Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Justice Thomas Doc — Not on Netflix

Posted: January 28, 2020 by julietteochieng in American Success Stories, media
Tags: , , , , ,

Ginny and Clarence Thomas

by baldilocks

J.J. Sefton of Ace of Spades HQ reviews the new Clarence Thomas documentary.

Besides President Trump, arguably one of the most transformative figures to emerge onto the American political landscape in half a century is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Yet, it’s not his stellar legal mind, reflected in scores of brilliant opinions he has penned over the course of his nearly 29-year career at the highest court in the land that earns for him that status. Sadly, it is merely for the fact the he is a black man who, after coming of age in the repressive Democrat Deep South and even embracing the black radicalism of the late 60s ultimately had the scales fall from his eyes and dared reject the political Democrat-Left plantation. But when he was nominated to take the seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court that he became not only their worst nightmare, but an existential threat.

Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, a new documentary slated for release at the end of the month, is a powerful journey back in time, told mostly by Thomas in his own words, and in some segments by his remarkable wife Ginny and mentor and champion, former Senator John Danforth

I’ve always admired Justice Thomas as do most who have read his autobiography My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir. By the way, in the book a reader can find yet another display of the character defects of one Joseph Biden.

And I remember Barack Obama’s public and pointless insult toward Thomas during one of the 2008 presidential debates.

Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated. Mr. McCain said, “with all due respect” the four most liberal sitting Justices because of his different judicial philosophy.

Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that “that’s a good one,” and then adding that “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution.” The Democrat added that he also wouldn’t have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

The nerve of some people. It was like a donkey trying to squash an elephant.

Oh wait …

Anyway, read the entire review. I plan on seeing the documentary when it gets here on the 31st.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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6 Quick Kobe Thoughts, Confession, The Difference a Day Makes, Life goes on, Liang Wudong, What Impeachment? and some things never change Under the Fedora

Posted: January 27, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, culture, entertainment, nba, Sports
Tags: ,

What happened to Kobe Bryant is why I don’t get into any aircraft or go on any long trip without going to confession and receiving absolution first.

None of us from short fat lower middle class 56 year old bloggers to 41 year tall healthy rich basketball superstars are promised tomorrow. So if you need the sacrament of confession the best time to get it is now

It’s amazing the difference a day makes, I would wager that 24 hours ago if offered a chance to ride on a chopper with Kobe Bryant and his daughter you could likely count the number of people who would decline such an offer on your fingers and toes.

You could make a very good episode of the twilight zone about a basketball fanatic selling his soul for the chance.

It’s worth noting that moments of silence and tributes not withstanding the NBA games still went on yesterday, the Grammy’s took place yesterday, on Sunday the Superbowl is going to take place and all of the athletes in all the various sports will keep going on as normal. Unless you are one of the family of those who died life goes on as normal. It’s a lesson worth learning if you are one of those taking the court, field or stage yesterday with the crowd cheering you.

Another person died yesterday that should be remembered by likely will not.

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There will likely not many glowing tributes in the news for Doctor Liang Wudong who died treating patients from the disease that everyone around the world is running from.

There should be.

If you thought people weren’t paying attention to impeachment last week today you’d better believe that nobody is paying attention to it today.

This is one of those very rare times when a Monday Morning is the perfect time for anyone in politics or business to dump an embarrassing story and know for a fact that nobody is going to cover it.

Finally I was on twitter while all this was happening and saw this tweet from a DC blue check journalist in reply to the President’s comment:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Twitchy has a whole batch of such replies I think my initial reaction to this is correct: God what’s wrong with you people?

Cindy McCain Explains why she (and other elites) don’t deserve our respect (and an interesting coincidence)

Posted: January 26, 2020 by datechguy in crime, culture, News/opinion, oddities
Tags: ,

Cindy McCain the widow of Senator John McCain confirms something that all of us have already known:

note that she says that a girl from her daughter’s high school was a victim of him and she hopes he’s in hell but consider, it didn’t outrage her enough to speak out aloud and make a fuss about it, five years, or ten years ago back when it might have made a difference when the odd blogger or two was writing about it.

Remember this is the wife of a US Senator, a Former Presidential Candidate supposedly one of the most respected people in the political world, a “Maverick”.

Nope not a word.

When it comes to Jeffrey Epstien or Harvey Weinstein, or Matt Lauer et/al as far as our elite betters in cultural or political world the actions of these men were not a crisis in their eyes until the general public found out what all of them already knew.

Closing thought. Something hit me when I was writing this piece. I went back and checked the historical stats for my site.

From 2010 to 2013 My site was on a roll, I was growing in traffic, I was being credentialed for national campaigns covering Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional and other campaigns all over the country and able to do it via Datipjar. I had an oped run in the NY Post and even had an appearance on Boston’s fox station (I brought cannoli naturally). In late 2013 I brought on the first batch of my Magnificent Seven added several popular nationally known bloggers as paid members of my team. My Radio show was going strong and was expanding. I attended CPAC in 2014 confident that this was going to be my future.

