
golfer approached and asked if he could join him. The first said that
he usually played alone, but agreed to the twosome.
They were even after the first few holes. The second guy said, "We're
about evenly matched, how about playing five bucks a hole?"
terms.
The second guy won the remaining sixteen holes with ease.
As they were walking off number eighteen, the second guy was busy
counting his $80.00. He confessed that he was the pro at a neighboring
course and liked to pick on suckers. The first fellow revealed that he
was the Parish Priest.
The pro was flustered and apologetic, offering to return the money.
The Priest said, "You won fair and square and I was foolish to bet with you. You keep
your winnings."
The pro said, "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"
The Priest said, "Well, you could come to Mass on Sunday and make a
donation......
And, if you want to bring your mother and father along, I'll marry them.
No comments:
Post a Comment