This worries me a bit

Earlier this year Deadpool blew the box office away by crushing every preconceived notion the movie industry had about superhero movies. You could have some nudity. You could have some bad language. You could actually make a superhero movie for grown-ups and give it an R rating and it wouldn't drive the viewing public away (see my review of Deadpool here).

After opening big, Deadpool went on to make about 3/4 billion worldwide. That's big money for a relatively low budget flick. And the studio didn't hesitate to greenlight a sequel. News was that the popular comic character Cable would be in the sequel and fans were off to the races talking, texting, tweeting, blogging about how the second movie would/should play out.

Reality check kids.

News came out earlier this week, that Deadpool director Tim Miller has stepped away/been pushed out of the director's chair for the sequel. Initially we got the dreaded creative differences boilerplate about Miller's leaving. Then it became a rift between Miller and Ryan Reynolds, who is a much bigger celeb in Hollywood than Miller, as they differed on the casting of the Cable character.

Then it went back to the creative thing again as the nefarious "sources" claimed Miller wanted an action-y flick and Reynolds wanted to lean more heavily on humor and fourth wall breaking and raunch, etc.

Last thing I saw was something along the lines that Reynolds wanted a lower budget flick like the original, and Miller, who's background is in CGI effects, wanted a much more expensive movie with tons of visual effects and such to the tune of tripling the cost of the original movie. People close to Miller say that's bullsh*t. Other directors are chiming in saying it's a shame Miller had to leave the production of a franchise he helped start. And a bunch of idiot fans (probably Trump supporters, lolz) started an online petition to get Quentin Tarantino on board as the new director.

*sigh*

So many times we see that it is the tension between opposing views, ideologies, and the like that create the best final product. There's a potential here for this second movie to go down in flames horribly. Miller and Reynolds hit just the right mix of sincerity, irreverence, and action to create one of the best comic adaptations since the genre got going.

Don't f*ck this up, guys.

please

Emma Stone disappoints

But really, only a little.

After all, I don't expect any full connection to reality from a movie actor. But it is frustrating to hear this sort of nonsense nonetheless.

Emma Stone graces the cover of Vogue magazine this month. And as part of her cover story/photo spread, she agreed to something they do now called 73 questions, which is supposed to be some hip, trendy way to interview a subject with a series of supposedly random questions thus giving us insight into the real Emma Stone or whoever.

I say supposed because Emma's rapid fire, rehearsed sounding answers to questions fired at her relatively quickly should let even the most casual viewer infer that she was given the questions in advance.

Her answer to the "cause" question was delivered to the camera as she walked up a flight of stairs, looking downward over her shoulder and accentuated with an actor's best attempt to show angry sincerity about whatever words were just spoken.

*sigh*

Like man-made climate change, I could fill pages with contradictory facts about the myths perpetrated by liberals about gun ownership, violence, and other interconnected topics. Such as:

According to the 2012 Congressional Research Service Report, though the U.S. is number one in private ownership of firearms:

firearms per 100 residents
1.USA – 112.6
2.Serbia – 75.6
3.Yemen – 54.8
4.Switzerland – 45.7
5.Cyprus – 36.4
6.Saudi Arabia – 35
7.Iraq – 34.2
8.Uruguay – 31.8
9.Sweden – 31.6
10.Norway – 31.3

And yet we don't even crack the top ten in deaths by firearms worldwide:

deaths by firearm per 100,000 residents per year
1.Honduras – 67.18
2.Venezuela – 59.13
3.Swaziland – 37.16
4.Guatemala – 34.1
5.Jamaica – 30.72
6.El Salvador – 26.77
7.Colombia – 25.94
8.Brazil – 21.2
9.Panama – 15.11
10.Uruguay – 11.52

They don't give an actual place for the U.S., but at 3.2 deaths per 100k, I would imagine it's pretty far down the list.

Don't get me wrong, that's still way too many people dying from unnatural causes, but it's not the blood running in the street imagery that Stone and others like Matt Damon would like an unsophisticated audience to accept blindly.

Or this graphic that illustrates that you're more likely to die of a heart condition than in a mass shooting:

And this one that shows that the homicide rate in the U.S. is in decline since the wide spread passage of concealed carry laws:

And on and on. The myth of the gun show loophole, how breaking and entering has increased 25% in Canada since they imposed severe punishments on homeowners defending themselves with firearms, how 13 lives are saved by defensive use of firearms for every life lost via criminal use of a gun. As I said, I could fill pages with actual data on law abiding citizens responsibly using firearms.

But it's all about celebrity advocacy these days. I saw an ad for Vice News the other day. Where they happily mention that the world doesn't consume news as it once did. And that's a fact. Now we get whichever celeb they can put in front of a camera, repeating whatever lefty talking points the media wants to push, and unsophisticated generations of young people just eat it up without ever questioning the motives or science behind the conclusions.

Emma Stone disappoints me. But she isn't the only one.

sadly

*sigh* another debate tonight

Why are we bothering with this?

In past election cycles, even when it looked like one candidate was going to run away with it, there was perhaps some information or at least a chance for the supposed loser in the race to make a few last points. Anyone think Trump is going to go out with some dignity?

Yeah, me neither.

I mean, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Clinton will win the White House. Every single substantive poll shows her anywhere from 5 to 8 points up, and by most accounting, already has enough electoral votes to win the race. Only the last remnants of Trump's delusional bumper sticker voters like Drudge are pointing to random college polls claiming with exclamation points that the race is tied up. How pathetic.