On April 14 2014 I wrote an article titled

Private Islands, Orgies, Bill Clinton? Nothing to see here

The kicker was this:

What could the media do if this story involving the former father of the year? They would call it old news, not relevant, dirty tricks from a salacious lawsuit that doesn’t even involve him and an attack on Hillary that crosses the line. In fact the left will deploy a plethora of adjectives to discourage further discussion of this story from antiquated to zany, but there is one adjective that could not come out of their mouth to dismiss this story:

Unbelievable

The last few years have proven that the left can convince a low information voter of a lot of things, but even the full power of the mainstream media and the strongest zealots from the War on Women® brigade would not be able to convince the American public that Bill Clinton would have no interest or business on a private island where orgies took place.

2014 ended as my worst year in the Blogs history until last year’s technical issues kept us from posting and updating. Despite the addition of popular well known writers my traffic crashed over 67% in one year. The Tip Jar revenues likewise dropped. My radio show which had been adding stations never grew further and ended. By 2015 I had picked up an overnight temp job to pay the bills which eventually became a full time job in 2018. I dropped the podcast and I resigned myself to the fact that where I am in the blogging/writing/reporting world would never be more than what it was.

I never noticed the timing until today.

Saturday Geeking Picard, Sinking Who, Batwoman Crisis, Where’s the Orville? John Wayne vs Baldrick and Two Down Four to Go

Posted: January 25, 2020 by datechguy in comedy, culture, entertainment

I haven’t taken the time to watch Picard because I refuse to sign up for CBS all access and it seems to be the general consensus is that Patrick Stewart is excellent and while it’s a tad woke it could have been a lot worse.

I really get the feeling that there are a lot of Stewart fans who really WANT to like the series because they want to like him, combine that with the fact that he’s a generally good actor playing an iconic character the he originated and you get fans almost desperate to cheer it.

What does it say about what the woke have done to a series when “Couda been a lot worse” sounds like a victory lap?

Meanwhile Doctor Who continues to crash and burn with rating sinking to McCoy era numbers and worse. The fact that rotten tomatoes keeps clearing out bad reviews makes it even worse in terms of appearance that they have somehow decided to sign for yet another series after this one.

It seems the woke folks at the BBC are determined to purge the last of the old fan base to leave the series pure without it to the point where we are actually seeing people say it’s beyond redemption at this point and better off cancelled.

I have a feeling all of his was avoidable but you get a real feeling that these guys hated their customer base more than the liked the franchise, and frankly the didn’t like the franchise all that much.

The same crashing and burning is taking place in Batwoman. The rating weren’t all that good to start and Crisis on Infinite Earth’s Crossover managed to eat up a lot of oxygen (the whole multiverse idea which now allows the possibility of every single person who ever played any DC character to cross over is big, particularly when you consider that there is at least one comic “universe” where the DC & Marvel heroes co-exist) but once it had to stand on it’s own woke feet the burn began again and the rating are finding new frontiers of holes.

Now it’s possible that even the lousy ratings it has generates enough funds to pay for the series and if it does then they can continue to play the woke game as long as they want (sort of like Doctor Who) where it continues to be a niche show for a niche market, but if that’s not the case and it remains the CW version of the WNBA only surviving because the larger franchise is willing to take a hit to prove its woke credentials it remains to be seen how long it can go on.

With so many longtime franchises committing woke Seppuku the wait for the 3rd season of The Orville has been excruciating. You would not think that one of the wokest lights in Hollywood would be producing practically the last show that can be enjoyed just for being good but McFarline has done it not allowing his woke message (yeah it’s there we all see it just like we did in every series of Doctor Who Pre-Whitaker ) to overwhelm actual storytelling.

The wait is harder because I’ve actually reached the point where we don’t know if the temptation to go full woke is there. He’s reached a point of wealth and celebrity where it doesn’t really matter but I get the feeling he hold just enough of the geek/fanboy inside of him that he doesn’t want to screw over others the way the other franchises have.

Hope I’m right.

Was looking for a free movie on Amazon Prime and settled on Brannigan one of the last pictures John Wayne made where he plays a Chicago Cop to travels to England to pick up a fugitive, John Vernon of Dean Wormer fame.

There is one scene particularly made for comedy geeks where Wayne the acting icon meets encounters someone you would not expect to see in a John Wayne Movie

Yes that’s a very young Tony Robinson before he became a comic icon as Baldrick in the Black Adder series doing a comic pratfall for Wayne. You never see him asked about it in interviews which I find rather strange, but just seeing the two of them together given their histories is enough to make me laugh

Finally with Terry Jones dead the Pythons now have two down and four to go. Combined with Neil Innes recent death it’s a big blow to fans however given their ages not all that surprising.

I suspect it will cause a lot more interest in John Cleese’s visit to Worcester in a few weeks as the realization that the number of chances to actually see these guys in person is dropping exponentially.

I must confess that when I heard he had Alzheimer and Dementia all I could think of was him in the fourth series of Python in drag with a weird umbrella like hood over his head doing an odd dance in the street and ask “given the characters he has played over the years how can anyone tell the difference?”

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