The NRA just chose a leader who calls the Civil War “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Let me let that sink in for a minute.
This explains much. Many of the most extreme NRA members seem to think that there is nothing treasonous at all about taking up arms against your own country if you don’t like the way things are going. And now I see why — because they have the same mindset that the people who committed treason back during the Civil War had.
“What? You want to take away my (insert one: slaves / guns)? Don’t you know the Constitution gives me the right to own (slaves / guns)? You can’t violate my freedom like that! I don’t care that a majority of Americans think differently or that the courts have ruled against me!”
Seriously, I understand these people better now. Sadly.
Every month, the economy improves, little by little. We have the lowest unemployment in four years, the stock market is at an all-time high, and the deficit has been cut by a large amount.
Now certainly if any of those things had gotten worse, you’d be sure to hear how it’s Obama’s fault. Hell, you actually hear it now from people who apparently never read anything about the economy.
The real fact is that the President can only do so much to help the economy. That’s true of every President. Somehow people think the President has some sort of magic control box on his desk and can switch the dial from “economy bad” to “economy good” whenever he feels like it. “If I had the power to make gas prices go down,” Obama said last summer, “what possible reason would I have not to do that?”
But the President certainly does have some power — Bush’s decision to cut taxes for the very wealthy hurt us economically and now that they’re gone, the economy has started to improve, for instance. But he didn’t do it alone; he had congress’ help. Obama’s problem is that he is facing a party that has said, many times, that its main goal is to prevent Obama from accomplishing anything. That’s why congress has passed no jobs bills, no matter how much we need them.
Obama fought them when they declared that the way to solve our economic problems was through “austerity” — which means basically cutting everything, throwing many people out of work, and somehow all these now poor people without jobs or income would help the economy by — well, they never exactly explained that part. We know it doesn’t work, because in every European country that tried it, their economy fell head-first into terrible depression and massive unemployment.
So the fact that the economy is improving despite the Republicans seemingly doing everything they can to prevent that should mean that Obama gets some credit, right?
Right?
Hello?
I love a good pun (as anyone who has checked out my book titles know)… And today I am being bombarded on Facebook with “Star Wars Day” — not because the film was released today or anything, but simply for the pun.
I remember seeing the first film (now known as “A New Hope”) about a week after it came out. My friend Gary Walker had seen it and was raving about it, so we went down to the local mall to see it. I enjoyed it tremendously, and anxiously awaited each sequel. Although I read a lot of science fiction, I was never a Star Wars fanboy. I didn’t buy the books or toys (I was already in college), and still can’t name all the side characters everyone knows by heart, but there’s no doubt I enjoyed the films.
Then Lucas ruined the films with the prequels — or as they are known around my house “The Films Which Shall Not Be Named.”
There are thousands of stories that could be told in the Star Wars universe (which I hope Disney will consider). Instead, Lucas gives us the earlier story of Darth Vader.
Let’s ignore the fact that the films are terribly directed and acted, full of cartoony CGI, and look like their primary purpose is to sell toys. Let’s just talk about the story of the prequels.
Where’s the suspense? We know how the trilogy ends. We know what happens to Vader. There were absolutely no surprises or twists or “Luke, I’m your father” moments in the film.
To make matters worse, anyone watching the films in order today will have all the twists in the later films spoiled. “Oh, Vader is Luke’s father? Big deal, I knew that two films ago.”
But the films also are not consistent in and of themselves. Vader creates C3PO when he’s a kid and yet C3PO never mentions this to anyone in the later films? And Vader just forgets? And seriously, if you’re trying to hide Luke from Vader, why are you putting him on the planet where he was born, using the same last name?
Besides, Jar Jar Binks.
So let’s hope Disney takes the new films they are making in the Star Wars universe and does something new. We don’t have to see the same story again. There are trillions of people in the universe, let’s have some of their stories. Disney has a good producer/director/writer in charge, and I have A New Hope that things will be better. (Heh)
Just keep Lucas away from it.
Ever notice how sometimes the very same people who proclaim that our government is completely incompetent and run by morons are the same ones who are convinced that this same incompetent government was able to pull off the greatest hoaxes mankind has ever seen? There’s something amazing in the conspiracy-addled mind that can hold these two inconsistencies together without noticing.
The thing that bugs me most about these government conspiracy theories are that they don’t make sense from a human standard. If the government really did have aliens hidden in Area 51, you’d think someone involved over the past 50 years would have revealed this, written a book, and became rich. That happens now with government secrets of a much smaller scale — you’d think with all the people who have to have been involved in this, someone would have produced some proof by now.
After all, our government is pretty bad at keeping secrets. It really is incompetent in many areas. And between the press and the internet and cameras everywhere and whistleblowers and insiders talking, we know a lot about what our government does. And that’s a very good thing.
Still the crazy ideas continue.
At least this mindset is an equal opportunity employer. There are conservatives who are convinced Obama was born in Kenya and liberals who are convinced we faked the moon landing.
This is not to say that there aren’t minor conspiracies going on all the time — especially concerning money, price-fixing, insider trading, and so on. But nothing on the scale of the “9/11 was an inside job” mentality or the “government wants to take all your guns and install a military dictatorship” delusion.
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