Sunday SciFi: Babylon 5
Very good, nay, excellent SciFi. Especially for TV. This show wasn’t just SciFi, it was Space Opera in the best sense of the genre.
Grand sweeping story arcs over five seasons, great battles; personal, man to alien, and large fleets of space craft battling for control over this corner of the galaxy.
Much, much better than the Star Trek knock off of Babylon 5. Yes, gentle readers, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was a cheap knock off of Babylon 5.
The B5 pilot aired first, even though Paramount rushed ST:DS9 to the small screen before the B5 series was approved and made it to the airways. The best ST:DS9 seasons were the ones where they did what B5 did the season before. The ST:DS9 “creative” team even hired the same actor B5 used the season before in appear in what was essentially the same role. The B5 team found this out when they tried to bring the actor back to reprise the role and found out he was over at Paramount filming a DS9 episode. JMS responded by killing off the character and replacing him!
Five full seasons, plus a handful of made for TV movies. Enough to keep you busy for a while if you enjoy really good SciFi.
Morning Round Up
Let’s start with a cartoon by John Cox
The US Tax code is a Byzantine maze that Rube Goldberg would claim is too complex. As I said before…
One of good ideas of the President’s deficit reduction panel was to drastically simplify the tax code and reduce the highest tax rate to 25%. That will reduce the 30% plus overhead of the IRS and get uber-rich democrats, like my senior Senator, to actually pay their fair share of the taxes paid by almost every other working American.
Don’t expect democrats to embrace this idea though. It goes against their core values, like waging class warfare.
Speaking of taxes and the economy, let’s review this bit of news…
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said a surge in U.S. government “activism,” including fiscal stimulus, housing subsidies and new regulations, is holding back the economic recovery.
Wait! It gets better as Mr. Greenspan puts yet another nail in the coffin of Keynesianism.
“Any withdrawal of action to allow the economy to heal could restore some, or much, of the dynamic of the pre-crisis decade, without its imbalances.”
Not that this will slow down the big government fanatics in our Dear Leader‘s administration.
Speaking of which, it’s time to play “Fear the Boom and Bust” again!
Moving on, I’m am not surprised that democrat Sheila Jackson Lee is a really, really bad boss and would be brought up on harassment charges in the private sector.
Overcoming Liberalism: Step 12
Step 12 of 12: Be a missionary
Once you have completed the previous steps to overcoming liberalism, it’s time for you to share this awakening with others who are not as fortunate. Go out amongst the liberal sheep and spread the good word of your freedom from the chains of ignorance that once bound you. Congratulations, and welcome to reality.
Two US Air Force airmen killed. Murderer yelled out “Allahu akbar”
That’s according to the New York Times. The killer made an effort to determine who in the crowd were US Military personnel before opening fire.
No mention of the killer’s religion or the shout in the sanitized CNN story. Hardly a surprise.
The shooting occurred at the Frankfurt airport. So much for Germany’s strict gun control laws.
Quote of the day
“Whenever two parties make a free will trade; Spices for wool or grain for fire wood or even three dollars and fifty cents for a happy meal, both sides benefit. Because the customer would rather have the hamburger and McDonalds would rather have the three fifty. You’re welcome to disagree with me of course, you can email me a comment on why you hate businesses and corporations using your Apple computer while you sit at Starbucks and send messages down AT&T phone lines to Youtube servers running Hitachi hard drives all of which is powered by something like Consolidated Edison most likely generating electricity by burning oil provided by Exxon Mobile. Now if you want to hand deliver a message scratched on a tree bark using a sharp stick while wearing a grass skirt I will be much much more impressed with your moral outrage.”
— Bill Whittle
Wisconsin Fleebaggers heavily funded by Public Employee Union payments
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, Culture of Corruption, Politics
Color me not surprised. Here is the, ahem, money quote.
The 14 Wisconsin Democratic senators who fled to Illinois share more than just political sympathy with the public employees and unions targeted by Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.
The Senate Democrats count on those in the public sector as a key funding source for their campaigns.
In fact, nearly one out of every five dollars raised by those Democratic senators in the past two election cycles came from public employees, such as teachers and firefighters, and their unions, a Journal Sentinel analysis of campaign records shows. . . .
Remember the good advice from the man who wrote the screenplay, “Follow the Money.”
Overcoming Liberalism: Step 11
Step 11 of 12: Stop re-writing political history
It’s now time to admit that Bill Clinton is a lying-cheating-sexist-racist idiot, Hillary Clinton is one of the worst role models for women in this country, Al Gore really did lose the 2000 election by every vote tabulation you attempt, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War and didn’t create the homeless problem, John McCain is not a typical Republican, and Jimmy Carter is a nice man but has one of the worst presidential records of anyone in history.
Monday Book Pick: The Mote in God’s Eye
The Mote in God’s Eye by Dr. Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
One of the classics of Science Fiction by two of the best “Hard Science Fiction” authors out there. This was their first collaboration and for extra bonus points, they had it vetted by the Grandmaster of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein.
Quote of the Day
Bill Whittle nails it shut with this observation:
“After the second amendment goes, the first will soon follow. Because if some social engineering genius determines that real people can’t be trusted with dangerous guns, then it’s just a matter of time until they decide they can’t be trusted with dangerous ideas either.”
Overcoming Liberalism: Step 10
Step 10 of 12: Eat a hamburger
If God didn’t intend for us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat. You can put your sprouts and tofu on the hamburger, but get some meat into you. You’ll look and feel better than you ever imagined. You can always remind yourself that Nazi propaganda hailed Adolf Hitler as a vegetarian to get you through this step.
Editorial note: If you believe in evolution, then you should be eating meat along with your veggies. Science points out that man evolved as an omnivore. If you are a denying that part of your evolutionary heritage, then don’t get upset when an Homo sapiens points out your “anti-science” habits.