Back to the Center

H/T: American Thinker

I can relate

Truths For Mature Humans

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How in the world are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

9. Bad decisions make good stories.

10. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

11. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

12. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

13. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

14. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

15. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

16. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

17. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

18. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

19. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

20. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds,eyes closed, first time, every time!

21. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974.That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.

I stole this from The Silverbacks.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that You are listening!

REPEAL THE 26TH AMENDMENT!
by Ann Coulter
November 10, 2010


Jimmy Carter was such an abominable president we got Ronald Reagan, tax cuts, a booming economy and the destruction of the Soviet Union.


Two years of Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress got us the first Republican Congress in half a century, followed by tax cuts, welfare reform and a booming economy –- all of which Clinton now claims credit for.


Obama's disastrous presidency has already produced Republican senators from Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Illinois; New Jersey's wonder-governor Chris Christie; and the largest House majority for Republicans since 1946.


We deserve more. Clinton only threatened to wreck the health care system; Obama actually did it. We must repeal the 26th Amendment.


Adopted in 1971 at the tail end of the Worst Generation's anti-war protests, the argument for allowing children to vote was that 18-year-olds could drink and be conscripted into the military, so they ought to be allowed to vote.


But 18-year-olds aren't allowed to drink anymore. We no longer have a draft. In fact, while repealing the 26th Amendment, we ought to add a separate right to vote for members of the military, irrespective of age.


As we have learned from ObamaCare, young people are not considered adults until age 26, at which point they are finally forced to get off their parents' health care plans. The old motto was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." The new motto is: "Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote."


Eighteen- to 26-year-olds don't have property, spouses, children or massive tax bills. Most of them don't even have jobs because the president they felt so good about themselves for supporting wrecked the economy.


The meager tax young people paid for vehicle licensing fees on their cars threw them into such a blind rage that in 2003 they uncharacteristically voted to recall the Democratic governor of California, Gray Davis. Wait until they start making real money and realize they share a joint-checking account arrangement with the government! Literally wait. Then we'll let them vote.


Having absolutely no idea what makes their precious cars run, by the way, young voters are the most likely to oppose offshore drilling.


How about 10-year-olds? Why not give them the vote?


Then we'd have politicians wooing voters with offers of free Justin Bieber tickets instead of offers of a "sustainable planet" or whatever hokum the youth have swallowed hook, line and sinker from their teachers, pop culture idols and other authority figures. (Along with their approved-by-the-authorities "Question Authority" bumper stickers.)


Like 18-year-olds, the 10-year-olds would be sublimely unaware that they're the ones who will be footing the bill for all these "free" goodies, paying and paying until they die of old age.


Brain research in the last five years at Dartmouth and elsewhere has shown that human brains are not fully developed until age 25 and are particularly deficient in their frontal lobes, which control decision-making, rational thinking, judgment, the ability to plan ahead and to resist impulses.


Unfortunately, we didn't know that in 1971. Those of you who have made it to age 26 without dying in a stupid drinking game -- and I think congratulations are in order, by the way -- understand how insane it is to allow young people to vote.


It would almost be tolerable if everyone under the age of 30 just admitted they voted for Obama because someone said to them, "C'mon, it's really cool! Everyone's doing it!"


We trusted them, and now we know it was a mistake.


True, Reagan tied with Carter for the youth vote in 1980 and stole younger voters from Mondale in 1984, but other than that, young voters have consistently embarrassed themselves. Of course, back when Reagan was running for president, young voters consisted of the one slice of the population completely uninfected by the Worst Generation. Today's youth are the infantilized, pampered, bicycle-helmeted children of the Worst Generation.


They foisted this jug-eared, European socialist on us and now they must be punished. Voters aged 18 to 29 years old comprised nearly a fifth of the voting population in 2008 and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama, 66 percent to 31 percent.


And it only took 12 to 14 years of North Korean-style brainwashing to make them do it! At least their teachers haven't brainwashed them into burning books or ratting out their parents to the Stasi yet. (On the bright side, before teaching them book-burning, their professors would be forced to teach them what a book is.)


It would make more sense to give public school teachers and college professors 20 votes apiece than to allow their impressionable students to vote.


The Re-Education Camp Effect can be seen in how these slackers living at home on their parents' health insurance voted in the middle of the Republican tidal wave this year. Youths aged 18-29 voted for the Democrats by 16 points. But the kids aged 18-24 -- having just received an A in Professor Ward Churchill's college class on American Oppression -- voted for the Democrats by a whopping 19 points.