Rabid cesspool Conservatives4Palin has shrunk down to just one post a day, pretty much all by their live in mouth breather Thomas, who has given up totally trying to defend Trump or forward the Trump platform (probably because there never was anything beyond some slogans to begin with) and is throwing all the mud at Hillary he can. Sort of pointless to do in an echo chamber. And not that Hillary doesn't deserve any and all of the criticism leveled at her, it's just . . . why are you bothering? The knuckle draggers that frequent that place don't need to be convinced who to vote for. They've been all in for Trump since the get go, since Sarah sold her soul and integrity to support him.

What anyone who truly cares about conservatism and the fate of this country should be focusing on now are the down ballot races. Make sure the Republican party doesn't lose any seats in the House or Senate and get ready for the next four years of bumping and banging in Washington.

So a couple of hours of prime time television will get blocked out tonight. I guess we'll get a lot of Trump launching one insane conspiracy theory after another at Hillary. I'm not sure who the moderators will be tonight, but I'm wondering if they advocate as hard for Hillary as the others have. And if so, I wonder if we'll get treated to the sight of Trump walking off stage in the middle of the debate. He's already destroyed a teleprompter at one event, and he's been sowing the seeds of a rigged election for the last couple of weeks. I can easily see a scenario where he argues with the moderator and stomps off and then goes into a furious tweet-storm blaming everyone but himself for his historic failure.

I doubt anyone is going to change their vote or make a final decision based on what happens tonight. This has been the most polarizing campaign in my adult lifetime. This isn't going to be a dignified way for the process to finish.

Just not sure why we're going through the motions. It's like inviting people to a prospective trainwreck . . . "Come on, watch the carnage, it'll be great!"

yuck

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- Let me stand . . .

Very good episode last night in terms of pushing the season's plotline forward, addressing a few nagging concerns and some decent action as well. Plus, I'm sort of pleased to see that one or two things I was hoping for/suggesting seem to be coming to pass.

Suffering from a gunshot and the debilitating effects of using her powers, Daisy reaches out to Simmons for help by luring her to a supposedly for sale apartment. There's some nice back and forth between the two, showcasing Gemma's newfound boldness and self confidence from her ordeal on that planet with Hive. And also a much appreciated dressing down of Daisy and her life course as Gemma scolds her by saying Daisy can't simply abandon her friends then come crawling back when she needs help then re-abandon them again. It was mom giving her daughter a stern dose of reality and I wonder if maybe that and Daisy's interaction with Coulson later in the episode is the beginning of her finding herself that sense of belonging she's been looking for since the series began.

We get a fun, though improbable, car chase between Coulson and Mack in Phil's restored vintage vette and Reyes' Charger. I say improbable because we know Coulson's car can fly, though that function is currently disabled, but a supercharged big block Dodge V8 versus that Chevy straight 6 . . . not remotely close. But it was a fun little throwback scene, complete with a run down the LA river to an unexpected conclusion.

And I hadn't thought of it before, but it makes sense that the Rider's car would be indestructible. Duhrr

The Rider captured and Daisy back with the gang for a moment, we finally get a bit of the team up action they've hinted at all off season. Reyes more than holds his own, and we get a scene of him using the flaming chain that was fun to see. I liked that.

We also got lots more of Aida as Holden allows Aida to treat May as a nurse, driving Fitz to near apoplexy as worries May will realize exactly what Aida is. But it's Gemma, near the episode's end, that immediately recognizes not only what Aida is, but Fitz' handiwork in the android's behavior. And happily, she's not pissed off at him which is usually the reaction in standard television fare. That was nice also.

In a way, this was Gemma's episode. We got to see a lot of her functioning with confidence that has developed over her ordeals the last few seasons. She mothers Daisy, acts competently in a gun fight, and shows some clever skills and enjoyment of using her new position within S.H.I.E.L.D to get things done.

We got a bit more background on the DarkHold book that caused the ghosts, Robbie's uncle's role in that mess and learned that the firestarter guy, James, from the Hive storyline is the one feeding info to the Watchdogs, helping them kill Inhumans. Still left to explain is who within the government is working with Senator Nadeer from last week's episode.

We did get a tease for next week's show that has Daisy wearing her gauntlets once again. In this week's show, Simmons chastised Daisy for not using them to protect herself. Daisy responds that they're not exactly unobtrusive to wear, so I'm wondering if we'll see them redesigned at some point to something less obvious. Some of the promo images of Chloe Bennett as Daisy have her wearing tactical black looking gauntlets as part of her uniform. So we'll see.

In this one aspect, I feel sort of pleased that the show's writers are going down one small path I thought they might. Fun to be right once in a while.

---

And along that line . . . I mentioned something in my discussion of Westworld the other day that apparently I'm not the only one thinking.

I wondered if perhaps the complex/park was off world somehow, and that might explain some of the anomalies we've seen so far. This last episode added a bit of fuel to that in my opinion.

The com center where we see Bernard video chatting with his wife, and other employees engaging in similar conversations -- the difficulty of getting a call out and the quality of the transmission is casually dropped in this scene. With the next level tech on display in the park, it's a bit hard to imagine that a simple cellphone call is a challenge unless the distance is extreme. There's the possibility that the facility is shielded in some way. But I'm still thinking this points to an off world location for Westworld.

