I Was Wrong

OK, I had predicted a Rudy Giuliani victory in the GOP primary (not that I was favorable to such a thing in the first place). Happily I report: I was wrong.
The Commisar of Gotham has folded like a bad hand after the first deal. Thank you, Florida. I thank you. The nation thanks you. I'd say you made up for that 2000 Bush-Gore swinging chad debacle, and are once again deserving of our token respect.

Sadly, we are not out of the woods yet. As he exited the stage of stoogery, Rudy endorsed John McCain, expecting, I'm sure of it, a nice plum assignment in the hoped for McCain administration.
Rudy as Attorney General? Could happen.
And if that scenario doesn't scare the shit out you, nothing will.

Ever notice how those who most often promote their own tolerance, and demand such from others, are often times the first to cast a moral judgment upon anybody who may view the world from a different set of eyes?

What's Good For Gino Is Good For America

Ok, so there's this stimulus package and latest I hear is that everybody is gonna get a check in the mail for something like $800.
This is suppose to be good for America.

I don't know about you, but I think I would feel a whole lot more stimulated with $20,000.
And America will be even better for it.

Rambo

Briefly: Rambo is living in Thailand where he is hired by a group of missionaries to transport them up the river into Burma. Tragedy strikes. Rambo is then contracted to lead a group of mercenaries up the river to save the missionaries.

I saw First Blood the day it opened in 1982. Ever since, I have been a fan of the Rambo character. Now, the fictional superhero returns after twenty years of absence (since 1988,when we last saw him killing Soviets in Afghanistan in Rambo III).

This installment is low on plot (not very much plot was needed,anyway) and big on mayhem. Also, the characters are not given time to develop. This would normally spell doom for a more artistically presented work, but in this case it really isn't a problem. The only character that matters is John Rambo, and he's already been developed quite thoroughly in First Blood. The rest are merely props in the short story line.
Once the story gets moving, and it doesn't take too long, the crescendo of violence begins. More blood,limbs and intestines fly through the air in this chapter than the three previous films combined. I loved every minute of it.

View the trailer here.

An observation: It appears Sylvester Stallone is attempting to write the final chapters in his two biggest character creations. We've already seen the completion of the Rocky series (and Rocky Balboa was a well done film) with nowhere else to take it. Now it looks like he may be doing the same with John Rambo, bringing him around full circle,returning him 'home' after coming to self-realization with just who/what he is. Although the ending does leave some room for taking the character back up again later, I suspect this is the last we will see of him, though I sincerely hope not.

All in all, worth the price of admission. On a downside, all those who bought the DVD trilogy collection will now have to shell out for the fourilogy collection coming soon to a Wal*Mart near you.

Parts Is Parts

Organ donations have been the news recently. Most alarmingly, the new policy in Great Britain that allows hospitals to take organs without consent. This is wrong on more than one level, but without getting into these specifics at this time I want to propose an alternative: Organ selling.

For starters, let's talk kidneys.
Currently, sixteen people die in the United States every day while awaiting a kidney transplant. Good kidneys are not, and should not be, rare to find. Everybody is born with two good ones, and only one kidney is necessary to sustain life.So,yeah, there's all these spare parts walking around and no really good reason for sixteen deaths everyday.
The issue then, is not one of limited supply, but one of supply and demand. Generally, some healthy soul assumes room temperature, and then the medical staff comes out, like vultures circling a fresh kill, and attempts to persuade the grieving family to part with some parts:
"So sorry your child is dead. Can we have this?"
or,
"Before we pull the plug, we want something for nothin."
Morbid.

If families, or even individuals, were allowed to sell their kidneys, more kidneys would become available. Money is a great motivator. How many surviving families could be benefitted if they could get a sizable lump of cash after Daddy dies in a tragic accident,leaving his kids without the support of a father? Or, somebody struggling in poverty could offer up one of their spare kidneys to somebody with the means to save themselves while also helping out another?

Now, before you go and turn all "Two Americas" on me about how 'the rich' will benefit off 'the poor', let me inform you: our current system of donation already favors the wealthy and the famous. Celebrities routinely move to the front of the organ line. This is not a not a secret to the mildly informed. And the wealthy, but not so famous, travel to third world nations like India to receive organs on the open market.

I don't know about you, but if a family member could procure an organ for a price, I wouldn't hesitate to drain my savings and mortgage my home to save their life.
Add in the charity factor of neighbors, co-workers, or church groups, and nobody will go without.
As it stands now, I am forbidden from doing so as I do not have the means to go abroad, or a government that will allow this basic freedom.

Right here, right now, in what is bragged of as the freest of nations, everybody makes money from organ donations except for the supplier of the organs. We need to change this.