Young people voted for Obama as a fashion statement. One daughter of a friend of a friend of mine spent her whole college summer in 2008 working at a restaurant and then, with teary eyes, sent everything she made to the Obama campaign.


Luckily, she doesn't have to worry about paying for tuition, rent or food. Or property taxes, electric bills, plumbers and electricians. After being exploited by the left, she'll end up paying for it for the rest of her life, with interest.


Liberals fight tooth-and-nail to create an electorate disposed to vote Democratic by, for example, demanding that felons and illegal aliens be given the vote. But it's at least possible that illegal aliens and criminals pay taxes or have fully functioning frontal lobes.


Republicans ought to fight for their own electorate, which at a minimum ought to mean voters with fully functioning brains and the possibility of a tax bill. Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote.


COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106


I'm not sure how seriously to take Miss Ann on this one.  I absolutely agree with her stated opinion that the voting age should be raised back to 21 but like revoking the frnachise for women (another very good idea) it has almost no chance of happening.
 
Personally I would like to see the franshise further restricted to taxpayers.  Perhaps one vote per dollar of taxable income and one vote per dollar of property taxes paid.  Or better yet one vote per dollar of income tax paid and one vote for every dollar of property taxes paid.  That would be one way of getting Democrats on board with tax cuts for the producing class (you know "the rich").
 
That way at the very least those deciding who will spend our tax money would be the people who actually pay in that tax money.

You kind of had to see it coming

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Happy blogging!

I found this on Blogrolling's home page.

It was nice while it lasted.

New Computer

I finally had to break down and buy a new computer. It is working beautifully and for the folks who have messaged me complaining about how long this blog takes to load on this new setup it takes less than 30 seconds - while also downloading a large file and playing a YouTube video.

Tonight's Music

Here is a nice number from Aerosmith callled Hangman Jury. It is off the CD Permanant Vacation.

MSNBC suspendes loon for being honest

From MSNBC:

MSNBC has suspended prime-time host Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for contributing to the campaigns of three Democratic candidates this election season.

Olbermann acknowledged to NBC that he donated $2,400 apiece to the campaigns of Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grivalva and Gabrielle Giffords.

NBC News prohibits its employees from working on, or donating to, political campaigns unless a special exception is granted by the news division president—effectively a ban. Olbermann's bosses did not find out about the donations until after they were made. The website Politico first reported the donations.

Others have commented on NBC's rank hypocrisy in forbidding "journalists" like Olbermann from writing a check to a politician's campaign while allowing them to give millions of dollars of "in kind" contributions by doing everything from slanting news coverage to spreading out and out propaganda (think about the way that almost the entire MSM carried Obama's water during the 2008 campaign).

So I only have one question. If NBC goes ahead and fires Olbermann will Fox News give him a multimillion dollar contract?

Lessons from last night

1. This is a center-right country and attempting to govern it from the hard left will earn rejection from the people.

2. People were not voting for Republicans (in most cases) they were voting against Democrats (and especially Obama). The Republicans who now control the House now have two years to demonstrate that they are not only different from Obama and his Democrat party but that they are better than Obama and his crowd.

3. Republicans will most definitely not show the public that they are better than the Democrats by compromising their stated core beliefs in the interest of "getting something done". In other words if anyone is going to "cross the isle" it had better be Obama and the Democrats.

4. Christine O'Donnell lost her Senate race in Delaware because the local media was able to make enough voters in that state ashamed to vote for a believing Christian and conservative. This brings up an important point. The national mainstream media has lost most of its credibility along with its audience/readership. However the local media still retains the power to create a narrative which can alter the outcome of an election in a state or congressional district.

5. Some parts of the United States of America simply aren't America any more. The people of Connecticut chose an obvious fool over an accomplished businesswoman because they were embarrassed that her business involved professional wrestling. The people of California re-elected Barbara Boxer and sent Jerry Brown back to the governor's mansion. This is in spite of the fact that left-wing policies are driving California's economy into the ground like a tent peg.

6. Voter fraud is alive and well. There is no other way to explain Harry Reid's reelection.

7. Public employee unions like SEIU now serve the Democrat party like the brown shirted SA once served the Nazi party in Germany. It was a tragic mistake to allow government employees to unionize and in 2013 when the new Republican president is sworn in with a GOP House and Senate backing her every effort should be made to repeal the legislation which allowed government employees to organize. The fact is that in the old days government employees were in a better position regarding pay, benefits and especially job security than they are today. Most of the civil service protections which they once enjoyed have been lost or seriously watered down by congress on the rational that their unions didn't object - at least too much. Government employee union leaders have exchanged the pay, benefits and security of their membership for political power for themselves.

