Don't know why there's nothing that interests me on the big screen all year, and then they have to cram all the good stuff into one month.

If some of the advance hype suggested that “Wolf” was going to be a kind of “Goodfellas” on Wall Street, in reality it’s more like the jittery, paranoid third act of that movie stretched out to three hours, starting at a fever pitch and heading toward the nuclear.

Another year in the books for the boys. A successful one at that: two deer harvested.

Clean-up at the end is always a bit of challenge. All the gear needs to get organized, packed, and stored for another year. Plus the cabin has to be restored to the condition it was in before 10 guys got around to a weeks worth of hunting.

Those challenges can be amplified, however, for some of our members. As a fellow contributor of our blog put it, "I should have made a bigger distinction between the piles of clothes that are clean and those that are sh*t."

How to overcome this packing obstacle?

"I just smell every item," he explained.

I love "Money for Nothing" and Mark Knopfler. But I'd love to see it live with Sting (who sang background vocals on the studio track) on stage. Better yet if we could just get silly and have Phil Collins playing drums. And if we're just being stupid, might as well have Clapton join Knopfler on guitar.

Oh snap...

is pretty the much the man.   As if you didn't know that already, just from Lester Diamond.

But here he is IRL, living the creed "Country First."

Conservative actor James Woods: 'I don't expect to work again' - Washington Times

and not an actual Democratic Congressman speaking on the record.



One more:

There's nothing better than a pretty lyric. Particularly when it confirms the nobility of the human heart:

I once knew a girl 
In the years of my youth 
With eyes like the summer 
All beauty and truth 

But in the morning I fled 
Left a note and it said 
"Someday day you will be loved" 

I cannot pretend that I felt any regret 
Because each broken heart will eventually mend 
As the blood runs red, down the needle and thread 
Someday, you will be loved 

You'll be loved, you'll be loved 
Like you never have known 
The memories of me will seem more like bad dreams 
Just a series of blurs, like I never occurred 

Someday, you will be loved

Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe.

Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County.

I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so.

I thought that all of you, but especially D.C., would appreciate this little video, in which Bloomberg "posits that this is the best movie ever made about American business." Aykroyd is just a cool guy. Bonus points for ending the clip with our favorite movie misquote.

I was looking back--way back--in the deep OccObs archives.   It was interesting to read some of the posts during the earliest stages of the race for the GOP nomination in the '08 cycle.  In the Fall of '06, I found Duncan Hunter an interesting possibility because he was beating the drum of protectionism;  I thought Brownback would be the best conservative option from an ideological perspective, but for his support of McCain/Kennedy (in hindsight, his support of McCain/Kennedy may have been his strongest recommendation); and I was commending Virgil Goode for insinuating all Muslims are the enemy.  What a clown circus.

SHK, OTOH, got one big prediction right. Unfortunately, the link in the original blogpost no longer works. I found this NYP story from the same date. Any idea if it was what you were referencing, SHK?

Here's the upshot of the article:

Some of Rudy Giuliani's fiercest city critics are set to launch "swift boat"-type strikes to inform voters around the nation about the former mayor's behavior before 9/11, The Post has learned...

...Here are six obstacles Rudy Giuliani will have to overcome if he expects to be president:

1) BERNARD KERIK - Former top cop imploded after nomination as homeland security chief raised ethical questions.

2) RUSSELL HARDING- Patronage pol pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $400,000. Investigators also found child porn on Harding's computer.

3) WARDROBE MALFUNCTION - Giuliani might get dressed down for wearing women's clothes on "Saturday Night Live."

4) WIFE STRIFE - First the cousin, later the mistress.Donna Hanover was the woman in the middle.

5) WHAT'S LEFT - Giuliani has liberal-leaning views on gun control, abortion rights and gay rights.

6) THREE'S A CROWD - Giuliani moved out of Gracie Mansion (right) and into a condo with two gay men and a dog.

Ellis:                    You can't stop what's coming.
                            It ain't all waiting on you.
                           That's vanity.

I know this is old news already, but I don't watch Parks & Rec despite Caribou's insistence.  Excellent filibuster. 

...on WEEDS to read article.

Link

W: This is just a deal gone wrong, isn't it?

ETB:    Yup. Appears to have been a glitch or two.

Why does A.G. Holder continue to stoke to the fires of racial tension, when this case was, as even the prosecutors have admitted, not about race?  See link below for an excellent analysis.

