bleeding heart

Yes, inserting quotation marks around straw men is like placing a stovepipe hat on a snowman....it brings it to life!

At any rate, I would question whether the reason most Ford supporters are Ford supporters is because of "fiscal conservatism,"

Well, we don't know who was "right wing" and who wasn't. Plenty of liberals are gun owners. We do know that (Kimmy's interesting point aside) most of the scenarios involve improper handling....some of them fairly benign, some of them profoundly dangerous and idiotic. The wannabe thug in his mom's basement, the crotchety old moron with the gun in his book,,,,these yokels are crazily irresponsible.

It could of course be completely true that Christie didn't know anything about it. In that case, he still is responsible for it in the conventional leadership sense...not least because such things are usually done as a result of a culture of expectations set by the leadership itself (which is why the "bad apples" hypothesis of Abu Ghraib never truly took hold....which is good, it's a piss-poor excuse.) But of course, if Christie did know, than his responsibility is much larger....criminal, you might point out. I have no idea which one is true.

You know I'm in agreement with you, at least roughly, about religion generally. But as your own remarks imply, we're only talking correlation. that is, could it not be that societies that suffer under awful policies, and or awful circumstances, in which relatively large swaths of the populations endure economic, social and political hardships....that such things could well be the cause of intense religiosity as much as the effect? I mean, ultimately it's perhaps a fool's game to delineate cause and effect with any accuracy, but I believe such might be the case. I rather look at it this way, though hopefully not delving into religious apologetics which try to make a similar point for self-indulgent reasons: I don't think religion has "caused" a single bad human quality. that is, any human quality, good or bad, is innate to human nature (since crude behaviorism has been, in most realms of science, mostly discredited). Therefore, religion doesn't invent any horrors. It does, I will certainly grant you, often appear to exacerbate things, and sanctify behavior that we might otherwise deem repugnant. Therein lies the primary issue with religious faith. But I think religion touches upon points of faith that are not discretely "religious" in nature. that is, ugly, dangerous articles of "faith" are a very real component of human thought itself, as we know when we shake our heads in wonder during morally or logically insane political opinions...which each one of has done on numerous occasions. So ok, obviously none of this is terribly insightful, much less groundbreaking. But my point is that religious faith isn't, for me, the problem. The problem is morally and logically insane propositions and notions that religion contains....but does not alone signify or play out. They remain without religion as well as within it. As for the truth and reality as we best understand it....there, I do think there is value in harshly interrogating religious belief whenever it clashes with what we've come to understand about reality through more rigorous means. (Science.) But many people of faith are not, or not obviously, holding beliefs akin to superstition, or even the supernatural. My conservative Christian father, for example, who rarely misses church, and is active in that community, doesn't even believe in the Divinity of Christ. No miracles, no virgin birth, no rising from the dead. "God" is an idea to him, not a palpable being (or an actual, six-foot-tall manlike dude living on a planet, as the Mormons believe. Yes....they really do!) Rather, it's an idea, something to do with a human desire to see human beings entire as some sort of moral community...in a potential sense, not an objectively-existing one, perhaps. And Jesus Christ....is simply a symbol, an embodiment of the reaching for moral perfection. I see nothing to which to object in this type of faith....and I don't think it's an uncommon one among believers. It's practically an enemy of religious literalism, and is inherently humble. It's certainly no more arguable or problematic than liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism...all of which contain articles of faith, and all of which are contradictory and, potentially, lethal belief systems..and .based only partially on observable reality.

He was almost good enough to save The Iceman (meh, as you say), a pretty tepid biopic of a real-life hitman. And he was really good in the under-appreciated Bug (the play from which it was derived was written by the same guy who wrote Killer Joe (speaking of McConaughey....we're getting into that six degrees of separation thing now. )

I saw Take Shelter, and thought it was terrific. And Michael Shannon was incredibly good.

Ah...fair enough.

Just as a point of order, I don't think that "GWOT" is any longer the preferred nomenclature...just as well, since the term is a monumental joke anyway.