8. As Winston Churchill said this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may, perhaps, be the end of the beginning. America in still in deep trouble. Our president is still a committed enemy of this nation and he still has a majority in the Senate to back him. Repeal of anything will not be possible for the Republican House because it will not be possible to overturn a presidential veto. However the GOP must try. We must show the people of this nation that we "get it" and are attempting to not only slow the nation's decline but reverse it.

Delaware is still in play

Some of you may be aware that an internet site called Gawker (I won't link to it, you can find it if you really want to) posted a story by a young man, now identified as Dustin Dominiak (you can read the details of his outing in this post on TSG), in which he relates what he claims to be the details of a "one night stand" with Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell.

I read the account penned by Mr. Dominiak and have to report to you that it reads very much like a Penthouse letter - with all the credibility that such letters typically have.

Given the fact that Mr. Dominiak has a couple of photographs of himself and Ms. O'Donnell sitting together wearing Halloween costumes in a bar it is apparent that he did encounter her at some sort of Halloween happening somewhere or other.

However the rest of Mr. Dominiak's story reads like something a half drunk frat boy might post on his Facebook page to get even with the girl who laughed at him when he asked her to accompany him to the men's room of a bar for oral sex.

The fact that Gawker admits to paying a few thousand dollars for this adolescent fantasy makes it all the more pathetic.

So pathetic that one must ask themselves why they would even bother. After all the polls are supposed to show liberal Democrat Coons with a nearly 18 point lead over O'Donnell so the race would seem to be over. Why then lay out money for a transparently false story that can have no other purpose than to embarrass Ms. O'Donnell?

One answer that springs to mind is that since Ms. O'Donnell is a conservative Christian she is the very embodiment of evil to the progressive left. In the left's fevered imagination any such person who dares to seek political power must not only be defeated but destroyed utterly.

They must be punished and an example must be made of them so that others like them will not be tempted to challenge the left's entitlement to power.


That could certainly explain the desire to go one step beyond in taking down Christine O'Donnell. However there is another and probably more likely explanation for the desire to slime Ms. O'Donnell.

She may not be as far behind in the polls as the mainstream media wants us to believe she is.

Check out this poll from the Monmouth University Polling Institute. By their own reckoning Christine O'Donnell has cut Coon's lead down to 10 points. AND she is leading Mr. Coons in the southern part of the state and has a 5 point lead over Coons among independent voters statewide!

The only thing keeping Coons in the lead is a large advantage in New Castle County. A lead which depends in large part upon minority and young voters who are the least likely to actually show up and vote on election day. Another factor to be considered is the 8% of the voters who are still undecided. Historically undecided voters break for the party out of power in the closing days of an election (explaining why Coons' lead is shrinking).

The people of Delaware are asking themselves if they can really afford to send a rubber stamp for Barack Obama's destructive policies, which threaten their jobs, their homes and their children's future, to Washington.

More and more are saying "NO". Will enough of Delaware's citizens decide to cast a rational vote against the Obama agenda?

I don't know. But what I do know is that this race is not over and Christine O'Donnell absolutely can win.

Obama caught on tape smoking crack with whore in DC motel room!

Sorry, just wanted to see how many search engine hits that would get.

Go back to what you were doing.

Unintended Consequences?

Leo Grin has a good piece on Big Hollywood about how the minimum wage ruined the movie going experience.

And yes, at movie theaters (movie palaces, they were called, and looked the part) they would usher you to your seat with a flashlight and a smile. If someone starting talking during the picture, the usher would shut them up. If the film was out of focus, an usher would alert the projectionist.

You were happy to have the service and the smile, they were happy to have the tip and the job. Everyone was happy. Life was good.

Then the liberals descended like vampires (the Stoker kind, not the Meyer kind) and passed all manner of laws and regulations about who these businesses could employ and at what price. Almost overnight, all of these service jobs vanished.

Why? Economist Peter Schiff explains it well in a trenchant article he wrote last year titled “Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity”:

When confronted with a clogged drain, most of us will call several plumbers and hire the one who quotes us the lowest price. If all the quotes are too high, most of us will grab some Drano and a wrench, and have at it. Labor markets work the same way. Before bringing on another worker, an employer must be convinced that the added productivity will exceed the added cost (this includes not just wages, but all payroll taxes and other benefits.) So if an unskilled worker is capable of delivering only $6 per hour of increased productivity, such an individual is legally unemployable with a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

These days we all go through life with our humanity and civilization diminished because of these laws. Look around, and you’ll see old people struggling to pump their gas or carry their luggage. You’ll see Mom and Dad ready to pop a blood vessel as they frantically navigate through computerized telephone menus looking for a real live human being who can help them. Simultaneously, you’ll see an ever-growing army of unskilled people — mostly teenagers looking to break into the job market — denied the opportunity to work because liberals have made it functionally illegal to employ them.