Deconstructing Reality and Zimmerman

Over at Race 4 2016, I offered my early read on the '16 GOP race.

Figured I'd share with y'all over here:

Breitbart did a fabulous job putting a timeline to the "reporting" done on the Zimmerman trial by the MSM.   Misinformation, hyperbole, and slander were present a plenty, with each new bit of race-baiting built on the foundation of yesterday's falsehood.   Please give the Breitbart story a read here.

In this case, it is the loss of Trayvon Martin's life that is most tragic.  Prayers and best wishes to his family, who undoubtedly feel like the scabs have been ripped off these deep and still healing wounds.

That said, the public disservice done by the media in creating a fire storm, one that did not fit the facts of the case, may be the most disturbing.  One might even call it a high-tech lynching, available via streaming video and RSS syndication.    It went low-tech when Al Sharpton (of Tawana Brawley fame) led demonstrations that managed to intimidate the State Attorney's office into bringing charges the police had determined were unwarranted.

The press built this narrative one step at a time.  Rather than admit that there was no evidence as to who began the physcial altercation, the press "profiled" Zimmerman as a racist.   When Zimmerman said "these guys always get away,"  the press told you "these guys" meant "black people," not "burglars."

ANOTHER COUNTER
A clerk stares at Moss.

From Mansome:

Despite the CW being parroted around in the MSM that "Hillary!" is unbeatable in 2016, we have the following poll results in from Q:

Link

Remember this is a state that Obama carried twice.  Also, it is likely that the GOP candidates included in this poll, while not unknowns,  do not have the name recognition of the former FLOTUS/Senator/SecState.

This will, IMO, be a nettlesome issue for the GOP in '16.   No one will get nominated without earning the support of (at least a meaningful slice of) the evangelical/socially conservative wing of the party.  The leverage of SoCons in the early states, esp. Iowa, SC, FL is just too large.  That said, a message of "the gays are after your kids' minds" might fly in an Iowa GOP straw poll, but not in a general election (again, IMO).

How to negotiate these straits?

All credit to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who did a good thing by drafting a former blue-chip prospect, Cory Hahn, who was paralyzed from the chest down playing college baseball. A good decision that may also turn out to be a smart decision for the franchise, although to see why, you may have to "change your eye level" (to use some baseball terminology) and see the bigger picture.

Ultimately, they did this because they deeply respected Cory Hahn and his family, and wanted to pay him tribute. They selected him in the 34th round in honor of his jersey number (34). But this was not merely ceremonial. They also plan to try and employ him in the organization, in some capacity.

Hahn is already acting as an instructor for his former baseball team.  It's not hard to imagine that his words, example, his mere presence, will provide a massive dose of motivation to 18 and 19 year olds in the farms. Especially as the long grind to the show starts to wear on them.

Poor A-ball kid... Think you've got an impossible climb? Take advantage of your situation. 
Carpe diem. 

Kudos to the DBacks. Congratulations to Cory Hahn. And Solid Citizen awards to Ray Montgomery and Derrick Hall for allowing their hearts to lead them off the beaten path, to a decision that is good. In the moral sense. And may turn out to be good. In the utilitarian sense.

I am stunned by the scope of the damage in Moore. The area impacted is just enormous. The utter destruction of the homes in the path of the tornado is worse than I'd imagine it in a nightmare.

Watched the video below this morning. A bit of warmth amidst all the sorrow.  I'm struck by how composed this woman is, at her age, despite being confronted by the complete destruction of everything she owns and knows:

"I know exactly what happened here. Exactly."

"All too easy."

Link to Varvel cartoon

Karl Rove's Crossroads PAC dials it down to the essentials. And the details are still coming.

Link.

Godspeed, Baroness Thatcher.  You will be sorely missed.

Link.

“The EU previous stated that individuals will not be harmed, and they will not take money from pensioners. But here they have done just that. They are stealing money in order to support bond holders, which is of course hypocritical because all nations like Germany want to support their own banks who hold these bonds”,added Young.


EU has put the Cypriots in a very “appalling situation" argues Young. “What the Cypriots are being told is that if you are lucky you got a leaky lifeboat, but other than that no one is coming to your rescue”...


All the EU and IMF care about is to “make sure that the big‘euro ship’ can sail on entirely safely.”

...there are more austerity measures ahead, but ultimately, “the Cypriots have been left alone with a loaded revolver with all six barrels full and being told to go play Russian roulette.”

