"Arrival" -- a movie review

Edward's movie review.......

Just saw the cerebral, sci-fi alien flick "Arrival" with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. I followed it fine, or at least thought I had, right up until the last 5 minutes, then it took me the entire ride home to work out what I'd just seen.

Without giving anything away, Arrival follows the usual Hollywood aliens-visit-Earth tropes......we can't communicate, armies are arrayed, fear and loathing are the rule of the day because comparatively unevolved humans aren't capable of anything but killing what we don't understand, blah blah blah.

It departs from typical alien movies by cleverly weaving into the main plot, the sub-plot which addresses personal choices and knowing one's own future.

I recommend it and would enjoy hearing any thoughts you have on the sub-plot.

OSU experiences multiculturalism, and not in a good way

Multiculturalism strikes at Ohio State University. A Somali immigrant student ran over and/or stabbed 9 students at OSU this morning. First he ran over pedestrians then got out and started stabbing them with a butcher knife before a campus cop shot him dead. Thankfully no student victims have died. 

Predictably the OSU administration pretended to be perplexed as to the motive, but given that ISIS recently commanded its followers in the West to randomly attack civilians with "cars and knives", the motive isn't too big a mystery. 

Because the people being radicalized against us are already legally here, there isn't much we can do unless there is a multi-person conspiracy and the authorities can detect it. If the attack is by one person, there isn't much we can do to protect ourselves except be armed and ready to fight back. 

Fidel "not surprised" to find self in Hell this morning

An exclusive interview by the Miami Herald revealed that murderous, thug dictator Fidel Castro reportedly "not all that surprised" to find self in Hell this morning.

When asked what he thought of burning in the fiery pits for all eternity, Castro shrugged and added, "Meh, ees a small price to pay for the joy of being a pain in the ass of the running-dog, capitalist, American peegs for 50 years".

Justice for Hillary is not Trump's job as President

So Trump says he has no interests in pursuing Hillary Clinton for whatever crimes she may have committed while Secretary of State.

Candidate Trump may promise prosecutions out the wazoo, but President Trump would be wise to abstain from that process altogether, because it's not his job as President to pursue any specific American citizen for any crimes, nor direct or otherwise influence the Justice Department or the FBI to do so on his behalf. If her crimes rose to the level of a federal indictment, they'll figure that out, Trump need not involve himself in any way.

Dude has a country to manage and instructing the justice department or the FBI to go after Hillary would not only be outside his purvue as President, it would look like a petty, political vendetta for which he doesn't have the time.

As President, he should wash his hands of the Clintons and not be part of whatever Sessions at Justice and the FBI decide to do. And if the investigations don't lead AG Jeff Sessions to indict her, then let her slink out the back door of US politics and mercifully fade away.

Americans have to believe that the FBI and Justice Dept. are apolitical, otherwise the rule of law breaks down.

Bus drivers are good drivers, Johnthany is not

Apparently this moron intentionally wrecked a school bus in Tennessee a couple of days ago, killing 5 kids and injuring many more.

Predicatably the news media and hysterical government regulators are screeching about 3-point belts on every school bus being mandatory, but has anybody stopped to marvel at the costs and problems that would arise, not to mention, seat belts weren't the problem here.....hiring this idiot thug with the dumb name, Johnthany, to drive a bus in the first place was the problem?

-Retrofitting every school bus in the nation with belts would cost millions if not billions and take many years.
-3-point harnesses require a sufficiently tall seat. Most school bus seats are fairly short. Must they also purchase and install taller seats?
-not every kid fits the same belt. You can't have football players using the same belt as 2nd graders.....that might be MORE dangerous in a wreck.
-Will every bus driver now have to play flight attendant too and check every belt for security before driving to the next stop?
-what's the legal liability if a kid does get hurt? Once the government belt mandates begin, dumb juries will award a hurt kid millions and bankrupt school systems all over the country. Trial lawyers will see to that with frivolous, pay-day lawsuits.

The list of problems with belts goes on and on. Wouldn't it be better to not hire thugs named Johnthany who look like Snoop from 1983, to drive kids' buses?

The Great Rutabaga Deception

It's late November so this story must be retold so as not to be forgotten.......

Some families go around the table at Thanksgiving and say what they're thankful for. Some families retell the story of Squanto and the Pilgrims. In our family, we tell the sad tale of Uncle Ed and the rutabaga incident of '76-'77, which I will recount to you now.......

The Great Rutabaga Deception of '76-'77...........

My family celebrated T'giving at the home of friends in '76 and I was delighted to see a casserole dish filled with my favorite, sweet potato casserole. My sister Andra cautioned me that she didn't think those were sweet potatoes. I snorted, dismissing her tomfoolery even as I piled my plate high. Turns out, they were rutabagas, the single most disgusting food stuff there is. I had to force them down so as not to embarrass our hosts. The following year we ate there again, but my desire for sweet-potato casserole was known to them from my humiliation the previous year, so I safely and eagerly anticipated dinner with my favorite Thanksgiving dish. Again I dove into the sweet, orange mountain with abandon and again Andra warned me that those might not be sweet potatoes. "Surely not. They wouldn't do that to me again" I exclaimed, incredulous at the thought. As I sat down, I realized that I smelled not of lightly roasted pecans, caro syrup, and the ambrosia that is caramelized brown sugar....instead I smelled a combination of fart and kimchi. RUTABAGA'S AGAIN!!!