Such problems are a direct and predictable consequence of thoughtless wage and employer regulations, and they’ve wreaked quiet devastation on our society and standard of living, especially among the very people they were originally designed to help.

Go and read the rest.

Economists call this sort of thing an "unintended consequence", an unplanned on and unanticipated result of the six hundred pound gorilla of government regulation rampaging through the china shop of the economy.

In recent times I have tended to rethink the idea of unintended consequences, at least in situations like this. After all if teenagers get a taste of productive work. If they get a chance to feel the satisfaction of receiving a paycheck for a job well done (and feel the dismay of seeing how large a chunk of that paycheck is swallowed by state and federal government) they will be less dependent upon government. And worse, from the standpoint of the progressive left, they will be less desirous of being dependent upon government.

The same can be said of senior citizens. The less they depend upon their Social Security check the less susceptible they are to the Democrat party's lies about Republicans wanting the "steal their Social Security".

In short the left wants as few people looking to themselves for the fulfillment of life's needs as possible and as many looking to the government as possible. Make as many people practically unemployable as possible and you automatically grow your natural constituency.

And this is precisely what minimum wage laws do and do disproportionally to the young, seniors and minorities.

At first minimum wages were probably a well intentioned but misguided effort to elevate those at the lower end of the economic ladder. However now that their actual negative effects upon those they were intended to help can not be denied their current value to those who still support them cannot be denied either.

Tonight's Music

Here's something mellow to start off your weekend.

Call me SENATOR, you little army punk

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

The creator of this video, David Zucker, calls it his appology for supporting and contributing to Ms. Boxer's first Senate campaign.

Let us hope that the people of California will have enough pride to be embarassed enough about his wretched woman to send her home next month.

Also it should be noted that all the actors and crew donated their efforts to this project.

Caption This

Man of the People

H/T: American Thinker

The left loses it

J.R. Dunn had a good piece on American Thinker the other day:

History tells us that organizations, movements, even entire nations can go mad in much the same way an individual does, with the same expression of irrationality, frenzy, and violence. Recent evidence suggests that the American left is going through precisely such a breakdown.

[. . .]

What better metaphor for the current condition of the left? Leftism suffers from an equivalent psychosis -- one that is now beginning to break out. This is not by chance, but due to the ongoing collapse of the left's epic dream. Leftists have always believed that one clear shot, one opportunity to put their policies into play without opposition from "reactionary interests," would result in a political chain reaction, success leading to further success and finally absolute triumph as the New Socialist Jerusalem came into being with almost no effort on their part. This is childish fantasy, a wish-fulfillment daydream, transparent almost to the point of contempt. (It's also extremely ahistorical -- exactly such circumstances existed in 1933 and 1964 due to historical accident. Liberals botched things then exactly as they are doing now.) But for many years, it has been the only thing keeping the left going.

Leftists really believed that Obama embodied their moment. Obama held all the cards -- majorities in both houses, a slavish press that viewed him as no less than a godling, an enthusiastic public, even an acquiescent international establishment, overlooking a few holdouts such as Kim and Ahmadinejad. No left-of-center president has had a smoother road before him -- not FDR, not Lyndon Johnson. Yet Obama's efforts amount to utter failure -- not because of opposition from the "party of no," not because of circumstances, not because of sabotage, but because of Obama's "success" itself. He got the bills passed, guaranteed that their execution would be in the hands of extraconstitutional figures beholden only to him, and got them funded by means both legal and illegal. All of it was put into play with a smoothness that only Chicago thuggery combined with socialist chicanery could accomplish. He launched them, and they crashed, and they burned.

They crashed and burned because they cannot work. Not in a universe with natural laws that operate the way they do and with human nature constituted as it is. They have never worked anywhere they have been tried -- not in Europe, not in Asia, not in Africa, nowhere across this wide world. Obama's grand schemes have been attempted previously. The failures were hurriedly stuffed down the memory hole, enabling the left to hope for another shot sometime down the line. (No small number of people in this country -- many of them not doctrinaire leftists by any means -- truly believe that FDR "ended" the Depression.)

But today they have a problem -- several, in point of fact. The first is that the memory hole has in large part been filled in over the past decade and a half by such things as the internet and the New Media. It's no longer a simple matter to shove nationwide failures out of sight. It may not even be possible.