Rioting in Greece last year

Greek Riot Police

Cypriot Police Tank

Man threatening to bulldoze bank to get to his money in Cyprus.

Putin denounces EU confiscation of assets (which happens to include significant offshore Russian assets).


In summary:

"The Dark One is gathering all armies to him. It won't be long now. He will soon be ready."

If you have an interest in leadership, group dynamics, politics, sports, or human interaction. Link

and will miss him. God bless you in your retirement, Holy Father!

Shoot first, look at your target later.  Link:

F&S: What about the other uses, for self-defense and target practice?

BIDEN: Well, the way in which we measure it is—I think most scholars would say—is that as long as you have a weapon sufficient to be able to provide your self-defense. I did one of these town-hall meetings on the Internet and one guy said, “Well, what happens when the end days come? What happens when there’s the earthquake? I live in California, and I have to protect myself.”

I said, “Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.” Most people can handle a shotgun a hell of a lot better than they can a semi-automatic weapon in terms of both their aim and in terms of their ability to deter people coming. We can argue whether that’s true or not, but it is no argument that, for example, a shotgun could do the same job of protecting you. Now, granted, you can come back and say, “Well, a machine gun could do a better job of protecting me.” No one’s arguing we should make machine guns legal.

America! F*ck Yeah!

BTW: Is Joe always drunk, or is this just the way he talks? If he actually was sober, can you imagine how much fun it would be to get Biden in a hunting cabin for a week?

Read this for more information.

Read 'em and weep.

Of the many articles discussing the Pope's resignation, this WSJ piece is worth discussing here, as it touches on the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, and makes some very important points about Benedict's agenda and the nature of Western Civilization:

Perhaps the most important religious development in our time is the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. Benedict courted controversy over Islam with his 2006 speech, "Faith and Reason," in Regensburg, Germany. He quoted the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus saying uncomplimentary things about Islam, quotes that led to death threats against the pontiff.

Largely lost in that controversy was the Pope's purpose in delivering the speech—an insistence that Faith and Reason need not be antagonists. Their convergence, he argued, "created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe."

You might also call it a defense of Western civilization, or simply the West. In the modern West, however, we have turned skepticism and tolerance into such pre-eminent values that we are in danger of rendering ourselves incapable of defending the virtues of the Western tradition. Pope Benedict refused to turn a blind eye when radical Islam suppressed freedom, notably freedom of conscience.

In the Middle East, China and elsewhere, Christians face persecution, expulsion, imprisonment or even death for cleaving to their faith. Coptic Christians in Egypt have suffered greatly after Mubarak, and in Iraq some of the oldest Christian communities in the world cling to a tenuous existence. Benedict's pontificate deserves to be remembered for the attention and energy he gave to the plight of Christians living in unfree conditions for religious practice.

There is much to say, and for those who are interested, you can undoubtedly find pieces ranging from recaps of his Papacy, to analysis, to conspiracy theories, most of which are by writers with competence far exceeding my own. The only thing I wish to add are my personal feelings.

I am grateful to an incredibly learned, deeply prayerful man for accepting the call of the College of Cardinals, at a time in his life when he had lost a close friend, and had hoped to be peacefully resting in his native Germany. I am moved by his love of God (the theme of his first Papal Encyclical), and how that love filtered into a love for all doctrines and traditions of the Church, especially the Sacred Liturgy.

As far as the Holy Father's resignation, I am saddened to see him go. I have no standing to "analyze" it as a matter of institutional precedence. I have only hopeful belief that it is in the best interest of the Church and humanity, and the conviction that Benedict would not have chosen this path unless he believed it so.

Or put another way, if you were focusing on the category with the smallest number, maybe saving lives isn't really your priority. ht: US News

The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis sounds like a fan of Sen. Paul, but throws up familiar caution flags w/r/t a Paul campaign:

Conservatives who witnessed how Mitt Romney was demonized (in a pretty similar manner as I predicted) must now realize that it is the goal of liberals to cast Republicans as crazy, evil, racists.

Fair or not, Paul would be easily cast in that negative light.

Some of it is his fault. His comments to Rachel Maddow about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be used against him. This, of course, would only confirm the negative narrative his liberal opponents (and their friends in the media) wish to perpetuate. (Note: I get that Rand Paul hates racism — and that his position is a nuanced one. But that won’t matter in our sound bite media culture.)

