Redstate

Now Paul vs the Mule, that would be interesting.

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And Rightly So!

Democrats ask not

Paul Vs the Hoka
Right to arm bears

Paul vs The Theocons
Revolt in 2008

Paul wins election
The probability broach

Paul vs the Centauri
The forever surrender

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

but Paul is right on many issues, gun control is one of them. It is a damn shame he is the libertarian of the group, it is like a poison pill to ruin libertarian-conservatism. OTOH, Fred is not bad on these issues. In fact, as a long time Rudy defender here, I am really thinking of Fred as vote worthy. I like Rudy more, but there are some things I just have to have clarity on. To me, 2nd Amendment rights are as important as the Abortion issue is to our most extreme members.

Molon Labe!

And his record of accomplishment so non existent I'd certainly take a second look.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I am lamenting the issues he has right. He is a non starter, the foreign policy and monetary policy are black balls, he is a nut.

Molon Labe!

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com

I have the encore Western channel. They keep showing Support Your Local Gunfighter, I want to see "Sherrif" for a change. My top Westerns are: Il Buono Il Brutto, Il Cativo, the rest of Eastwoods work, Lonseome Dove, The Long Riders, The Wild Buch, C'era una Volta Il West, Open Range, Tombstone, 3:10 to Yuma, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Wild Bill, and many others. I am not into the white hat, black hat stuff so much, but I love how the western has been used to reflect political and societal themes such as the Cold War and the anti-hero. Entire college subjects have been taught on this topic.

I do like the funny ones too.

Molon Labe!

Good, Bad, Ugly
Tombstone
High Plains Drifter
Outlaw Josey Wales
Man who shot liberty valance
my darling clementine

Support your local...I'm just on my way to Australia

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com

great list. I am kind of a Tombstone, Holliday, Earp geek, so I am not much fun watching Clementine. I always shout, "this is not historical!". Anyway, great list, those are classics.

Molon Labe!

Unforgiven.
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Two thirds of the world is covered by water,
the other third is covered by Champ Bailey.

but you are right to point out Unforgiven. I also like "Unforgiven Light" aka Pale Rider. Not as good a movie, but at an impressionable time, and I even have it on tape in French.

Molon Labe!

I screwed that up. Pale Rider is High Plains Drifter light. I still like Unforgiven and own it.

Molon Labe!

Gus Mcrae is one of the greatest parts ever put to screen. I read the book too, all 900 pages.

Molon Labe!

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com

Molon Labe!

and the Eastwood spaghetti westerns. Garner is classic in Sheriff (not so much in Gunfighter, but it's still pretty good). But you missed the best western ever made:

Silverado

THE best.

The Magnificent Seven

Not as good as Silverado, but very close.

that is why the genre is best. Actors really give their all out of respect. I did not mention Silverado, but the movie was a big deal, it was so good. I recommend the Wild Bunch to any who have not seen it, I think many of us young'ns missed it. Kind of like Silverado but much darker. And someone should mention High Plains Drifter, the best movie ever to watch on a stormy night.

Molon Labe!

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
www.fred08.com

Milch's Deadwood is my top pick for westerns. There was a "Dinner for Five" episode with Milch and Olyphant, and they talked about the show and how unusual it was for a western to be as popular overseas as Deadwood was. Milch said it was because it was perceived as "anti-American" and he and Olyphant scoffed at that idea. He also told a funny story about his frat brother GWB and made him look good. He likes GWB, "moron" that he is, and America, much to the chagrin of Hollywood lefty types. The man is no fan of Bill Clinton or FDR.

I also loved Milch's "John From Cincinnati." It was a very spiritual and uplifting show. It was ahead of its time, and the story of the Second Coming (and no, it wasn't John). Alas...

Milch talks about the lack of soul in television these days, and uses the Iraq war as an example of how the media has infantilized Americans, to be pre-disposed to wanting only miniseries. He complains that Americans are too impatient, and pulling out of Iraq now is, sadly, not about the Iraqis and what will become of them, rather, it has to do with America's ADD. He blames the media and the American people more than Bush for the "rush to war", and rightly so.

QUESTION: Your work seems to focus on finding humanity in ambiguous characters. Do you think that some people are simply unforgivable?

MILCH: No, I don't think so.

THORBURN: Not even your old fraternity friend, the president?

MILCH: Not even him. Especially not him, whom I find to be more of a genial boob than a moral menace. I think the war in Iraq has more to do with the media's abdication of its responsibilities than the deficiencies of our president. Through lack of informing vision, the media has infantilized the audience. The surrogate existence provided by television has come to supplant the emotional life of the populace. I've stopped doing series set in the present because the assault on the collective sensibility after 9/11 gave the populace so much fear, that they could only be placated with a three-week miniseries designed to tell them that they didn't need to fear danger here, because we were taking the war over there. The motivations for that war had nothing to do with WMD and everything to do with the habituation of the viewing public to the shaping of human experience in distorted forms, for which the media is responsible. For the first three weeks, the Iraq miniseries received enormous public approval, because it was the series we wanted to see. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. The current disaffection has nothing to do with the Iraqi people and everything to do with the fact that the series is over, and we don't want to see it anymore. It was a war undertaken for the wrong reasons, and responded to for reasons the public doesn't understand.