The second is the fact that this time, they bet the house. They put everything down on Obama. Because it had to work. Because the third time was the charm. Because O was the messiah. And now they're sitting in the casino dead broke, without another dime to lay on the table, and through the doorway they can hear the shouts of the people whose money they embezzled.

This is why the left is being overwhelmed by psychosis. Because they are up against the wall with no way out. Under such circumstances, the strong individual bites the bullet and runs for daylight. The weak fall apart. It's been a long, long time since anyone defined leftists as "strong."

The left's psychosis, like those of many individuals, involves violence. Simply put, no left-wing regime has ever attained complete power without causing the deaths of its own citizens on a mass scale. We need simply give a short roll call of the bloody names: the USSR, Red China, "Democratic Kampuchea," Cuba, Vietnam...these speak well enough for themselves.

Some of the mortality incurred by social-nationalist states is caused by accident -- policies that simply don't work out (this includes hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. itself, another memory-hole saga that is going to emerge back into the light come this January). But violence is the major cause -- the ubiquitous secret police, the not at all uncommon massacres, the brutal crushing of dissidents and workers' protests, and the camp networks that no leftist government can do without. A left-wing state cannot exist without violence because there is no other method of keeping the people in line once the inevitable policy failures occur.

[. . .]

Most recently, we have had the incident marking the full emergence of left-wing psychosis in all its mad glory: the "No Pressure" film released by the 10:10 group. Few AT readers can have missed discussion of this little gem, which features a series of vignettes in which anyone opposed to the "global warming" hoax is annihilated by a magic button that blows them to pieces on the spot. (Some may protest that the film is English -- the author, Richard Curtis, is noted for his genteel British comedies. But in truth, it's international -- Gillian Anderson is American, and if you were to further trace artistic and financial involvement, you'd find plenty more Yanks in the mix.)

This is as clear a depiction of left-wing psychosis as we are ever going to see. It is the yearning -- of an intensity beyond the grasp of sane, normal individuals-- to possess some means of total power, some instrument of near-divine retribution and punishment. Not for personal aggrandizement or sadistic pleasure, no, not at all...but simply to remove those stones in the path of progress: the Neanderthals, the troglodytes, the reactionaries, who are standing between the people and their righteous destiny. We'll use it just a few times, only against the really bad ones, and only to make an impression. And once we do that, we'll put it aside, and never, ever touch it again, we promise...

This is infantilism, pure and simple, as all psychoses are, including the one diagnosed by Jung. It is a compulsive belief that the world needs to bow to the demands of the eternal child immediately and without protest. And when it doesn't -- and we can be sure it won't -- it must be punished to the limits of the imagination and beyond. This is the impulse behind leftism, stacked to the roof as it is with people who never grew out of deepest childhood, who have grown twisted and embittered in the conviction that world has let them down and must pay for it.

It is also the impulse of the tyrant from time immemorial, from the Neros and Ashurbanipals to the Stalins and Maos of our own epoch. In "Pressure," we see it expressed more clearly than ever before, by extremely talented and sophisticated people, in the expectation that it will encourage others. (Another point that struck me was the way the film mixes bloodshed with whimsy. Whimsicality -- what unfunny people have instead of a sense of humor -- has always been a mark of the left. Now it has been publicly intertwined with the impulse to kill. How sick is that?)

[. . .]

But it will come to nothing. No socialist paradise, no universal nanny government, and certainly no police state. It will come to nothing thanks to one simple fact: the American left has no spine.

Go read the whole thing.

This, like Angelo Codevilla's article (and now book) on America's ruling class, answers many questions.

Horror Movies

Since Halloween is approaching I thought it would be fun to compile a list of the best horror movies of all time. First of all let's lay a couple of ground rules.

One, the movies must involve the supernatural. A movie about a serial killer stalking his victim or a subway car full of innocent citizens at the mercy psycho gang members can be scary indeed but those are primarily crime movies while the Halloween season requires the participation of something beyond ordinary human evil.

Two, we can stipulate that the old black and white horror movies starring actors like Bella Lugosi, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff playing Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the werewolf were all great films. Many people, me included, think they are more enjoyable than almost everything calling itself a "horror movie" that comes out of Hollywood today. But to be honest most of them were products of the "if people will pay to see it once they will pay to see it again and again so make a sequel" mentality. They were hastily written and hastily produced with little in the way of special effects (even by the standards of the times).

