Archive for September, 2007

Khillary-​​Khare

New York Senator and aspiring Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary R. Clinton is set to unveil her new plan to enslave physi­cians and ensure that all Americans have equal access to death today. Highlights will include: indi­vidual mandates, requiring all Americans to buy health insurance; employer mandates, requiring employers to pay for employee health care; and insurance mandates, barring insurance companies from charging unhealthy clients more for coverage. Specifically, Clinton’s package would also require insurers to provide coverage for anyone who applies for it and would also bar insurance companies from charging people with greater health care costs more for their [ . . . ]

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The Hymowitz Editorial

I was going to comment on a recent editorial (Kay S. Hymowitz, Freedom Fetishists, Comment. Sept. 2007, at 50, available at http://​www​.commen​tary​magazine​.com/​c​m​/​m​a​i​n​/​v​i​e​w​A​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​h​tml ?id=10925) that paints Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism in an unpleasant color and with a crude brush. I spent several hours mulling over what I wanted to say about it. But in the end, I decided I really had very little to say that hadn’t already been said. That little boils down to this: Intellectual slop­piness begets intel­lectual slop­piness. Hymowitz should have done some real research, instead of relying on a few prominent Libertarians’ warped inter­pre­ta­tions of Rand’s philosophy, before purporting to speak with [ . . . ]

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Oh, Alex II

A contestant relates a story from when he was a messenger. Upon making a delivery to the exercise guru, the messenger could not regain his pen from Richard Simmons until he had made a promise to exercise. The present day contestant is a husky man, with noticeable paunch. Alex responds: You lied! If he keeps this up, I’ll make this a regular feature. PS: Remember to avoid dangling your participles!

Frankenpurse

I research many things on the Internets. This is not one of them. But I found it and could not stop laughing. And it gives me an oppor­tunity to kick off the “Post-​​​​modernism” category. Via Manolo’s Shoe Blog, which itself comes to me via Mr. Flibbertigibbet, the Louis Vitton Frankenpurse: Apparently, it costs $52,500 and they’re only making two dozen. Beyoncé Knowles and the current Mrs. Rudy Giuliani are rumored to be among the elite few purchasers. Witness the Post-​​​​modernism at work here. Rather than make a new, classy, stylish bag that a beautiful woman wouldn’t have to compete with for attention, they [ . . . ]

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Requiem?

It has been six years and we are still losing the war. On this the first Tuesday 11 September since the last Tuesday 11 September, it is profoundly heart­breaking that, instead of iden­ti­fying and destroying our enemy, our government has instead shackled our ability to defend ourselves to the whim of collec­tivists, appeased and pandered to those who would destroy us, and visciously undercut the very prin­ciples for which we should be fighting. Can it really be that Americans have forgotten what it did to us? If it happened again, would we react the same way? Or has the post-​​​​terror [ . . . ]

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Watch the World Burn

Untitled Batman Begins Sequel went and got itself a title without telling me. A title and a (somewhat dull) teaser. The Dark Knight is due out on 18 July 2008. Mark your calendars. If you haven’t seen Batman Begins yet, you should look into new real estate. Your current abode under that huge rock isn’t helping you any. Also in sequels that got names recently, Untitled Fourth Indiana Jones Movie is now Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I am cautiously intrigued.

On Nausea

Open letter to TV commercial directors of photog­raphy: Shaking the camera will not make what the ad is saying more true. It will only make your viewers seasick. This is espe­cially so on larger screens. No one wants to buy a product whose ad made them barf. It doesn’t make your subject more “real,” or “raw,” or “edgy,” or “relevant.” It’s also such a Commie thing to do. Cinéma vérité, Dogme 95, reality tele­vision, docu­mentary film­making — all are direct ideo­logical descen­dants of Soviet agitprop and dialec­tical mate­ri­alism. The idea that shaking the camera makes the subject more realistic, by analogue to [ . . . ]

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