Sure, we could adopt the European-socialist-serfdom model that says you and your body are not your own, but wards of the state instead, to serve a greater good according to, and defined by, the The Powers.
Or we could solve our organ shortage in a manner that respects individual freedoms and personal sovereignty.

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Just A Little Too Far

Kal,is this you?

"I was watching the game and I said I want my head to look like Tom Brady's helmet."

Slave Uprising

For much of our nation's history Black Americans have been kept in their place, and consistently it has been the democratic party apparatus that has been most guilty.
Slavery, in the Democrat Party south.
Jim Crow, in the Democrat Party south.
And later, after the Civil Rights movements had their days, once again it was primarily the democrats who used blacks as stooges and stage props, giving them their voice so long as they didn't get too uppity, and giving nothing of real substance in return.
The Democrat Party system gave rise to a few black ministers, promising them face time,wealth and protection from investigation, in exchange for delivering the votes of the black masses.
If ever a single demographic was pimped out so perfectly, it has been the way black Americans have been done by democrats.

Now, along comes the most unblack of black men to lead a revolt.
Ideologically, this guy is no different from any other Democrat. There really is no diversity of thought or ideas in that party, so candidates are chosen using the only other qualification left: personality.
And Obama has it.
In spades.
Hilary Clinton was supposed to walk to the coronation, the heir apparent of the party apparatus. This has got to be frightening for her to be facing a direct threat to her throne by, of all things, a member of the group who was supposed to be in her pocket.
After 225-plus years of using/abusing blacks to build their party, and somebody forgot to give Obama the memo: Blacks leaders are supposed to lead other blacks only to vote democrat.

Obama has left the plantation. He's not speaking to blacks. He's speaking primarily to whites, and the whites are responding.
To make things extra difficult, he's facing smears and personal attacks from the most effective political machine of the past forty years. Not even phased, he's hitting back with his own rhetoric and keeping The Machine off balance.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The blacks were supposed to be in the tank for Hilary. And the opposition just a formality.

It's a great show, and it's about to get real dirty.

But I hope he understands just who he is dealing with.
If he's not careful, he'll end up laying on the grass in Fort Marcy Park.

In The Name Of The King

I didn't know much about this film as it had just opened this weekend and I hadn't seen any reviews on it, but the poster outside the lobby looked kinda cool. Not knowing what to expect, I went on in.
Briefly, it's a rip off of Excalibur, Krull and any other medieval-based futuristic fairy tale you can think of. Not a scene goes by where I'm not thinkin "I seen this before". You've got the anonymous young dirt dweller, who is unbeknown st to himself the heir to the throne, who leads a rag tag band of commoners to rescue his maiden in distress and avenge the death of his son, all the while a Merlin/Magi character runs interference on his behalf against the evil rebel warlord, who has his own "magi guy" pulling levers against the kingdom. Oh, I and can't leave out the tree dwelling,vine swinging forest nymphs.
You got all that?

Featuring a cast of mid-stars and used-to-be-stars who don't even bother to speak the same dialect as one another. You'd think at least Burt Reynolds would've tried to lose the southern accent that served him well in his "Smokey..." days. But no. The 'king' of the medieval kingdom is obviously just a washed up redneck playing 'dress up' for a paycheck.
"Stars", and I use the term loosely, include the afore-mentioned Burt Reynolds,John Rhys Davies, Ray Liotta, Claire Forlani, Leelee Sobieski, Ron Perlman and a bunch of others who would just as soon rather not be remembered for this job.

Rated PG-13, meaning nobody over the age of thirteen would take this movie seriously.

I Did It

Now, I feel dirty.

As We Begin The Primaries

Because in a room full of lunatics, it's always the sane man who looks crazy.

Because Politics Should Be Fun

Kung Fu Election

The Future Of Marriage Gets A Lift

Coming Soon:
What every man needs.
That special life partner who doesn't whine for attention, never gets headaches or mood swings, won't spend your money, and can still keep quiet during a Bears game.

The Murder Of D.B. Cooper?

The FBI is making a new stab at identifying mysterious skyjacker Dan Cooper, who bailed out of an airliner in 1971 and vanished, releasing new details that it hopes will jog someone's memory.
This story has caught my imagination since childhood. But what surprises me is that the FBI is still pursuing the case. The guy is dead. If he wasn't dead, he would have surfaced by now.
If, by slim chance, he is still alive? Just leave him be. Anybody who did what he done, and got away with it all these years, deserves to live out his life in peace.
But now I learn of a new (to me) wrinkle in the story:

"He also didn't notice that his reserve chute was intended only for training and had been sewn shut."

Was he intentionally given a sham chute?
There needs to be an investigation into this, and if so, and his murderer brought to trial.