Smudged

Liz Sidoti explains why the Sestak thing is bad for Obama regardless of the legality of lack thereof. Excerpt:

White House counsel Robert Bauer said what transpired was neither illegal nor unethical.

But he also said: "There have been numerous reported instances in the past when prior administrations — both Democratic and Republicans and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office."

Fair enough.

But Obama has held himself to a different standard. By that measurement, and in this case, he failed to deliver.

As a candidate, Obama cast himself as above partisan sniping and political maneuvering — even as he proved to be a shrewd politician able to broker deals. He promised voters turned off by politics and Washington — and yearning for change that this fresh-faced, political newcomer offered — that he would do things differently from his predecessors.

Of course I never saw Barack Obama as being above doing anything dirty. He hasn't proven to be any different than all those white guys except he can probably get away with more. But a lot of people just believe what they hear on TV about transparency, post-partisanship and thrills going up legs. So Sidoti is right—he's damaged by this even absent an investigation for which it would not be wise to hold one's breath in anticipation.

Of course it would be great watching Obama swirling down right after Specter disappeared.

A former LOST fan pans final episode as a "stunning act of creative cowardice"

Here's some really insightful and detailed commentary on what was wrong with the LOST finale. It's admittedly much better than my snarky take, which has been called immature, providing several contrasts with other films and stories and it doesn't run on for too long. The fact that the author, Doctor Zero (aka John Hayward), had been a fan in the early days is another benefit and his knowledge of key parts which represent serious internal inconsistencies show that his accusations of lies on the part of the show's creators are not merely lashings out. Example:

It’s not merely a question of riddles left unanswered. The show lied to its viewers, repeatedly. Remember Juliet saying “it worked” after the atomic bomb went off, followed by the last season’s opening shot of a submerged island in what appeared to be an alternate timeline? That wasn’t some sort of clever misdirection. It was an outright lie. The reason everyone immediately rewinds The Sixth Sense after seeing it for the first time is that it plays fair. It shows the audience certain things, with complete honesty, and the audience misinterprets what it’s seeing. It’s the difference between pulling a quarter out of someone’s ear with sleight of hand, versus knocking them unconscious and stuffing a coin in their earlobe. The kind of cheating indulged by the Lost writers will cost them their feet, if they ever run afoul of the madwoman from Misery.

The contrast with The Sixth Sense is perfect. It's the difference between skillful film-making and hoping people forgive you for your lack of skill. Here's the Doc's conclusion:

Too much of their collective story was left to our imaginations, and we aren’t the ones getting paid millions by ABC Television to write this stuff.

My thoughts exactly.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

Please Read Brigitte Gabriel's Books

The antidote for the stupidity of Tavis Smiley is to read good books and get others to read them. I'm reading Brigitte Gabriel's first book about Islamists, Because They Hate, and I'm going to be posting short excerpts from the book. I really don't think she'll mind. Here's a paragraph from page xxiii of the 2008 edition introduction:

Our enemy is not an organization of people living overseas plotting to attack. Our enemies are the neighbors next door, the doctors practicing in our hospitals, and the workers who share our lunch break. Our enemies are terrorists driven by a dangerous ideology and clothed in deception who operate under cover and laugh about the advantages our sensitivity training, gullibility, and political correctness have given them.

I urge everyone to go here and sign up for updates from ACT! for America. You will find the material extremely informative. Remember, you can always unsubscribe.

"Bitchtar"

Here's my laugh for the day which I shall share with thee. Apparently Kyle Smith does not think the latest Sex in the City flick is very good, and it inspires him to great comic writing. Plus he gets bonus points for using the phrase "sand Nazis". Excerpt:

The girls aren’t interested in anything except shopping, drinking and strutting through the desert in slo-mo, but what’s most appalling is that they vamp to “I Am Woman” in this land of sand Nazis. A veil “cuts back on the Botox bill!” chirps Samantha. Har. In Abu Dhabi husbands can legally beat their wives — and Carrie thinks this place is Oz, a cure for her boredom with a zillionaire husband who, she complains, eats too much takeout. (She won’t cook because she’s more “Coco Chanel than Coq au vin.” Waiter: one divorce, please).

Complications? Carrie loses her passport when distracted by shoes. (Did Lindsay Lohan contribute to this script?) We nearly lose Charlotte when she chases a watch. Native women bond with our heroines — over shared love for the books of Suzanne Somers. A major problem gets solved in the end when Carrie gets more jewelry.

Despite its “Lawrence of Arabia” length, this film — the Sexless and the Self-Pitying — is as unfunny and shapeless as another famed desert epic. Just think of it as “Bitchtar.”

"My music is good!"

The good die young.

Summing up "Lost"

I'm not a Lost fan, but my wife is, so I asked her "What happened?" and she told me. I just listened with the emotion of a court stenographer, not even pretending to care about the idiotic characters left. (I'll never understand killing off Michelle Rodriguez so early. Why not give the axe to some unmemorable blonde? That was when I completely lost interest, but I digress....) I had a two followup questions for her, first off, what happened to Hurley? She told me that Hurley became the keeper of the island, or whatever. So... neat.