Some of it’s not his fault. It’s not fair to blame him for the sins of his father, but that won’t stop the media or Paul’s political opponents. It might not be fair for Rep. Ron Paul’s racist newsletters to impact his son’s presidential ambitions — but you know they will.

ICYMI, here are Sen. Paul's comments about the Civil Rights Act. His intent was to advocate for the right to free private association, but instead left himself vulnerable to the charge that he is indifferent to racial discrimination:

Maddow: Do you think that a private business has a right to say that 'We don't serve black people?'

Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important in this debate is not getting into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question 'What about freedom of speech?' Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent. Should we limit racists from speaking. I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it...

Maddow:... How about desegregating lunch counters?

Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion...

Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.

From the NY Post:

Federal tax rates are the same in Florida and New York.

But there’s no state income tax in the Sunshine State. Compare that to New York, where the state and local governments took $14.71 of every $100 earned in 2010, according to state records.

The only state with a higher rate is Alaska...

The demand is so high that officials in Palm Beach County have set up an entire office to answer questions from city hedge-funders looking to relocate.

“We’re not doing a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign. We don’t need to,” said Kelly Smallridge, who heads the Palm Beach County Business Development Board, which set up the special unit to handle inquiries and marketing.

“They’re coming to us.”

Because Hollywood's gonna try to erase him if he keeps this up.  In the midst of a brilliantly written defense of the second amendment, one paragraph just jumped off the page.  Copied and pasted for your reading pleasure:

I'm pretty sure that all but the most naive and passionate feminists understood the War on Women for what it was: a cynical ploy to gin up female votes for Obama.  After all, if a true "War on Women" was being waged by the GOP, wouldn't President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid be waging that war with abandon, seeing as it is (presumably) savaging its intended targets, who also happen to be half the country? Wouldn't the President move Heaven and Earth to end the onslaught?

The National Catholic Register went a bit deeper in explaining the cases they will take:

Based at Stanford’s Mills Legal Clinic, the training program will focus on two types of cases: plaintiffs seeking “accommodation” of religious beliefs and practices and plaintiffs engaging with the public square, possibly to secure access to public facilities or obtain approval for building houses of worship.

“Real-time" cases include a prisoner who converted to Judaism and now needs permission to be circumcised and zoning approval for a mosque. Sonne said that students would work on cases that were less likely to be entangled in partisan politics, avoiding, for example, legal challenges to the HHS mandate or free-exercise cases arising from opposition to same-sex “marriage"...

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has represented plaintiffs from many religious traditions, and Sonne suggested that the public interest group’s “vision fits in well with an academic environment that offers a different perspective: Whether you are representing a mosque or an evangelical church, the question is whether they have the freedom to act in accord with their conscience.”

Sonne added that the decision to select less incendiary cases for the clinic docket did not signal a retreat from a strong commitment to religious liberty: “We think that religious liberty is a natural right. The kind of cases we will handle will manifest that belief, regardless of the issue.”

I was genuinely (and happily) surprised that a part of the higher-education establishment would consent to this type of clinic. Perhaps there is still some hope that our most prestigious graduate programs, who have a great deal of influence in determining who among us will eventually access the most important levers of power, may be embracing a bit more ideological diversity. From the Times story:

Lawrence C. Marshall, the associate dean for clinical legal education at Stanford Law School [states] “My mission has been to make clinical education as central to legal education as it is to medical education. Just as we are concerned about diversity in gender, race and ethnicity, we ought to be committed to ideological diversity.” Mr. Marshall became a hero to liberals for his work to exonerate death penalty inmates when he was a professor at Northwestern Law School a decade ago.

[Bold face is my emphasis]

A welcome development indeed.

To summarize:

1) Stop looking backwards.  Be aspirational, not nostalgic.
2) Compete for every single vote.  Not 47%, not 53%, but 100%.
3) Reject identity politics.  A color blind society was and is a valuable goal.  Let Democrats pit Americans against each other.  The GOP should treat all as individuals, not members of a special interest group.
4) Stop being stupid.  No offensive and bizarre comments.
5) Trust the intelligence of voters.  Give details.
6) Quit "Big." GOP should not be the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts.  We need to be a populist party.
7) Focus on real people, get out of the beltway mindset.  Spend time talking about how the middle class can thrive in an opportunity society, where gov't doesn't pick winners & losers.