What makes these films classics are the dignity and class infused every part of the creative process which produced them. Their underlying attitude was that there is such a thing as good and evil and that good inherently deserves to win. This is why tormented Larry Talbot was willing to end his life if it would break the curse that turned him into a werewolf, why Dracula always ended up with a wooden stake through his heart and why at the end of the movie we realized that the true monster was Dr. Frankenstein himself.

Another aspect of why these old movies are superior to most of the blood and gore slash-fests which pass for modern horror movies is the fact that the standards which Hollywood was forced to conform to in the past did not allow for the graphic violence which modern directors rely upon instead of good writing, good acting and good direction.

But all that these pictures have going for them cannot save them from the fact that they were formulaic cookie-cutter productions intended for children and teenagers. In other words they occupied the same market niche as Friday the 13th part 29 and so do not really qualify for a list of pictures which are not only fun to watch but actually advance the art of movie making.

With that out of the way here is the beginning of my list of the greatest horror movies of all time.

1. The Exorcist. A beautiful little girl is possessed by a demon. The evil creature uses her to preform acts of evil from the symbolic (desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary in a local Catholic church) to the concrete (committing cold blooded murder). It strips her of her innocence and attacks everyone around her in ways designed to create terror and confusion to challenge faith and create despair. The only flaw in the movie was that in the end the demon was vanquished not by the power of God but by the compassion of the priest who offered himself in exchange for the child and committed suicide before the beast could assert full control over his body.

2. The Exorcist III. Forget the others in the series. Exorcist III is the true sequel to the original, written by William Peter Blatty it manages to create the same atmosphere of suspense and invoke the same sense of oppressive evil.

3. Rosemary's Baby. I thought strongly about making this no. 1. Roman Polanski is certainly a low life dirtbag rapist who deserves to die behind bars, but he did manage to make of the the best horror movies of all time. The way the situation is set up lets the audience know that something evil is afoot even while young Rosemary Woodhouse is only beginning to realize that something isn't exactly right. Everything about this movie works together perfectly to create the desired effect. The photography, the location, the music and above all the acting.

4. Halloween. This was the first of its kind and must be judged on that basis. It was genuinly creative rather than copycat. Even though the rules for this list require that the evil be supernatural it is strongly suggested that Michael Myers is more (or is it less) than merely human.

To be honest this is all I can come up with. What emerges from Hollywood in the current era is almost universally garbage. Directors imagine that special effects, an ocean of fake blood and a giant helping of hipster nihilism are the only things required to make a "scary" movie.

Some pictures deserve an honorable mention however.

Phantasm. This was an excellent movie but is doesn't make the list for two reasons. One, the villains were aliens not supernatural beings and two, it wasn't so much scary as it was wicked cool and funny in a twisted and perverse way.

Alien. Magnificent film, but again it was about an alien not a supernatural horror.

Rawhead Rex. Good concept but suffers from hokey special effects and an ending that's a little too pat. Still it gets points for having the first openly gay demonic monster. Also the movie reinforces an important lesson. Standing stones are standing where they are for a reason. Don't knock them down!

Halloween III: Season of the Witch. If this film had been trying to be funny it would be a work of genius. As it is it is little more than schlock intended to cash in on the Halloween franchise, but if you want a laugh sit down with this DVD and a six-pack.

The mask comes off

This video is not the product of a Monty Python reunion.



It is the handiwork of Richard Curtis and his wife Emma Freud (Emma is the great-granddaughter of Dr. Sigmund Freud, proving that being crazy as a shithouse rat runs in families).

Curtis and Freud are part of a British group called 10:10 which wants the British people (as the video states) to cut their carbon emissions by 10% this year.

What is most telling about this is that environmentalists have finally pulled back the curtain and revealed the true face of the monster within.

James Delingpole writes in the Telegraph:

With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.

I don’t think any of us will ever be able to look at another Richard Curtis movie in quite the same way ever again. It may even be that we will now never, ever be able to enjoy another episode of the Vicar of Dibley, because all we’ll be able to think about is Dawn French with a Panzerfaust beneath her cassock ready to blast off the heads of any members of her congregation who don’t believe in Man Made Global Warming. What a sad day this is for us all.

PS If you want to register your disgust, a commenter from the previous blog Reconstruct has some helpful suggestions:

Now you’ve seen the video, prepare not to be surprised that your taxes helped pay for it.

The 10:10 Campaign is supported by:
ActionAid (Govt of UK 2nd largest funder in 2009);
The Carbon Trust (surely #1 on the list of quangos-to-go);
The Energy Saving Trust.

Be not surprised that The Guardian is their ‘media partner’.