The price of admission, so to speak, might be telling too. We hear that guests are paying $40,000 a day to stay/play in the park. Seems a bit extreme to me. There could be some real hyper-inflation in the future. And the park isn't overrun with guests, so a small number of paying customers might need to really dish it out to make the place work. But surely this isn't the only enterprise this Delos corp. is involved in. I'm picturing something like Umbrella from the Resident Evil movie series -- a company with it's fingers in practically everything, but has this park as something special for a perhaps more nefarious purpose in the grand scheme of things. So again, $40,000 per day seems more reasonable if you imagine you've got to send your guests to another planet for their vacation.

Also -- how long is a day in Westworld? Delores is our unofficial time keeper in the series. We know a day begins when we see her wake in bed and then leave her house to go paint by the river . . . Teddy is riding in on the train and so on. We know the day ends when Delores is attacked at her home. But there are other scenarios that are going on that have nothing to do with Delores or Teddy -- the hunt for escaped killers, etc. And we see the park's techs and employees cleaning up after gunfights and other events when there are no guests or hosts around. We see the hosts being debriefed or repaired in the lab area . . . like Maeve the other episode. How is this possible in a 24 hour day?

Again, it just makes me wonder if we're on another planet here. And apparently I'm not the only one thinking this. One of the movie/tv review sites I like to visit had some comments by one of their writers who said that he's seeing chatter about the possibility of Westworld being on another planet. So I'm patting myself on the back here a bit.

And just so I'm not leaving you with my disjointed ramblings, here's a screen cap of Chloe Bennett looking unusually busty and an old pic of Evan Rachel Wood (Delores) from some magazine I had buried in my back up drive from I don't know when:

Rule 5 Sunday -- clean out that damn closet, boy!

So I'm a bit of a packrat, I tend to save all kinds of stuff, including magazines of all sorts. I have a huge collection of magazines that have Mulder and Scully on the cover from my X-Files geek days. I also have my old comic book collections and a bunch of vintage MAD magazines -- those I'm keeping. Everything else is working its way into the garbage can.

But since folks are always looking for some of these old images, I've been scanning the Playboys before throwing them out. It's a tedious process and one that has brought me face to face with some odd problems -- like the warping of the page edges from the binding process. Very weird.

But here's a sampling of the various celebs that graced the pages of Playboy in the late 80s through the 90s -- Jessica Hahn versions 1.0 and 2.0, Joey Heatherton, Vanna White and others. Enjoy.

*click on the thumbnails for full-sized images*

Rule 5 Sunday suggested by this.

Hat tips:
Jake Finnegan
The Daley Gator
The Classic Liberal
Say Anything Blog
Proof Positive
American Power
Reaganite Republican

Let's talk Westworld for a moment

The show is yet another example of what cable television can do when they want to put some resources into a production. The sets, set design, casting and acting are all absolutely top notch. And the storyline proceeds along a deliberately slow pace that would have broadcast networks clawing their eyes out since there's not a stunning reveal in each and every episode to drive (in their minds anyway) viewers to watch each week.

Since the show is a tech/nerds dream, there are endless reviews and some wonderful deconstructions and analysis already online. But I want to point something else out.

In the second episode, there was a much reprinted monologue by Dr. Ford (played by the wonderful Anthony Hopkins) where he points out to the park's shallow showrunner guy that visitors to the park don't come back repeatedly for the obvious attractions and opportunities there, but rather because they think they have found something no one else has seen. Something only they know about and can enjoy.

That's sort of where I'm going here because I could be miles off on this, but I haven't seen anyone else talking out it online.

In the first episode, we hear of a livestock problem that may necessitate an armed response team. It turns out that the park refers to decommissioned robots, or hosts, as livestock and store them in a sub-basement area of the facility. In this case, the 83rd sub-basement floor. And there was a quick look at the elevator display that showed what I thought was a sub-basement C as well. 83 floors would be nearly an 1/8 of a mile down. That's way beyond what we can accomplish now with current construction techniques. I know the show is set in the future, but how far in the future? I got the impression it was one of those in the near future scenarios.

Anyway, we exit the elevator and see a large concourse area, some escalators in the background and a large globe sculpture with the company name Delos on it.

That's not how you architecturalize a warehouse. That place used to be the ground floor at one time, possibly the entrance. And now it's nearly a 1000 feet underground. What's up with that? We see in later images, the facility sitting on top of a stone pillar in a geographic area of canyons and such.

We know that everything, down to the smallest detail is constructed in Westworld. The clothing, the firearms, the animals down to the tiniest of creatures like the snake Dr. Ford commands with hand gestures in episode 2 are all manufactured. Probably even the scorpion in episode 1 is a machine. The flys? Why not? Perhaps that's part of how the virus is being transmitted to the hosts. Perhaps it's not all in simply a phrase that is whispered from one host to another.

But back to the big picture. If all that is manufactured for the park . . . what if everything is manufactured? Down to the soil that Ford stares at so intently. What if it is all a creation?

The park is huge, looking to be perhaps hundreds of miles across. Big enough to hold something refered to as The Maze in its interior in a place that no one seems to be able to find by simply wandering around. And yet there is ubiquitous surveillance on every square inch of the park 24/7. How could it be possible to have cameras everywhere unless they were part of the construction of the park itself?

And where would the park be? The trains that take the guests to Westworld look to be of the magnetic suspension type that ride frictionless, lifted off the tracks by magnetic repulsion technology. Those trains are reported to be able to travel at nearly 700mph. That's less than 4 hours coast-to-coast for the U.S. The trip is long enough for someone to nap their way through it, or become bored on what appears to be a rolling hotel, so are they traveling for half a day or more? 34 hours to circumnavigate the globe at that speed, assuming you could have tracks either over or under the oceans, so less than four hours to a day's travel? As the climate seems to match the U.S. southwest, Westworld isn't at either pole unless this show is going to turn into some ridiculous climate change scold. And appearing on HBO, that wouldn't shock me in the final analysis.

