Friday B-Movie Pick: Sands of Oblivion
From 2007 comes this SciFi original movie in all its B-Movie crunchy goodness. It was spectacular in all of its low budget glory. The real draw to this was the cast. It had Morena Baccarin and Adam Baldwin, who worked together in Firefly and Serenity. Baccarin played her role pretty straight, while Baldwin was a bit over the top, which is what his role needed. It also had an 82 year old George Kennedy, who was pretty damn good. What you would expect from him, even for a role to get him out of the house for a couple of days. The other cool bit of casting was Dan Castellaneta hamming it up as Cecil B. DeMille. Which brings us to the plot of this thriller. The plot hook is that DeMille used actual Egyptian artifacts he picked up in his travels in his film “The Ten Commandments.” One of these released an ancient ‘Evil’ loose to roam his California desert location, killing stage hands and committing other mayhem. DeMille and his Freemason buddies manage to capture the “Left Hand if Seti” and bury him, along with all the other sets and props beneath the sands of the California desert. Fast forward to the early 21st Century and we find a youthful Doctor of Archaeology, played by Morena Baccarin, engaged in digging up DeMille’s old sets before some public works project destroys them. Stir in Adam Baldwin as her almost ex-husband, also a Doctor of Archaeology, and an expert on ancient Egypt. Add a young hero type (who they go to great lengths to mention having served in the First Infantry Division in Iraq), some young co-eds, and some low budget special effects, and you have a fine example of B-Movie making at its finest! Oh don’t forget to throw in the Dune Buggy race and gratuitous shotgun-fu for flavor.
Instructional Video
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Politics, Progressives, RKBA, Video
This video is very instructive on just how the left “argues.”
After the progressive leftist Joe Klein babbles on about a “national sugar rush”, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin points out that his theory has been disproved by actual research on the subject. Firearm related violence has gone down over the past 40 years and, the federal ten year ban on certain semi-automatic rifles inflicted on law abiding US citizens had no effect on violent crimes committed with semi-automatic rifles (crimes committed with semi-automatic rifles didn’t go down during the ban and they didn’t go up after it ended).
How did the members of the “reality based” progressive left react to actual facts from carefully researched data?
They denied reality and repeated their talking points. Which is fairly consistent behavior pattern for “progressive” leftists. Reality is less important than their political agenda.
Keep in mind they are discussing the Colorado theater shooting. It came out later that the murderer was a progressive leftist. A staunch supporter of the so-called “occupy” movement and a volunteer campaign working for Barack Hussein Obama. It’s a fairly safe bet that he is politically aligned with Joe Klein.
A coordinated political attack
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Media Bias, Our Dear Leader, Politics, Tea Party
Recently, our Dear Leader claimed that there was “Not even a smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS run by his political appointees.
Well, as we have learned, everything that BHO says has an expiration date. Sometimes that date is even before the words come out of his mouth. Remember that the left leaning Washington Post, among others, selected one of Barry’s Catch Phrases as the Lie of the Year.
So we should take his claim of no corruption with several large barges worth of salt.
Let’s review a few key facts were. The IRS conducted actual, probing audits of multiple 501(c)(4) organizations that made their list of organizations with certain key words. Some of those key words were left leaning, but of the groups actually targeted by an IRS audit, 100% were right of center “Conservative” groups.
Now let’s review what the Inspector General for the IRS had to say on the matter, “Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012.” There are a few more gems in his report to Congress:
In total, 30 percent of the organizations we identified with the words ‘progress’ or ‘progressive’ in their names were processed as potential political cases. In comparison, our audit found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt applications with ‘Tea Party,’ ‘Patriots,’ or ‘9/12’ in their names were processed as potential political cases during the timeframe of our audit.”
…
“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, emails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.”
Of the 296 organizations flagged with “political” keywords, only six were “progressive” groups. That is 2% of the 296 organizations selected by the IRS.
Let’s not forget Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official who pleaded the Fifth rather than answer questions from Congress.
Clearly, there is more than just “smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS under the reign of our Dear Leader. This Culture of Corruption probably runs much farther and deeper in the Obama administration than just the IRS.
Update: The IRS targeted Republican Christine O’Donnell and then leaked her tax records to the press.
IRS Scandal Has Obama Fingerprints All Over It, Experts Say.