On the other hand, if you’re outraged by the video, you might be interested to know that they also have a small number of genuine commercial sponsors: O2, Sony and Kyocera all have helped fund the 10:10 Campaign.

I suggest that the first thing to do is to make your outrage known to O2, Sony and Kyocera, suggesting that their commercial interests might not be furthered by funding murderous nazi will-fulfillment propaganda.

This is especially sad for me because Richard Curtis was a writer and co-creator of Blackadder, of of the funniest bits of television ever produced.

Mr. Delingpole is correct about the "snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness" of the modern environmental movement which is itself nothing but a wholly owned subsidiary of the modern political left. And like every other part of the modern political left is is nothing but a giant death-cult.

Whether condemning tens of millions of people to death from malaria by banning DDT, consigning millions of children to blindness by opposing genetically modified vitamin A enriched rice for Third World countries or having wet dreams about murdering people who refuse to waste their time by participating in trivial feel-good energy saving programs the green left shows itself to be nothing more than an acolyte attending human sacrifices placed onthe blood soaked alter of the left's nihilistic self-loathing.

The video might be gone by the time you read this because 10:10 keeps taking it down (like the people who produced all those "Hitler Youth" style videos of children singing about Obama they realized after the fact that they were doing more harm than good to their cause). However people concerned for getting the truth out about what the eco-left really stands for keep re-posting it so just go to YouTube and search for "No Pressure 10:10" and you will find it.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

HOW MANY TIMES DID GOLDWATER RUN FOR PRESIDENT AGAIN?
by Ann Coulter
September 22, 2010

Washington elites' heads exploded when Christine O'Donnell won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware last week. Luckily they were all reading The New York Times' op-ed page at the time, so the mess their exploding heads created was minimal.

The establishment's complaints are confusing. They say O'Donnell has a problem because she's never held a job in the private sector (like our president), didn't pay her taxes (like our treasury secretary), and had her house foreclosed on (like half of the electorate).

They also accuse her of saying crazy things -- but she's running for Joe Biden's old seat, so this may be an advantage.

This week, all we've heard about is how O'Donnell once said she went on a date with a guy in high school who claimed to be a witch. (So what? Bill Clinton married one!) Bill Clinton was credibly accused of at least one forcible rape. Those two seem about equal to you?

I haven't seen hypocrisy like this since -- oh, that's right, since last week when CBS's Bob Schieffer attacked John Boehner for smoking, after two years of the media's ferociously avoiding the topic of Obama's cigarette habit.

The Republican Party is being warned that tea party-endorsed candidates such as O'Donnell might lead to Barry Goldwater-style epic defeats.

Of course, the tea party candidates range from libertarian Rand Paul in Kentucky to Yale Law/Iraq War veteran Joe Miller in Alaska to Christian activist O'Donnell. But any evidence of principle in a Republican is always treated by the elites as if it's an embarrassing eccentricity best kept under wraps.

Referring to "fringe candidates" from the tea party, Morton Kondracke wrote in Roll Call that Republicans are "heading out of the mainstream" and cited Goldwater as a "disastrous" precedent.

David Gergen said on CNN that the tea party candidates may be producing "something like what we saw back in the 1960s when the rise of Barry Goldwater seized power in the party back from the establishment, took it, but then went on to get a real drubbing in that '64 national election."

CNN's Gloria Borger also compared the tea party movement's demand for ideological purity to the conservatives' ill-fated nomination of Barry Goldwater.

As a one-off, 46-year-old example, Goldwater is like the Timothy McVeigh of conservative presidential candidates. But if Goldwater is going to keep being used as a boogeyman to scare conservatives, let's at least get the history straight.

Ironically, the elites also compared Reagan to Goldwater and predicted a devastating defeat for him in 1980. But Reagan didn't lose. He not only never lost an election, he never won by less than a landslide. (You might say Reagan's opponents suffered Goldwater-style defeats.)

So what was the difference between Goldwater and Reagan? Had the country changed that much in 16 years?

The social issues were the difference. Reagan agreed with Goldwater on fiscal and national defense issues, but by 1980, social issues loomed large and Reagan came down mightily on one side -- the opposite side as Goldwater, as it turned out.

Unlike abortion-loving Goldwater, Reagan said, "We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."

And unlike gay-marriage-loving Goldwater, Reagan said: "Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. ... We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."

Goldwater may have been a thorough-going right-winger on national defense, but -- unless L. Brent Bozell Jr. was writing it for him -- he never would have said this of the Soviets, as President Reagan did: "There is sin and evil in the world and we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might."

