Wow. This clip was hilarious. I loved John Stewarts jokes about torture and atomic bombs! Keep up the hilarity John! He's the funniest, most comedy-oriented man on television. His show is all about the laughs and I like how he keeps true to his words about simply being a comedy show like he made in this interview:
When I have a kid, I'm going to name him John Stewart.
Is it just me, or has Battlestar Galactica completely derailed after the first few episodes of season 3? The show has had it's moments since. There have been fun battles to watch and some episodes have stood alone as entertaining but the whole overall plot, which I thought was going somewhere in the first two seasons, has fallen apart. These new developments of the last two seasons were obviously not planned from the beginning, the suspensful plot developments of the beginning were not inserted into the show as part of any plan, but because they would make the show more mysterious. This was obvious when a writer of the show admitted in an interview that the crew got together and voted on who the final five cylons would be (they had a list of everyone on the show, it could have been anyone).
Battlestar's first two seasons were very entertaining and the bizarre stuff (the mystery of the cylons' ultimate plan, brain Caprica inside Baltar and the "who's a cylon?" plot) seemed like it was going somewhere. I trusted that the writers had an ultimate plan in mind. I was wrong. They've just been making this stuff up as they go along, throwing things in that would be werid just 'cause. This realization gave me the same feeling I had when I watched Star Wars: Episode I and realized that Lucas obviously had not planned all this stuff from the beginning but was just super gluing some stuff to the Star Wars mythos to make an easy billion.
While Jonah Goldberg often shows a disturbing amount of support for "coercive interrogation techniques" (citing the TV show 24 as a reason for allowing them) his mental faculties seem to actually have been working when he wrote this:
Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I’m a jerk, for want of a harsher word not printable in this space?
I ask because I’m trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration.
“Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. “They are opportunities to do big things.” Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, “Never waste a good crisis.” Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is “great opportunity in the midst of” the “great crisis” befalling America.
It's interesting to note that the Obama administration is like an understated Bush administration. The economic crisis is his September 11th where he can use peoples' fear to pass questionable legislation without much opposition. Think of the stimulus package as the Patriot Act (which he voted to renew before becoming president), a sort of knee jerk reaction to a crisis. Then there's the health care and the great cosmic joke of universal preschool agenda, things that are really unrelated to the crisis, that represent the war in Iraq. Obama is to domestic policy what Bush is to anti-terror policy.
Now many may argue that Obama's bull isn't as bad as Bushes bull and there is a case to be made by that. There are less civil rights abuses in Obama's bull and nobody is getting killed by it (unless the critics are right about people dying in long wait lines, but I doubt even they would equate the numbers with the Iraq deaths). Also, left-leaning people would be tempted to say that because the progressive policies advocated by Obama will help America he is justified in bringing them about however he has to (which is an argument those on the right could just as easily use for Bush's anti-terror policy and have).
Pundits often criticize the opposing candidate for underhanded techniques but accept the underhanded techniques of their own candidate. In essence, they do not believe that being a political opportunist is bad, as long as the opportunist is on their side. Jonah Goldberg himself showed excessive devotion to George Bush's policies (he admitted that we should not have invaded Iraq given what we know now, but still thinks it was the right thing to do --an odd opinion to hold), one would expect him to being a right wing columnist for National Review. He himself is guilty of supporting the underhanded tactics employed by believers in his ideology, refusing to connect the dots required to realize that "no WMD = invasion bad."
Most Americans were disillusioned with Bush's policies by the end of his term (which his 22% approval rating seems to show). It should be noted, however, that after 9/11 Bush's rating shot up to a whopping 90%. It seems there are significant consequences to using a cricis to advance your agenda (at least, in terms of public perception, Bush was re-elected for a second term afterall). Obama should take note of this the next time he tries to tie his economic recovery policy to unrelated aspects of his agenda in an attempt to gather support for them. He should learn from Bush that crisis politics does not always pay off.
One thing I think everyone should take away from this is that whether you like Obama or hate him, wether you're left or right, a woman who faints at his speech or a skinhead polishing his sniper rifle; Obama is just another politician, nothing more.
Another GURPS drawing. This is something that happened the other night during the game. I have a 13 year old thief who met a huge adult viking. I got into his mead.