Update: Christine O’Donnell’s IRS case reveals more than just a ‘smidgen of corruption’
Monday Book Pick: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD: Empyre
Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD: Empyre by Will Murray
Will Murry is well known to pulp fans for his new Doc Savage novels. This book is about Marvel’s Nick Fury, Director of Shield. It was published back in 2000, and features the “old school” Nick Fury. The one who lead the “Howling Commandos” back in WWII. This is before someone decided that Sam Jackson would make a Bad Ass Nick Fury (which he did/does). In this adventure, Nick Fury has brought back the psychic division (called “Special Powers” in this iteration), and just in time too. The Special Powers group plays a major role in solving the latest evil plot from Hydra to cause death and destruction around the world. The afterword to the book says that Will Murry is a practicing psychic and has used all the of the techniques the SHIELD Special Powers group uses, including remote viewing. For you skeptics, consider this. This book was published in 2000. Spoiler alert here: It has a Middle Eastern base group (a fragment of Hydra and a thinly disguised Saddam Hussein) using commercial airliners to attack major cities by crashing the airliner into the target city. OK, Tom Clancy also used that one his books back before 9/11/2011. Still, the point had to be made. Either way, this is old school Marvel adventure with a flying SHIELD Humvee taking out Iraqi (of course they use another name, but it’s not hard to figure out) MIGs and Nick Fury at his cigar chomping best.
Monday Book Pick: Sword of Exodus
The Sword of Exodus by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari
The sequel to Dead Six. Valentine and Lorenso are in even deeper shit than they were before. Plenty of action and raw meat for the firearm enthusists.
Monday Book Pick Archive
The Obama Economy Numbers
It’s been five years since our Dear Leader started his “Occupy the White House Golf Tour” and four and half years since the second worst recession since the great depression ended. Now history tells us that the deep the recession, the stronger the recovery.
So where the recovery that should have started four and half years ago? An actual recovery would involve replacing the jobs lost and creating news one. Instead of that, what we have under the economic guidance of our Dear Leader is over ten million people less in the workforce than we had at the start of the recession.
The U3 unemployment rate fell to 6.7% from 7%, which normally would be a good thing. In this case, not so much. Let’s look at the numbers. The economy only added about 70,000 new jobs in December. If you have been paying attention over the past four and half years, you would know that the economy needs to add 120,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. The drop in the BLS U3 number is explained by the 520,000 people “leaving the workforce.” A better indicator of the health of the workforce is the BLS U6 rate. The average U6 rate during our Dear Leader‘s reign has been 13.1%. To compare, the average U6 rate during President George W. Bush’s two terms was 9.2%.
To further highlight just how much the current administration’s policies are negatively effecting Americans, let us review the progress made on the “War on Poverty” started 50 years ago by LBJ.
[…] Fifty years after President Johnson started a $20 trillion taxpayer-funded war on poverty, the overall percentage of impoverished people in the U.S. has declined only slightly and the poor have lost ground under President Obama.
[…] Although the president often rails against income inequality in America, his policies have had little impact overall on poverty. A record 47 million Americans receive food stamps, about 13 million more than when he took office.
The poverty rate has stood at 15 percent for three consecutive years, the first time that has happened since the mid-1960s. The poverty rate in 1965 was 17.3 percent; it was 12.5 percent in 2007, before the Great Recession.
About 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, which the federal government defined in 2012 as an annual income of $23,492 for a family of four.
President Obama’s anti-poverty efforts “are basically to give more people more free stuff,” said Robert Rector, a specialist on welfare and poverty at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“That’s exactly the opposite of what Johnson said,” Mr. Rector said. “Johnson’s goal was to make people prosperous and self-sufficient.”
So, as the nice man said, “Obama’s economic program of tax, spend, and regulate has been a dismal failure.”
Here is a graph from the Federalist, which points out that if ten million workers haven’t dropped out the workforce because the lack of economic growth, the U3 unemployment level would be almost 11%. This is Jimmy Carter recession level territory, in what should be a robust recovery.
Monday Book Pick: The Forever Engine
Filed under: Baen Books, Monday Book Pick, Science Fiction
The Forever Engine by Frank Chadwick
Crunchy Steampunk goodness from one of the founders of the genre. Yes, it’s that Frank Chadwick, creater of the Space:1889 RPG. Those of you, like me, will find a good deal familiar with tale of adventure and Mad Science. Including Liftwood, stout hearted British Marines, and a five barrel Nordenfelt!
Round Up Post
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics, RKBA
Let’s start with a few firearm/RKBA articles.