My second followup question was "What was the point?" I don't think she knew what the point was, except that she told me that everyone ends up in a church at the end--whether they had died or not--and they have a big group discussion to try to figure it all out. To me, that's almost perfect. For the perfect way to sum up the series, we must go to the Solomon of our times, the Great Jack Handey of "Deep Thoughts" fame:

I think a good novel would be where a bunch of men on a ship are looking for a whale. They look and look, but you know what? They never find him. And you know why they never find him? It doesn't say. The book leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide. Then, at the very end, there's a page you can lick and it tastes like Kool-Aid. (Source)

"There's a page you can lick and it tastes like Kool-Aid." That's what Lost means to me. If you disagree, then great! It's wonderful that we can all have our own points of view and the world is beautiful. Or ugly, whatever you're into.

It's really easy to start a story and really hard to end it. So my hat is off to the Lost creators: they made a lot of money selling advertising and aborted the thing before it got any sillier.



Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

"Reading helps you know what you're talking about."

Too funny. H/T Redstate.

Kudos to the frog puppet for doing this. My guess is that he'll suffer a lot of ostracism in the puppet community for taking the gig for a conservative issue commercial. Most puppets are hard core leftists.

OK, I know what you're thinking. The frog looks a little like McCain. Go ahead--admit it.

I like how disappointed the frog looks when he finds out Holder et al didn't read the law.

Phil Orenstein's Open Letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg Regarding the Ground Zero Mosque

Source. Here's the complete text:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

This letter is addressed to the mayor as well as to all public elected officials in New York City to recognize the only reasonable action to take for the City of New York and for all the people of America. In the name of righteousness and common sense, I demand that you to speak out in opposition to the proposed mosque, the 13-story Islamic Cultural Center called the Cordoba House, just a stone’s throw away from Ground Zero where the former World Trade Towers crumbled into dust on September 11, 2001 along with nearly 3000 New Yorkers.

The opening date for the Ground Zero mosque is September 11, 2011, the 10 year anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack which is seared into the memory of all Americans and directly touches the lives of every New Yorker through friends, family or co-workers who perished on that day. As long as we have memory that sustains us, we will never forget the horrific tragedy, and we emphatically oppose the construction of any mosque on the hallowed grounds where our fellow New Yorkers and loved ones were murdered in the horrific plot by 19 Muslim terrorist hijackers. This is not a freedom of religion issue. It is an issue of speaking out in name of righteousness. We have no objections to the construction of mosques. But why at Ground Zero? By the same token, who would allow the symbolic ignominy of a Shinto shrine commemorating Emperor Hirohito at Pearl Harbor with the opening day of December 7th?

The proposed mosque, a joint venture of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), is presided over by its founder, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who paid $4.85 million for the building in December 2009. His bogus claim that the money came from New York Muslim contributors needs to be investigated. Where did the $4.85 million come from and above all who is footing the bill for the projected $100 million cost of the project? According to a New York Post report, the founding organizations have accounted for only a fraction of the projected costs and it’s likely that wealthy Saudi benefactors will pick up the tab. The 2009 financial statement of Rauf’s organization, ASMA, shows that they received large donations from foreign sources, including $576,312 from Qatar, a nation notorious for funding international terrorism.

As mayor of the greatest city in the U.S., you as well as all public elected officials need to take a stand as Mayor Rudy Giuliani did in 2001. He rejected the $10 million donation for September 11th relief efforts from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal after the prince suggested that United States’ foreign policies contributed to the 9-11 attacks, in a statement warning that the United States "must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack." Imam Rauf, with his deceptively “moderate” demeanor, also made a similar assertion about one week before the Saudi prince. On the CBS News broadcast of 60 Minutes on September 30, 2001, Rauf said: “…United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened…Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense Osama bin-Laden is made in the U.S.A."

Imam Rauf will predictably follow in the radical tradition of his father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf and his Islamic expansionist plans for building mosques and Islamic centers in New York City. Dr. Rauf senior built the Islamic Cultural Center on 96th St. purchasing prime Manhattan real estate and completing the massive project with funding from 46 Islamic nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya. Is it any wonder why Imam Rauf is hiding the funding sources for the purchase of the building for the mosque at Ground Zero? It is unconscionable that the Ground Zero mosque will have similar funding sources, including Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers, and continues to finance jihad operations world-wide.

The greatest insult to the memories of our fellow New Yorkers who perished on 9/11 is the scandal that after 10 years, Ground Zero remains a gaping hole in the ground while construction for the new World Trade Center is being pushed back many more years and perhaps decades. Now a 13-story mosque at Ground Zero whose imam blames America for the terrorist attacks, will be completed within one year.

I call on the mayor of the great City of New York and all our elected officials to take a public stand and end this national disgrace. Terminate plans at once for the construction of the Ground Zero mosque.

Sincerely,

Phil Orenstein

Nothing here with which to disagree, nothing to add. Except... well, wouldn't it be ironic if the Islamists do build their big mosque and somebody sort of blows it up with a bomb or a missile or something? Just saying.