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Quote of the Day
Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of smart people. And over the last four years we have heard countless encomiums, and not just from Democrats, of the intellect and perceptiveness of Barack Obama. But a reading of the text of Obama’s December 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, billed as one of his big speeches of the year, shows him to be something like the opposite.
Even by the standards of campaign rhetoric, this is a shockingly shoddy piece of work. You can start with his intellectually indefensible caricature of Republican philosophy: “We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.” Or his simple factual inaccuracy: “The wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century.” Or his infantile economic analysis, blaming job losses on the invention of the automated teller machine (they’ve been around for more than four decades, Mr. President, and we’ve had lots of job growth during that time) and the Internet.
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What we have here, it seems a president who has no serious interest in public policy. He has spent nearly half his 15 years in public office running for other public office. The only difference now is that, having run out of higher offices to run for, he is just running for reelection instead. Those who pride themselves on belonging to the party of smart people should be embarrassed.
Monday Book Pick: Prince of Tanith
Prince of Tanith: A Space Viking Novel by Terry Mancour
A well written sequel to one of my favorite books, Space Viking. Like most of H. Beam Piper’s work, Space Viking is in the public domain, so sequels like this are fair game. Luckily this one is well written. It takes place after Lucas Trask marries his new love, Lady Valerie, and picks up the action pretty fast. It has all of your old friends and enemies, plus a few more. Fair warning. It ends in a cliff hanger. More about the ‘third’ book in the Space Viking Series later.
Sunday SciFi: A Middleman/Doctor Who Crossover story
Written by Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach!
Friday B-Movie Pick: Genesis II
Dipping into the mid-70s well again, we find this 1973 SciFi flick by none other than Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Set post-apocalyptic where humankind nuked the crap out of the planet, and people are digging out, rebuilding, and empire building. Mariette Hartley provides some nice eye candy, and ya, Roddenberry gets a bit preachy. No surprise there.
Monday Book Pick: The Dark Design
The Dark Design by Philip Jose Farmer
The third book in his epic Riverworld Series.
Sunday SciFi: UFO
UFO was live action SciFi show from the puppet master himself, Gerry Andersen, that ran for a single season of 23 episodes back in 1970.
Great actors, dark thoughtful scripts that always didn’t have a happy ending, sharp miniature work, and a late 60s sense of style and fashion made this show really stand out. Oh and the purple haired moon chicks in silver miniskirts. The cast included Michael Billington, who, according his wikipedia entry, was screen tested for the role of James Bond more than any other actor.
The show also other cool eye candy, including the gull wing door cars, nuclear submarines with a jet fighter mounted on their bow, space interceptors and S.I.D. (Space Intruder Detector). What really made the show was the dark, thought provoking scripts, complex characters and some fine acting by Billington, Ed Biship and Gabrielle Drake.
There is a UFO movie, based on the series in the works. Currently scheduled for a Summer 2013 release.
Part 2 of J.R. Dunn’s “Beating Decline”
Baen Books published an interesting Miltech article by Mr. Dunn, and has recently published Part 2, War in the Dirt.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Black Belt Jones
Another martial arts classic staring Jim Kelly. Coming at you straight from 1974, this “kung fu” flick also falls squarely in the blaxploitation sub-genre as well. This is mid-70s low budget drive-in theater fodder in all its glory. Jim Kelly delivers the martial arts goods, and manages to carry this flick with some decent acting chops as well.
Friday Roundup
Here are a few thing that just may have flew under your radar.
Obama is admired by just 4 percent of Middle East Arabs in the new survey released by the Brookings Institution and University of Maryland. I seem to recall the lefties telling everyone that Barack Hussein Obama understood the Muslim world and would improve our standing there. Silly lefties, as TalkStraight correctly summed it up, “[The] Arab World does not admire people they consider weak.”
Our Dear Leader is continuing his version of a “jobs program”, by being on track to kill a potential 120,000 American jobs by stonewalling the Keystone Pipeline Project. Just what does he have against inexpensive, non-oil tanker required, conflict free, oil being available to the American people? It is almost as if he wants higher energy prices, rising inflation and an American economy stuck in a ditch.
Since QE1 and QE2 have been such dismal failures, Obama’s pick to head the Fed,Ben Bernanke, is looking to inflict QE3 on the American people. For those of you who forget just what “Quantitative Easing” is, here is an instructional video.
Chicago democrat, and old Obama buddy Tony Rezko gets a ten and half year prison term for “extorting millions of dollars from firms seeking state business or regulatory approval.” Ya, it does sorta sound like the Obama administration funneling “green investment” money to big democrat donors.