James Craig became the Detroit Police Chief last summer. Before that he spent decades working in the Los Angeles Police Department before becoming the Chief of Police in Portland, Maine. In LA, pretty much the only people with firearms are cops and violent criminals. The restrictive, so-called “gun control” laws haven’t really slowed down the rate criminals can obtain firearms. In Portland, Maine, firearm ownership among the law abiding is pretty common. Another difference is the violent crime rate. High in LA, low in Portland. Chief Craig’s advice for reducing crime in Detroit (which approaches Robocop levels), is more firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens. Here is one of multiple studies that back Chief Craig’s advice.
San Francisco is pretty diverse, it even has pro-Second Amendment liberal democrats. These folks are pretty far left wackos despite this one gleam of sanity in the world view. Hell, they don’t like our Dear Leader because he’s “too conservative” in their view. Probably upset he hasn’t rounded up Republicans and shipped them off to death re-education camps yet.
Here is a question that many law abiding citizens who have actually read the Constitution ask themselves, “My next AR, build or buy?”
Can’t leave the epic Charlie Fox known as Obamacare off the list. “Glitches” in the bloody website are still rampant, leaving many without coverage. Keep in mind, that in the time it took the Obama administration to build a really crappy website, America build almost 100 aircraft carriers during WWII. Plus the aircraft for the carriers, and the support vessels, and trained the crews.
For your reference when dealing with moonbats and Obama cultists, 8 Things Liberals Do to Avoid Having an Honest Debate.
Let’s wrap up with a look at how the Obama Economy is working for America. “34%: The unemployment rate for Americans ages 16-17. The unemployment rate for teenage Hispanic Americans is 48%, and the rate for teenage Black Americans is 60%.” Ya, just how is that hopey-changey thing workin’ for ya?
The Schadenfreude keeps on rolling in…
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
By way of the VodkaPundit, comes this tale of progressive Obama-cultist woe.
A self-described Obamacare “cheerleader” is upset that she actually has to pay for health care.
“I’ve been a cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act since I heard about it and I assumed that it was designed for people in my situation,” she told KOIN. “I was planning on using the Affordable Care Act and I had done the online calculator in advance to make sure I was going to be able to afford it.”
Her husband works for a non-profit organization that pays for his health care, but the couple is unable to afford to have her and their son covered under his plan. And she’s been told their combined income is too much to qualify for a subsidized health care plan under Cover Oregon.
“It wasn’t until I started the process and got an agent that I started hearing from them I wasn’t going to qualify for subsidies because I qualify on my husband’s insurance,” she told KOIN.
Mr Green sums up this tale of angst and woe:
In other words, Miss Anonymous supported ObamaCare when she thought you were going to pay for it.
Scratch a prog, find a greedy, grubby thief.
One of the comments to the post gets to the heart of the matter:
…the article says the combined income disqualified them from subsidies (in addition to her being eligible for her husband’s plan, I assume). I believe that’s over $94,200. Cost of living aside, that’s decent money.
Now here’s what happened: Husband previously insured everyone on his plan. Obamacare came along and they decided they would drop the wife and child from his policy during open enrollment. The expectation was that, according to the online calculator, they’d be able to get insured free or close to free. This saving the family ~$125 a month. So he dropped them with the expectation that they would have coverage on January 1. Unfortunately for them, the agent actually appeared to do his job and confirmed that their income was too high and she had qualified for her husband’s plan. Now it’s too late to add them back to his policy.
Basically, it’s not that they CAN’T afford it, it’s that they don’t WANT to pay for it – at our expense. I feel sorry for the child. It has to be raised by a couple on unprincipled degenerates.
Straight Up Racism
I’ve often pointed out that a good way to find out what leftist are up to is to listen to what they are accusing those they see as their political enemies of.
Case in point, racism. The left has been playing the so-called “Race Card” so often since our Dear Leader started his run for his “Occupy the White House” gold tour, that even the self-identified “fake journalists” at Comedy Central have called them on it. It has been become their default reply to anybody who dares to disagree with their far left extremist ideology.
Now if you were to look for actual examples of racism, you would find the “progressives” who toss out the charge, guilty of what they accuse other of, more often than not. Case in point, democrat election campaigns pay their white staffers more than black or hispanic staffers.
“African American staffers on Democratic federal-level campaigns are paid 70 cents on the dollar compared to their white counterparts; Hispanics are paid 68 cents on the dollar,”
The study goes on to point out, while Republican campaigns tend to hire more white men than the democrats, they are much better at paying their minority staffers what they pay the white staffers.