I think (and yes, it's already been pointed out many times) that some delineation is in order. Religion is not religious fanaticism. A belief in God or gods does not, as I see it, hold back human progress in any demonstrable way. That I don't share this belief, and frankly don't quite understand it, is not relevant.

Why oh why can't he just "support the troops!" lol!

Well, under the (dubious) premise that this is a serious question, you get the same answer you'd get if any other celebrity figure were the subject; if enough people tune out of Enright's show, he will be replaced.

Overthere, you're certainly right that hits and misses are typical of large bodies of work (not just in film, of course). I haven't seen the Harrison docu. But I was thinking of the Stones concert, Shutter Island....both of which were not too strong, in my view. On the other hand, The Departed is fairly recent, and it rocked pretty hard, so I certainly wouldn't write him off in the F. F. Coppola school of has-beens just yet.

And what's with the "free speech" Duck Dynasty crossover stuff? You can get canned from Walmart if you make public statements that the company feels puts them in a bad light through association. As Walmart informs all new employees. Whether it was a good or a bad business decision is the only sane discussion we can have about it.

Bingo. It's not that I assume bambino is always right. It's that he knows more than I do on the particular subject, and so he's my MLW go-to guy. If an issue is partisan, his opinion reduces in value to that of....well, my own, I guess.

I'm not especially a Kanye fan, but I agree with your sentiment. Kanye is, in my view, more or less an idiot...at least, extremely foolish and apparently lacking in self-reflection when making numerous assertions in public. But it doesn't matter. To paraphrase someone else, "the book is the thing." Some people seem to have a strange idea that artists are uniquely insightful (writers, especially, tend to receive undue adulation on this point). It's hogwash, of course. Heck, read some interviews with Salman Rushdie, or Robert DeNiro, or Margaret Atwood or Picasso or George Carlin or Pete Townsend. All reasonably intelligent people of average "insight." You can see just as smart on MLW.

Sometimes I wonder unhappily if Martin Scosese's star isn't just slightly on the wane. He's good...but he used to be truly great.

To put it generously.

I take your point, given my remark...but, first, I don't consider "fiscal conservatives" to be stupid....but have long heard Fordites (up to and including Don Cherry, an "elite" if ever there was one) deriding all those to the left of themselves, as some sort of latte-sipping "elite." I suppose getting involved in the tit-for-tat is less than useful....but it certainly isn't the case that ordinary, hard-working "fiscal conservatives" have been insulted by "liberal elites" for so long that they're now playing payback, or something.....

I enjoy the interesting notion that millionaires with political power aren't part of the "elite"...because "elite" has come to mean "not as brick-stupid as a Rob Ford fan."

It stands to reason, and it's a good sign of homosexuality's normalization in Canadian society. There is nothing inherently Leftist about gay rights. It was just a temporary cultural phenomenon that only the Left has been supporting gay rights....much to the right's (and, hell, the "centrist's") shame. But that's all about to change...and it's a good thing, since gay rights need not be polarized through ideological partisanship. Not any more. Normalization.

No, as I recall, you've expressed some reticence about the wisdom of that performance.

No. The quaint coalition of mouth-breathing morons of course didn't give a rat's ass about the Iraqis...and it shows. What's interesting is that a great part of the objection to the war, from the start, was of the probabilities of terrible, unintended consequences...like, oh, for example, sectarian bloodshed....which occurred; the rise of terrorist violence.....well, lookee there; and the eventual threat of extremist Islamists taking advantage of the chaos to insert themselves into (at least) regional powers... ....and of course, as we all remember well, the little geniuses who supported and defended the war derided all these warnings as wildly implausible...... Well, I take no pleasure form the incompetence of the war's architects, nor from the monumental servility of the their defenders. It's been one sad tragedy after another. Good job.

Here in NB, the Acadians call it "chiac." And while they are humorous and self-effacing about it, I think most would point out that it's not a "dialect," so much as a language. And why not? Avez-vous besoin help avec le job?

Yeah, but Obamacare! (And, for the sake of another esteemed poster: Canada!)