The dialogue about Bush has nothing to do with Bush, but with the fact that he is the main character in a failing drama. No matter who was in office, the so-called intelligentsia would be criticizing him...

He pledged to never do another contemporary series again, but he decided to do one anyway, because he feels the world has reached a critical time and he had something to say about it, and he said it with JFC. (Ed O'Neill and Brian van Holt were amazing in this series.) It was truly a brilliant show.

Milch is a genius. A self-proclaimed crazy man, but a deeply spiritual man and a genius.

btw, in the 70s era, Western were big in Europe. All those "Spagetti Westerns" were shot with Italian directors, lead actors (sometimes an American or two), and Spanish extras. Most were shot in Spain, they often used Gypsies to play Indians.

I have been to Italy several times, they like the idea of the American West, you even see Confederacy paraphanelia from time to time.

Molon Labe!

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

One other John Wayne western I have is

The Searchers

John Wayne, John Ford, and Jimmy Stewart--it doesn't get any better than that for me.

Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.

I don't think I have seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance! I have heard of it of course but I don't remember if I ever saw it. As for the Searchers, incredible film.

Molon Labe!

This guy has a lot of appeal to right left and independents. He could pull a lot of votes away from the front runners in both major parties; but, it seems logical that he would pull most of the GOP voters to his campaign.

What do you think?

A thinking mind is a shame to waste.

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...I'm guessing that yes, he was.

Note tense.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

I saw the Dune movie once, and it disappointed me, it having been my second encounter with a movie of a book I'd read, first of a non-children's variety.

Since then I just skip them all. Yes, including Lord of the Rings.

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You didn't see LotR? Wow! Did you read the series? (I read it was I was in grade school.)

I have to ask if you'll be seeing No Country for Old Men.

That book was one of the best I have read in years (I then went on to read McCarthy's The Road. So very sad.) Anyways, I've often said I wish I hadn't read it first, since the Coen Brothers are such master story-tellers.

Here's a funny excerpt the book:

She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well maam I don't think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.

Ha!

...which is why I can't bear to become acquianted with a version of the Lord of the Rings that hacks out the Scouring of the Shire.

Never heard of No Country for Old Meh, though.

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..say that as a religious reader of the books, who has re-read them annually since 6th grade). However, I was very disappointed in the cutting of the Scouring episode (director Peter Jackson never liked that part, according to a behind-the-scenes special), as I always enjoyed that part of the final book.

"Yeah, Alfie? Johnny Double-R, here. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about how you took my nice, clean Northern European mythos structure and sh*t all over it, just because you got up one morning and decided that life would be just swell if only you killed off 20 million people. That bugged me just a bit, you dig? So I got to talking with a bunch of the boys, and you know? They weren't too down with this, either.

"So we thought we'd, you know, stop on by and explain things to you:"

...and the trilogy had scenes like that going on all the time. Yeah, I miss the Tom Bombadil and the Scouring and the relative lack of Ents, too: but come on. :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

In the first minute I was pretty well able to identify who's who and where this was.

Yeah, ok, that's pretty good. OK, it's more than pretty good. Maybe if there were a DVD of the War of the Ring, showing the combat scenes, I'd buy it without hesitation :-)

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Please do acquaint yourself, and see if it's for you. It's a very powerful book. (So is the post-apocalyptic The Road. Cormac McCarthy is a tremendous writer.)

NCfOM essentially about the pure evil that will always be with us, and a micro battle between good and evil. Chigurh (pronounced "sugar") is the embodiment of that evil, or some think the devil himself. Be forewarned, it is a disturbing and bloody story.

Especially when they jumped 50+ pages from the ferry crossing of the Brandywine to entering Bree. But seeing Rivendell, and the Dwarrowdelf (Moria), and Lothlorien, all brought to life, was more than enough to make up for it as far as I was concerned.

(LotR geek bonus question: I'm mentioned once in LotR (the book, sadly I didn't make the movie). Where is it?)

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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

1 - When Sam spies on some elves on their way to the Havens

2 - In a song

3 - By Bilbo at Rivendell

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The elves that Frodo & company walk with and spend the night with in the Shire, are of the House of Finrod.

---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

My guess is the leader of a faction of the elves.

Now there's no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.

Completely wrecked it for me.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Ha! It was a bit corny and OTT, but the whole movie was!

...by casually killing off the source of the drug that you spent the whole darn movie getting control over was not what you'd call coherent.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

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They terraformed the poles but most of the planet remained desert afterwards.