So I'm wondering . . . is this taking place in some post-apocalyptic time? Perhaps with entire areas of the planet scrubbed clean or destroyed by some terrible event? Does the Westworld complex exist both so deep into the earth and yet on top of a rock cropping because they had to rebuild it over and over for at least 30 years? That time frame is dropped repeatedly in conversation during the two episodes. The original movie is from 1973, so if they're doing the television show as a continuation of the movie, we're looking at 43 years since the first malfunction of the hosts.

What if Westworld is not even on this planet? What if the time frame is far enough into the future to allow for interplanetary travel. Imagine a colony on another planet, where humans live and work in a sterilized environment and crave the escape of raw debauchery and peril-less adventure? We know the guests have to pay lots of money to go there. We know they are not enlightened beings from some magical gentle future -- they run the gamut from timid to full out sadists. So perhaps they're those who were willing to risk some new off-planet enterprise, to live and work and escape a dying poisoned Earth and Westworld was part of the perks offered by this Delos corporation to lure folks into signing up?

That last bit sort of conflicts with my earlier wondering about the underground aspect of the facility. I get that. But something is there. I'm just not sure what. I'd like to think I've stumbled across something that all those folks who get paid to be smarter and more informed than me missed. But it just might be I'm overthinking this all a bit. It might just be the writers put in some obvious imagery without thinking about the contradictions with the larger picture. But I find that hard to believe in a show where they seem to have put so much effort into the tiniest of details.

We'll see what happens as the show progresses. I'm certainly hooked on Westworld for now.

Let's talk Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a moment

But first . . . hee, hee . . . couldn't resist that banner image when I found it online. I miss the old Simpsons.   *sigh*

Anyways . . . over the last two episodes, the much ballyhooed team up between Daisy and the Ghost Rider actually happened . . . sort of . . . and lasted like 5 minutes. What a bummer.

Daisy used her hacker skills to find out everything she could about Robbie Reyes and then ambushed him at his day job at the junk yard/garage he works at. After getting her ass kicked the first time she fought him, she pushed her luck approaching him again and tried to provoke him. Which didn't work out exactly as she had hoped. After a brief struggle, Reyes leaves Daisy at the junk yard with a broken arm to pursue those ghosty things that showed up in the previous episode.

It turns out that these ghosts are actually humans who have been phase shifted out of our reality due to some nefarious experiment they were working on to achieve some as yet unexplained "power" from a mysterious book or artifact known as The Darkhold. This was accomplished at some now closed down next-gen power facility. The S.H.I.E.L.D. guys in the form of Fitz and Mack show up at the facility, Momentum Labs, to find out what's going on and what might have happened to Agent May since she's totally around the bend after her encounter with the "ghosts."

Daisy and Robbie show up separately and end up saving Mack and Fitz as they're cornered by the other ghosts who have been released from the interdimensional boxes that held them captive. As the Rider, Robbie is able to touch the ghosts and destroy them.

I liked that both Mack and Fitz were able to see the Rider so we could avoid the dreaded "Scully effect" where no one actually sees whatever mysterious thing that other members of a team sees.

That episode ends with Robbie finding Daisy and offering to take her along to find out more about the ghosts, since he believes his uncle may be part of what's going on with them. This recent week's episode starts out promisingly, having Robbie and Daisy work together during a blackout caused by the Watchdogs. But after saving Robbie's little brother from some rioters/looters, the pair go back to Robbie's home, where Gabe reveals to Daisy he knows who she is and wants her to stay away from his big brother. Gabe doesn't know about Robbie's night job (which I thought was a cool way Robbie refers to it) and thinks he is actually keeping his big bro safe and grounded. Daisy disappears while Robbie is out acquiring some medical stuff to help with Daisy's broken arm.

And that was it for the big team up. Perhaps they'll work something out later in the season, but I was hoping for a bigger few moments with the two of them working and fighting together. Oh well.

They're going to have to do something about Daisy's arm, which is solid black and blue now and shatters even more with each use of her powers. Is this where the gauntlets we've seen in character images of Quake come in? I'm wondering if Fitz will put something together for her on the sly since through various exchanges we see the folks in the team still care about Daisy and want her back.

A lot of cards are now on the table now as Mack knows about Elena (Yo Yo) helping Daisy out, knowledge of the Rider is confirmed (and we're hinted that Coulson captures Robbie, briefly at least in the next episode), there's a subversive group within the government helping the Watchdogs to either eradicate or capture the Inhumans -- we see a Senator named Nadeer feeding them intel and we see her husband covered in the exo cocoon brought on by exposure to the terrigen crystals. And we finally get to learn who the new S.H.I.E.L.D. Director is -- Jeffrey Mace, known from the comic books as The Patriot. A non-powered hero type. But in this case, an Inhuman with abilities that seem to include invulnerability and increased strength.

With no more debates to muck up our Tuesday evenings, I'm hoping we'll get some uninterrupted viewing now. At least until the election in November.

Here's some fun character images I found, including one that shows that awesome Charger of the Ghost Rider:

Rita Ora is see through . . . again

Yeah, this is pretty much business as usual in the wardrobe department for Ms. Ora. But:

Holy wardrobe appropriation Batman! How about those shoes?! You know Burt Ward is looking in his closet right now trying to figure out how she got ahold of his Robin boots.   heh

The other part of this that befuddles me is the fact that she's basically wearing a negligee to dinner or some club. She's deliberately see through, so she wants to show off the girls. She knows she's going to get pap'd going either in or out of this establishment. And yet she walks in with her head down like she doesn't want to be seen.

