I hope to have the show we recorded yesterday up later today.

-Bill

Catching up on past shows—hope you’ll be back soon.

btw, Star Wars is not Sci Fi simply because there are no “people” in it… ‘Long ago in a Galaxy far far away…”

It really looks like they’re turning it into the Eliza Dushku show, instead of the ensemble show it used to be. (The new credits seem to be playing that angle up as well.) Being as Echo has always been one of the least interesting parts of the show it doesn’t bode well for the future.

BTW, nice to see Gattaca getting some much-earned love. It somehow got the reputation of being middling-to-bad, and for the life of me I don’t get it. I personally thought the second act was the strongest–that plotting of how to get past the security systems was some really exciting drama. I personally thought some of the late revelations didn’t pan out (and the Hawke/Thurman pairing had surprisingly little chemistry–guess that’s why they didn’t work as a couple…) but all in all, a very strong movie.

If I remember right, Eric Cantor is the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, arguably the largest Jewish synagogue association in America. We have Israeli flags in EVERY reform synagogue in the US (since the Six-Day War in 1967), and in most other non-Reform synagogues I’ve seen. To be an American Jew, you are “expected” to support Israel, despite any reservations you might have about the country.

So it doesn’t surprise me that he elevated that belief to a moral right to defend Israel… of course, Israel is Jewish in the same way America is Christian - as in, they go to services twice a year. Support them as an ally, yes, but not because Jesus is gonna plop down on Jerusalem… at some point.

2) That being said, the “other species and other ethnics” had me spitting my water out of my mouth. My God, that was funny.

3) Let us know how Amok Time the Play works out. I’m very curious.

4) The problem is not discovering the “Real America,” whether that is urban or rural America. The problem comes when one assumes that just because you live in Manhattan, you think that the rural lifestyle is worthless. It’s that blantant disregard for country life that rural people find offensive.

Enjoy your trip,
Marc
Cincinnati, Ohio

But hey, I paid to see the darn film, I might as well enjoy it. Re-watch… no. But perhaps that’s the problem with putting genre shows on mainstream media. The producers expect Transformers-level results, without realizing that it’s a fluke… the people who complain about Transformers is the genre audience - a much smaller group. So instead of harnessing that “will crawl on broken glass” fanbase (or more to the point, “will buy any piece of crap attached to the series” fanbase), they think “What will attract more fair-weather viewers?”

It’s like expecting every NFL game to be the Super Bowl… and trying to find ways for women to watch more regular season games. (shrug)

* Michele Bachmann, talking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “Sean, you know the one question they don’t ask? They [don’t] ask, ‘are you an American citizen?’ … [T]hey could at least ask if we’re an American citizen? They don’t bother to ask for that. That’s why I think people need to read this census for themselves. If you go to my website, michelebachmann, you can read it.” (If you take Bachmann’s advice, visit her website, and read the census, you find the American Community Survey put together by the Census Bureau. Question #7 reads: “Where was this person born?” Question #8 reads, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”)

* Thomas Sowell, prominent conservative writer, in the National Review: “Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender [to Iran] — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago. Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.”

* Rush Limbaugh: “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment, which term limits the President of the United States. He may not do it that way, he may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his cult-like followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is loved and adored has carte blanc once elected. Just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it…. No one else can lead the nation, they will say. And they won’t care a whit about the legalities that might be trampled. Half of the legalities if they don’t even know about them because they haven’t been properly educated…. Anybody who thinks that [Obama] intends to just constitutionally go away in 2016 is nuts.”

* Former CIA official Michael Scheuer, talking to Fox News’ Glenn Beck: “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States — because it’s gonna take a grassroots, bottom up pressure — because these politicians prize their offices, prize the praise of the media, and the Europeans. It’s an absurd situation again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.”