To this day I do not eat rutabagas and for years, every Thanksgiving, my son Michael and my sister's kids J.P. and Julia gather 'round to hear the cautionary tale of Dad/Uncle Ed and The Great Rutabaga Deception of '76-'77.

Consitutional scholar? I doubt it

During an interview from Peru over the weekend, as part of an explanation for the election outcome, President Obama complained that small red states have two senators just like massive blue states like California. Apparently he thinks this is part of some sort of system rigged against him.

I thought he was a constitutional scholar. The whole purpose of having two houses of congress is that one(the Senate) represents the interests of the states and no one state is more important than another. The other one(the House) represents the people based on population so California gets 55 reps while North Dakota gets 3.

Originally, senators weren't voted on by the people as they are today. The state legislatures voted on two representatives to the Senate to represent equally, that state's interests in competition(or cooperation) with the interests of other states.

Either he doesn't understand the Constitution or he's being intentionally misleading, knowing that dumb Americans haven't learned an iota about the Constitution in school.

Eric Bolling for Commerce?

Fox's Eric Bolling, one of the first anchors at Fox News to jump all-in on the Trump bandwagon, is reportedly being considered for the job of Commerce Sec.

Of all the useless agencies, Commerce might be the most useless, along with Education, Energy, Interior, and the EPA, which all need to be eliminated, but if you have to fill these vacancies for reasons other than to supervise their shuttering and closing, then you could do a lot worse than Eric Bolling, who seems to know a lot about job creation.

As his first order of business, he should appoint Mike Rowe as his under-secretary and send him out to get some things done, post haste

Does anybody know what the Department of Commerce does?

Heh heh, SNL is finally funny again

This is the funniest election-season ad from SNL I've ever seen. 

The skewering of the pouty left over the election outcome is brilliant. 


              

Sec State needs to be less hawkish

Just heard Rand Paul talking about how Rudi Guiliani and John Bolton are too hawkish when it comes to the wisdom of American-driven regime change in the middle east, with regards to their possibly being the secretary of state.

I have to agree. While I'm a fan, both Guiliani and Bolton still believe it was a good idea to occupy Iraq and get rid of Saddam Hussein and Qadaffi in Libya. Both are provable disasters and not only would the middle east be more stable had we left them alone, we wouldn't be there at all getting maimed and killed now 14 years later with no end in sight.

Can anybody point to a single positive result of our meddling, hawkish agenda in the middle east, that balances the costs to us in blood and treasure of that meddling?

Rand Paul(and I) believe it would be better, not to mention more consistent with Trump's position, for the Sec State to understand that American-driven regime change in the middle east was a mistake.

Typical millennial snowflake

By now everyone on the Interwebs has seen this hilarious pic of some of Obama's staff waiting sullenly at the white house yesterday for their first meeting with the Trump transition team.

The sad faces are too funny not to mock, but that chick in the back is absolutely hilarious. I think the caption sums up nicely the problem with millennials on the left.

How many times in that girl's life do you think she cried when she was disappointed? When her brother ate all the Coco Puffs, she didn't get picked for the cheer squad, and when life slapped the snot out of her with the truth that unlike what her dopey parents told her, she's not perfect or deserving of anything she doesn't work for and earn.

Heh heh heh, this one meme and her expression perfectly captures the protesters that are currently destroying their own cities because they didn't get their way.

Sad democrats

Sad democrats being sad......heh heh. 

The Clinton Foundation has no purpose

I'm guessing the Clinton Foundation will be shuttered shortly, as there are no favors of state to be sold to "donors". 

European immigration is a bellwether for America

France, Germany, and Sweden are rapidly descending into violent, utter chaos in areas where the quisling government bureaucrats have deliberately imported hundreds of thousands of unassimilable welfare colonists from the Islamic third world.....calling them "refugees" to make it palatable to the media somewhat reporting it. Violent crime rates in all three countries are skyrocketing as a result. 

In Sweden an average of 3 cops per day turn in their badges because they aren't allowed to do their jobs and cop no-go zones are popping up everywhere, while citizens are terrorized with rape, home invasions, street assaults, and violent ethnic street battles between Islamic factions of different beliefs. 

The same thing is happening in France and Germany. 

But wait, this is America, that can't happen here. Let's go ahead and import tens of thousands more mysterious Syrians, Somalians, Libyans, etc and create Islamic ghettos in small towns for them to live in....none of that European stuff can happen here....they just want to be Americans and share in the American dream. 

Well looky here, that "helpless refugee" in Paris on the left, who is about to kill somebody with that stick, is already assimilating to western culture.......his pants are down below his ass. See, we have nothing to worry about.