?!?!?!

She could have pulled that robe onto her shoulders and covered up. But no, she walks in allowing the pap to get all these pics of her while trying to look like she's so put off by the attention.

Girls confuse me.

*sigh*

Today in Twitpics

Or Snapchat pics or Instagram pics . . . I'm never sure exactly where these come from.

This first is from Charissa Thompson, who is a sportscaster on FoxSports 1 and apparently was displeased with this image because she deleted it almost right after it was posted. Don't ask me why, it doesn't look scandalous to me. Maybe that's the problem . . . heh

This next is a little self-photoshop deal from Eliza Dushku. I'm liking the see-thru outfit, but she looks sort of overly thin to me. I don't think the world would come to an end if she put on a couple of pounds.

Here's 51 year old Elizabeth Hurley who is making me think she has some sort of Dorien Gray thing going on, because she just keeps getting hotter with each passing year.

And last, but not certainly least, is my favorite redhead Maitland Ward who keeps freein' that nipple. This time in an outtake from a photoshoot for an actual print magazine that she appeared in. MEL Magazine, ever heard of it? Yeah, me neither. Probably like that "swimwear" line that hired her. *sigh*

Daily Duffster

The paps caught my Duffster on the street the other day nearly having a moment as she looked to be either on her way from someplace or to someplace.

There's a certain walk of shame look to these photos. Not that I object, I just wish they were being taken outside my home than someone else's. If you know what I mean *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*

And here's a couple of pics of Hilary arriving to the set of her television show Younger looking her usual glamorous hotty self:

I'm not apologizing for saying "I told you so"

I warned you. All you bumper sticker mentality voters, I warned you. We all warned you. All us statistically insignificant #NeverTrump-ers warned you.

We told you what kind of man, and I'm using the term in the loosest of meanings, Donald Trump is. I've said it all along -- he's a vulgar, crass, self-aggrandizing ass clown. He's addicted to power and notoriety and all the perks his wealth and fame bring him.

And that includes, by his own words, the ability to engage in sexual battery, to attempt to seduce married women and brag about these things along with noting that his position in life allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

And this is the guy you want in the White House? This is the skilled, motivated genius who can run this country and correct our path in history? Yeah, don't worry about those four bankruptcies. And don't worry about what he says at any given time. It's your fantasy of what you believe Trump to be that is all that matters.

I had to venture over to Conservatives4Palin this morning to see how the truly deranged were defending Trump. Wow. What a place! If you imagine that Sarah Palin herself has degraded into a pathetic caricature of a former vice-presidential candidate and sitting governor, you should see what a howling mess the website that supports her has become.

Sarah herself has a post, or perhaps more accurately, she posted to Facebook and the site reprinted it, where she mentions that Trump's statements are 10 years old. As if that matters. And it's only manly man locker room talk . . . Hillary did much worse defending her husband for his various and multiple indiscretions. And so on.

Manly locker room talk, Sarah? I wonder how you'd feel if your First Dude husband was caught on tape talking about molesting women? Or what you'd think if during an interview he happily gave permission to the interviewer to refer to your daughter Bristol as a "piece of ass" or if Todd spoke lewdly and approvingly of Bristol's curvy physique? Would you just shrug it off?

And if this wasn't a pattern of continual behavior . . . if it was just the latest episode in the life of a sixty year old man who embodies every stereotype of what it means to be an ugly uncouth vulgar man, would you, Sarah, be so forgiving?

I wonder.

And on top of that, there was a post by some mouth breather named Thomas who not only brushed aside Trump's comments but in fact said that he enjoyed them. That somehow Trump was allowing men to be men once more by validating some notion that one measures one's manliness through sexual exploits. Whether consensual or not:

Men can now reclaim masculinity from our emasculating politically correct culture.

The old fashioned prudish and pastoral days of the GOP are officially over.

Locker room talk is self explanatory. Locker room talk is a normal, and natural thing that real men do.

The most shocking thing to me is that I am the one burdened with taking a stand for all the men and their dying right of masculinity.

As we learned in the GOP primary, an old fashioned puritanical campaign, based on an old line frame of reference no longer works in America

?!?!?!

Remember, these are the same fanatical Sarah Palin fans that went berserk when RedState posted this obvious photoshop of Sarah sitting on Santa's lap as the header to an article about her:

These are the same people that screamed, rightfully so I should add, for Martin Bashir's head when he said on air that someone should acquaint Sarah with scat sex.

But molestation, implied incestuous feelings, and every other absurd and disturbing thing Trump has said during the election cycle and before? It's all good, bro. Just men being men. Bringin' back the hairy chests and knuckle dragging, dude. No wonder Hannity is such a fan.

Trump's personal Pravda -- Breitbart, has been strangely quiet. Their only posting has mentioned that the bothersome statements came in an interview with Bush 41's grandson. As if that somehow mitigates their awfulness.

John Nolte, who I mentioned in a post below, actually thinks this episode will reset the election in Trump's favor.

Yeah. I don't get it either.

But Nolte thinks Trump will offer some heartfelt apology (the one last night certainly wasn't it) and then having defused this controversy, will have the moral authority to attack Hillary on her role in protecting Bill from the various "bimbo eruptions" he went through as President. And thence cruise into the White House easily.

Yep. Sure thing there John. By the way, that bridge in the Everglades is still for sale. I can let you have it cheap.