CNN's Borger contrasted Goldwater with Ronald Reagan by precisely reversing their differences, claiming Reagan "was probably the most secular president we've known in our lifetime."

Yes, the man who called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire," who wrote a book against abortion as a sitting president, and who said that our government's founding documents "speak of man being created, of a creator, that we are a nation under God" -- that's the one Borger calls "the most secular president we've known in our lifetime."

By "most secular," I gather she means "most deeply religious."

Establishment Republicans are always telling Christian conservatives to put our issues aside because they're not popular -- and then moderate Republicans go on to lose elections, while conservative Republicans win in landslides. (It's almost as if the voters couldn't care less who David Brooks thinks they should vote for!)

As long as liberals are going to keep gleefully citing Goldwater's love of gay marriage and abortion, his contempt for Christian conservatives, and his statement that "every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass," maybe they could ease up on blaming Christian conservatives for Goldwater's historic loss.

Goldwater wasn't our guy; Reagan was.

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

Miss Ann is in fine form today.

A couple more points on this Christine O'Donnell business.

Are the liberals who mercilessly mocked some Christian conservatives for worrying that Harry Potter might lead young people toward witchcraft and the occult now in agreement with them?

I mean if going on a date with a guy who claims to be a witch is enough to utterly disqualify someone from serving in the US Senate then a whole series of books aimed at youngsters about how cool it is to be a witch or wizard can't possibly be good. Can it?

This is beginning to sound a great deal like the left's condemnation of the Boy Scouts for not allowing homosexual scoutmasters access to young boys while simultaneously condemning the Roman Catholic Church for allowing homosexual priests access to young boys.

Is anyone else's hypocrisy meter pegged?

Secondly we were constantly told that George W Bush was "out of touch" with ordinary Americans. He was a pampered "frat-boy" born with a silver spoon in his mouth and so forth.

Doesn't Ms. O'Donnell's past financial difficulty make her far more able to empathize with ordinary Americans who are having trouble making ends meet than the average politician?

Why doesn't the left see this as a good thing?

Check your hypocrisy meter again. The needle on mine just broke off.

Finally regarding Christine O'Donnell isn't the truly important thing how she is going to vote on the critically important issues that will be before the Senate in the upcoming session? After all the people of Delaware are just as frightened by the disastrous policies of the current president and congress as the rest of the nation. They want Obamacare repealed as badly as the rest of the nation. They want the unemployment rate lowered back to the Bush administration average of 5.1% just as badly as the rest of the nation. They want the price of gasoline and electricity to remain affordable rather than skyrocket (as they will if congress passes cap-and-trade) just as much as the rest of the American population.

So isn't the most important issue in this election the fact that Christine O'Donnell will be a reliable vote against the Obama agenda in all of it's destructive elements while her opponent will be a reliable rubber stamp for Obama and his radical (and radically destructive) agenda.

Doesn't that matter far more than what alternative religion she may have very briefly explored when she was a child?

Murkowski does the right thing

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Backed by the Tea Party Express and Sarah Palin, a little-known conservative lawyer from Alaska became the latest newcomer to the national political stage to take down an incumbent in 2010.

In arguably the biggest political upset of the year, Joe Miller claimed the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate when incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski conceded Tuesday evening.

Miller's win was a major victory for the tea party movement and marked the first time it had defeated a sitting senator in a primary.

Tea partiers had knocked off Utah Sen. Bob Bennett at a state convention in May, and emboldened organizers now have their sights set on Delaware, where they are backing Christine O'Donnell against the more moderate Rep. Mike Castle in the GOP Senate primary.

Miller, 43, told The Associated Press by phone late Tuesday that he'll campaign this fall on transferring power and control over resources from the federal government to Alaska and the other 49 states.

The state has long been heavily reliant on federal money to run — a legacy largely carved out by former Sen. Ted Stevens before his death in an August plane crash.

But the government's impending financial crisis will eventually force a reduction in funding to the state, Miller said by phone from Fairbanks.

"We have to be prepared for that, and the way to do it, of course, is to progressionally transfer holdings of the federal government to us," he said. "And of course, also by reducing federal regulatory burdens over the lands that we do control so that we can develop them more freely and more economically."

We need to stop here and thank Sen. Murkowski for having the grace and class to do the right thing. There were some early indications that she was going to pull a Gore/Frankin move and try to bring in lawyers to tie up the vote count and try to steal the election (as Gore failed to do and Frankin succeeded in doing).

That the GOP establishment in Washington would have most likely helped her is beyond doubt and another reason that this election is about defeating them as much as it is about defeating Democrats.