You Heard it Here First
Several months ago, someone added "How to Train Your Dragon" to our Netflix list. This represented a new release of the animated feature and, sure enough, it arrived right on the day it was supposed to.
I think I would lose my worldwide readership if I tried to review all the movies I see. As for this one, it had its moments, though it also borrowed freely from "Avatar","Dances With Wolves", "Little Big Man" and some others. One thing kind of puzzled me. The human race in the movie was represented by a group of big, tough-looking Vikings, complete with the usual red beards, horned helmets and hefty weaponry. So far, so good, but weren't the Vikings from Scandinavia? Norway? Sweden? If that's the case, why did all the adult Vikings speak with Scottish brogues? The kids, of course, were as American as Beaver Cleaver.
Election Day is in two weeks, and if the polls are to be believed, the Democrats' turn running Congress could be cut short by a combined assault of GOP regulars and Tea Party flame throwers doing what they do best - rip down the other guy with a collection of right wing code words that come just short of saying "Mah 'ponent is nuttin' but a dang turrist dressed up in a suit soes he can fool you inta thinkin' he's Amurkin lahk me." Of course, with two weeks left, I could be giving the TPers too much credit.
What they've found, to no one's surprise, is that the more often these lines gets repeated, the more reasonable they seem. That being the case, you might have heard that the Right has increased its spending in certain races exponentially, forcing the Democrats to abandon certain candidates in some races in order to save incumbents in others.
Not to brag, but I predicted the money part of this little conundrum back in January when the Supreme Court issued the "Citizens United" decision. Remember it? The one that says since corporations are, from a certain perspective, regarded as "people", that meant that one hundred years of precedents restricting direct advertising in political races would be out the window? Sure enough, there's money popping up from all sorts of new sources, many of whom don't even have to be identified. The Right likes to say that since labor unions could throw their financial muscle towards Democrats, that it all "evens out". That's downright comical when you see that Goldman Sachs managed to clear something close to $2 billion in just the last quarter. That amount alone would enable GS to buy most unions outright and operated them as loss leaders.
As for me, I'll believe that corporations are legally "people" when I see one sent to jail for breaking the law, or witness one erased from the earth by corporate capital punishment enabled by the criminal, not the financial, courts.
I think I would lose my worldwide readership if I tried to review all the movies I see. As for this one, it had its moments, though it also borrowed freely from "Avatar","Dances With Wolves", "Little Big Man" and some others. One thing kind of puzzled me. The human race in the movie was represented by a group of big, tough-looking Vikings, complete with the usual red beards, horned helmets and hefty weaponry. So far, so good, but weren't the Vikings from Scandinavia? Norway? Sweden? If that's the case, why did all the adult Vikings speak with Scottish brogues? The kids, of course, were as American as Beaver Cleaver.
Election Day is in two weeks, and if the polls are to be believed, the Democrats' turn running Congress could be cut short by a combined assault of GOP regulars and Tea Party flame throwers doing what they do best - rip down the other guy with a collection of right wing code words that come just short of saying "Mah 'ponent is nuttin' but a dang turrist dressed up in a suit soes he can fool you inta thinkin' he's Amurkin lahk me." Of course, with two weeks left, I could be giving the TPers too much credit.
What they've found, to no one's surprise, is that the more often these lines gets repeated, the more reasonable they seem. That being the case, you might have heard that the Right has increased its spending in certain races exponentially, forcing the Democrats to abandon certain candidates in some races in order to save incumbents in others.
Not to brag, but I predicted the money part of this little conundrum back in January when the Supreme Court issued the "Citizens United" decision. Remember it? The one that says since corporations are, from a certain perspective, regarded as "people", that meant that one hundred years of precedents restricting direct advertising in political races would be out the window? Sure enough, there's money popping up from all sorts of new sources, many of whom don't even have to be identified. The Right likes to say that since labor unions could throw their financial muscle towards Democrats, that it all "evens out". That's downright comical when you see that Goldman Sachs managed to clear something close to $2 billion in just the last quarter. That amount alone would enable GS to buy most unions outright and operated them as loss leaders.
As for me, I'll believe that corporations are legally "people" when I see one sent to jail for breaking the law, or witness one erased from the earth by corporate capital punishment enabled by the criminal, not the financial, courts.
posted by Mark at 10:18 AM
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