There is another Presidential debate tonight. Hosted by Anderson Cooper, an outspoken gay man, and Martha Radditz, a close personal friend of President Obama and whose husband became the head of the FCC under Obama.

Wanna bet we don't get a lot of wonky policy questions tonight? Should we be taking bets on how quickly Trump melts down?

People are screaming for Trump to either step down or be taken off the ticket. That ship has sailed. Flaccid weakling Reince Preibus had his chance to let the convention choose a nominee the entire party could get behind, but he knuckled under to the noisy minority of republican voters and their enablers in the right wing media and forced Trump upon us.

Early voting has already begun. Most of the absentee ballots have already been mailed. There is a provision in the RNC rules to allow them to replace a candidate who dies or quits the race or otherwise ceases to be a candidate. The otherwise bit is what people are hanging on, hoping that forcibly removing Trump falls into the otherwise category.

I've posted my thoughts on the bait-and-switch scenario. And I'm not for it. I could vote for Pence if it came down to it, but possibly not if the VP is Ben Carson. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?! But imagine the fallout if they swapped out Trump and won the election. Hillary and the DNC would have a challenge in front of the Supreme Court before the month was out. And even if the court validated the election results, we'd have four years of Dems talking about yet another stolen election and endless chatter on liberal dominated television and cable about deceitful Republicans, yada, yada, yada.

This is a mess. And you guys -- Reince, Rush, Hannity, Greta, Bolling, Coulter, Ingraham, Jazz, Levin . . . all you idiots that bent a knee to Trump . . . you brought this upon us. You own it. F*ck the lot of you.

I warned you.

We warned you.

#NeverTrump You should have listened to us.

So that's where John Nolte landed

I first heard of writer John Nolte when he was working for Big Hollywood, one of Andrew Breitbart's original Big 3 websites dedicated to bringing conservative views and reporting to Hollywood, Journalism and Washington.

Nolte's shtick was that he was this die-hard conservative movie critic hiding in wildly liberal Hollywood and had to keep his opinions on politics to himself. Indeed, Big Hollywood's primary drawing card was that it had conservative actors, directors and others writing articles under pseudonyms, finally able to speak their minds on politics and what it meant to be a conservative in Hollywood. But Nolte's job, as a professional movie reviewer became to search new movies for what he called the "sucker punch" of liberal movie makers. That is, they would sneak sinister left wing talking points and propaganda into films like so much subliminal advertising, secretly seducing an unawares public.

I'm being a bit snarky there, but on one level, he's right -- Hollywood has been for years pushing their liberal agenda via movies, television, etc. And I guess it helps to point this stuff out, but if you're writing for a conservative website, I think your readers might already be onto this fact, you know?

Nolte eventually transitioned into full time political commentary, but the last movie I remember him railing about was Jurassic World, singling out a line by Chris Pratt where he said "... maybe this time progress should lose." And turning that into some sneaky indictment of capitalism.

Have you seen that movie? It's on cable now in heavy rotation. Go watch it, the exchange comes fairly early into the flick. See if you jump to the same absurd conclusion Nolte did. I doubt you will. Like many of these gotcha watchdog types, they end up struggling to find something to complain about and end up weakening their own efforts/cause by desperately digging out minutia to be outrageously outraged about.

Anyway, after Breitbart went full Trumpbart, I hadn't seen Nolte's byline over there on any of their websites. I wondered if he had damaged his own brand with both the sloppy movie work and his angry political columns that seemed light on substance and heavy on emotion. But no, I stumbled across him once again.

There's a site called Daily Wire, which I only found because there was something by Ben Shapiro there. I like Shapiro, I like that he has called out Breitbart for what it has become and how it is denigrating Andrew's legacy. When I saw something by Nolte there, I thought maybe he had escaped and wiped the muck from his eyes. Nope. He's still a full on Trumpbot:

For most of the primary season, I supported candidates other than Trump, but he was always in my top 3 or 4, and from the beginning I never underestimated the guy. The most appealing thing about Trump is that unlike the other 16 GOP Dwarves he so expertly vanquished, he represents REAL CHANGE. Rubio, Cruz, Jeb(!), they all would have run as status quo/Democrat-lite, and they all would have been mired in some phony, media-generated scandal like this New York Times Nothingburger dropped on Trump Sunday morning. (OMG! Trump wrote off his losses!)

Trump will secure our borders, fix plutocrat-centered trade deals, fight for school choice, kill ObamaCare, end the suicidal refugee program, nominate conservative Supreme Court Justices… and all this will/can/could've happen(ed) if he would just stop baring his ass.

Right now I'm furious with the man.

He's making fools of us all, of those who for a year now have taken the MSM/#NeverTrump slings and arrows. Many of his supporters are currently in denial, or just can't bring themselves to admit that right now he's blowing it. I get that. No one wants the incoming "Toldjasos." But he is blowing it, and what is so unforgivable is that he is doing so over the one thing he can control -- his temperament.

Wow.

Talk about denial. Has Nolte even been watching as his hero has walked back all the things he claims Trump will do? He's right about one thing, all us #NeverTrump-ers are laughing at him. Nolte's a fool. He had a chance to vote for any one of several good candidates, actual Republican conservative politicians that could have run this country expertly. Instead, Nolte threw in with a con man, a buffoon who doesn't know anything about politics or the world or how to actually run anything. Yep, Trump represents REAL CHANGE John, but not the good kind. And that nothingburger in his tax returns? It isn't so much that he set himself up to not pay taxes for 20 years, but it's the fact this supposed brilliant businessman lost a BILLION DOLLARS on stupid business ventures!

And this is the guy that's going to fix our trade deals?! How f*cking blind can you be?

And like so many of Trump's desperate supporters, Nolte spends the article begging Trump not to self-destruct. Oh if only Donald could control himself for 35 days . . . oh if only he could stop hate-tweeting at 3:00am . . . oh if only he could be the soft focus brilliant businessman I see when I close my eyes . . . what pathetic drivel! This is what we've been trying to tell you since the primaries began. This isn't a bug . . . this is a feature, this is who Donald Trump is. Open you're f*cking eyes, John!

Yes John Nolte, I'm laughing at you. But it's not a satisfied belly laugh, more one of pity. I pity you that you're incapable of realizing how taken in by this con man you really are. I pity you that you don't have the spine to admit you were fooled and instead keep doubling down on your delusions and manic fantasies about a Trump Presidency.

You could have lent your voice to people trying to get a decent conservative politician into the White House. But no, you were seduced by the bright shiny object a self-absorbed showman waved in front of your eyes. You brought this on yourself, and like others in conservative media, you John Nolte brought this country to this place. You abdicated your duty as a journalist to shine a light on the lies and shameless self-interest of your own party members.

Yes John Nolte, I'm laughing at you. You deserve it.

#NeverTrump

Tony Stewart won't win a Championship in his last season

Tony Stewart was officially dropped from NASCAR's Chase for the Championship as he finished outside the top 12 in championship points in yesterday's Citizen Soldier 400 at Dover and thus won't be able to move on to the next round of elimination races. Martin Truex Jr. won that race, establishing himself as a solid threat to win this year's Sprint Cup title.

But Stewart's finish puts the final kibosh on what some of his ardent fans had hoped would be a fairy tale finish to his career in racing. Jeff Gordon got a chance at that sort of finish last year, though I doubt anyone really thought he had a legitimate chance at winning a title going out the door. Same with Stewart this year.

Starting the year on the DL after breaking his back in a dune buggy incident, Stewart had to hope he could point himself into the Chase like Kyle Busch did last year. Stewart did indeed make the top 30 in points, but it was his typically Tony Stewart win at Sonoma that put him solidly into the Chase. Leading the race towards the end, Stewart was passed by the much faster Denny Hamlin on the last lap. Stewart went after Hamlin like a pit bull and pushed Hamlin's car out of the way on the last corner to win the race and get into the Chase.

Tony Stewart is a throwback racer, an old school hard nosed driver in this day of triathletes and underwear models behind the wheel. He invokes drivers like Dale Earnhart Sr., Cale Yarborough, and the like. I've mentioned this before, but when Stewart started his own race team, he wanted to bring the number 14 back into NASCAR. That number is of course iconic to the famous A.J. Foyt and Stewart went to Foyt to get his permission to use the number. Foyt agreed immediately because he saw in Stewart a kindred spirit -- a guy who was only happy behind the wheel and had that checkers or wreckers mentality in a race.

You don't hear much talk about it these days, but back when Foyt was winning his four Indy titles, legitimately not via rain shortened races like the Unsers, A.J. would spend the day prior to Indy racing at a dirt track. He said it got him back to his roots prior to the biggest race of the year.

Stewart as many know, owns his own speedway in Eldora, hosts races and in fact the two biggest setbacks in his career came in dirt track incidents. One was the tragic death of Kevin Ward Jr. when the young driver ran out onto the track to confront Stewart and was hit by Tony's car. The other was his broken leg suffered when his dirt track car flipped over in a crash during a race. I have to wonder whether these two incidents, happening in such close succession expedited his decision to move to full time ownership of his team.

If it isn't obvious, Stewart is my favorite driver, for a lot of reasons. I like his attitude and ability behind the wheel. He's been successful at every level he's competed in, being the only driver to win Championships in both open wheel -- IndyCar Racing league in 1997 and three NASCAR championships in 2002, 2005, and 2011. He's driven in the 24 hours of Daytona, and pretty much done everything you can think of behind the wheel of a race car. He is probably the last of the driver's driver in racing today.

Clint Bowyer replaces Stewart in the number 14 next season as Tony transitions to full time owner of Stewart-Haas racing. The team is also moving to Ford, completing their extrication from Hendrick Motorsports that helped get the team off the ground in the first place.

I'm not overly enthused about Bowyer, but I guess he's the best guy available. Stewart-Haas will have it's hands full next season, getting Bowyer up to speed, trying to get Danica more competitive and generally coping with the change in equipment. Here's hoping they're successful. Tony Stewart has made racing fun to watch for me for a lot of years. I'm going to miss him. Not sure who to root for now.

And let me address this Colin Kaepernick mess for a moment

As my one or two regular readers already know, I work for the U.S. Postal Service. We have this rule in place, the Hatch Act, which states that we cannot engage in political activities while on the clock or in uniform. This is to prevent people from associating the Post Office with any one politician or political position, policy or agenda.

Smart

Colin Kaepernick is an employee of the San Francisco 49ers. While he may have 1st Amendment rights, he doesn't (or shouldn't) have the right to engage in politicking while on the job. They have morals clauses in these players contracts to keep them from engaging in activities which injure the image of the team.

If I was the owner of the 49ers, or any team in the NFL, I'd tell these guys they were more than welcome to protest or do what they like on their own time, but while in uniform they represent the team and the team doesn't agree with their position or their right to use the team to promote their political views.

And then I'd suspend them and bar them from the stadium until they agreed to stop violating team policies.

Period.

I'm sure the ACLU would want to jump in on this, but I think this is a fight worth fighting if you are an employer. Not sure why no one's doing it. But they should.

By the way, notice how you're not seeing this nonsense going on at baseball games or NASCAR?

Wanna bet NBA games will be protest fests when it starts back up?

Food for thought.

Why a Trump Presidency would be worse than a Clinton Presidency

First off, let me apologize for the above graphic. I was sure that someone would have already used the Trump as Janus meme by now. Guess I was wrong. I'm no savant with photoshop, so you get that mess above.

sorry :-(

Anyway, I decided to put my thoughts on this online last night and then I look at National Review this morning, and it seems that Jonah Goldberg sort of beat me to it. In his article he mentions that he was rushing it to publication because Hugh Hewitt was rushing out a similar idea as well.

Do I get to claim the great minds think alike bit here? Nah. I am simply kicking myself in the ass for not staying up late get this online when I first thought of it. You'd be amazed how many times I don't put something online because I've seen some big important writer has already broached the subject.

Anyway . . . here we go:

The heaviest harangue leveled at us #NeverTrump-ers is that we're enabling a Clinton Presidency and that would be so much worse for the country. It is true that Clinton as President would be an unmitigated disaster. Despite her relative hawkishness for a Democrat (something others in her party are not pleased with), she fully embraces all the quailites of the nanny-state, over-reaching intrusive mega-government principles that most of us conservative/libertarian types abhor.

But if President, Clinton would be opposed by a determined Republican held House and Senate that has already done a decent job of holding back President Obama from implementing his far-left radical agenda for the last eight years. It wouldn't be a walk in the park, but assuming we could get that weasel McConnell out of the Senate leadership role, conservatives might be able to hold Clinton at bay while still making some progress on our own growth and personal liberty agendas.

A President Trump would be a whole other deal. Because we have already seen how anyone and everyone, with one or two notable exceptions, are completely willing to ignore their conscience (that's assuming they actually have one) and their stated conservative principles to back Trump.

Invoking what I now refer to as the cowardly spineless Rush Limbaugh doctrine, conservative pundits and politicians will blindly follow a President Trump down any road because to oppose him would give aid and comfort to the enemy, as these idiots like to say. Their thinking is that if we, conservatives, push back against Trump, we're giving talking points and ammunition to the Democrats that will be used against us in future elections and debates on policy, etc.

Aren't you glad these Vichy cowards weren't running the military in WWII? eesh!

We have already seen supposedly hard line conservatives rolling over on every liberal agenda item Trump has proposed so far -- fund Planned Parenthood? Fabulous. Curtail 2nd Amendment rights? About time for some common sense on gun control conservative pundits say. Massive increasing of welfare spending? Oh yes, let's show our compassion. And on and on.

I didn't actually watch that first debate. I was trying to put a pointed stick in my eye because I thought it might be better. But in reading the reviews, commentary, and partial transcripts, I was taken aback by how many times Trump said he agreed with Clinton's position on this or that but thought he would go even farther on that particular policy. Am I the only one who noticed that? I'm not surprised Trump agrees with Clinton on anything frankly, he's been a supporter of Hillary ever since Bill was in the White House. We've all said it time and time again -- Donald Trump is a life long progressive liberal. Why would he change now?

And this notion that once he's in the White House, Mike Pence and other advisors would be able to reign him in is preposterous. They can't control him now. Once Trump gets that nitrous injection of power from realizing he's the leader of the free world? You think anyone will be able to tell him what to do?! And as a man that is more poll driven than Bill Clinton on his worst days, what do you think will happen when Trump's home town paper, the New York Times, starts publishing one editorial after another calling for him to address some agenda that fits perfectly with a liberal New Yorker's sensibility but is anathema to conservatives? He'll suck up to the paper for the overwhelming adulation he'll get from them and the ubiquitous left-wing media that controls every television network (save one), every movie channel and Hollywood.

Next to money, fame and adulation are Trump's drugs of choice. He's addicted to the attention of celebrity. And as Obama has proven over eight years -- the President can be the world's biggest celebrity.

And once he starts getting that relentless adulation from the press, what will stop him from implementing any and all liberal policy agendas the left covets? Congress? Who in there would dare stand against him? With only a minority of support among Republican voters, Trump got the support of everyone in Congress save a couple of hold outs against notable conservatives like Rubio and Cruz. With Trump hate-tweeting at 3:00am at any one who dared speak out against his brilliant agenda, which congressman would dare risk re-election by opposing him?

I'm not sure there is any policy that a President Trump would push that a frightened and cowed conservative media would dare to object to. And that's the danger of a President Trump. I don't say this lightly, but Trump as President would destroy conservatism in this county. His face as the face of conservatism would haunt generations of conservatives and those in the pundit class would be effectively neutered by their refusal to oppose him when they had the chance. Talk about aid and comfort to the enemy -- how would any conservative pundit push back against any liberal politician in the future when that politician could point to Ingraham's or Hannity's or Levin's or Limbaugh's or Coulter's (and I hate to use that hag's name here, but she gets a lot of attention, so . . .) or anyone else's slinking subjugation to a President Trump's liberal policies?

A Trump Presidency would be worse by orders of magnitude than a Clinton Presidency. I won't vote for Hillary because I'm a true Republican voter. But I won't vote for this stunning ass-clown either. I cannot. That's why I'm not voting for either this election cycle. I'll vote the down ballot races. I'll vote the local referenda. But I won't put my imprimatur on whoever becomes President. You have to draw a line at some point.

This is my line.

Still defiantly #NeverTrump.