The weblog of Joshua Drescher

Entries Tagged as 'Rants'

Good news:
Our network TV and radio companies have been decisively shown to have put aside partisan rancor in order to report - clearly and with a single voice - on important news of the day.
Bad news:
They did it by actively participating in a massive disinformation campaign aimed at presenting “retired military experts” as neutral commentators [...]

The final episode of Battlestar Galactica has come and gone and - I must say - I was disturbingly close to the mark with some of my predictions (please note: I assume you’ve seen the episode, so expect spoilers).
Overall, I give it a 6 out of 10 (which is about what I’d give the last [...]

Eek:
North Korea, which is preparing to test its longest-range missile, said on Thursday it could not guarantee the safety of the South’s commercial flights off the east coast of the peninsula where the missile base is located.
It linked the warning to next week’s joint U.S.-South Korea military drills which it regularly criticizes as a prelude [...]

Apparently, Obama recently spent an evening hanging out with William “That Total Jackass” Kristol.
It’s one thing to reach across the aisle, but it’s another thing entirely to have a nice dinner with the other side of the aisle’s psychopathic fringe. I’m going to be SO pissed off if - on Inauguration Day - Obama [...]

So it’s looking like I will be unable to avoid spending Election Day in - I shit you not - Moscow. Specifically, I will be in the AIR, flying to Moscow while It All Goes Down. Meaning that, in order to get word about the fate of Democracy and the future of America, [...]

Annoyed to find out that Choke isn’t playing anywhere nearby, we settled for seeing Oliver Stone’s latest presidential film - W. Overall, I was generally unimpressed. It’s not a clever film. It’s not illuminating in any real way (or even in a “crazy Oliver Stone conspiracy theory” way). It’s not so [...]

My opinion at the start of the campaign-proper, when Obama and McCain had secured their respective nominations, was as follows:
“Neither is great, but both are definitely better than Bush.”
I was satisfied with both options and confident that, regardless of who won, we’d see improvement over the next four years. As such, I was able [...]

Here’s a one line review of Bill Maher’s new film, Religulous:
Too long, too mean, not nearly funny enough.
That being said, I agree with the core tenet of Maher’s argument that religion is irrational, abusive and dangerous. It’s tempting to view this film as a main stream entry into the “New Atheist” movement, but the [...]

I’m in Seattle for the weekend, so I missed the live broadcast whilst in-transit and didn’t get a chance to watch it until this morning. A few quick thoughts:
The first half of the speech was basically a throw-away. It was all hollow accommodations lobbed at the Clintons and vague statements of position (but [...]

What is it with Democratic Presidential candidates and vacationing during campaigns? To Obama’s credit, he hasn’t been caught floating about on the S.S. Elite wearing a captain’s hat and an ascot, so he’s at least doing better than John Kerry did, but it still seems odd for him to take a week off in [...]

PBS has decided to transition the daily program to a single, weekend airing. Fred Rogers passed away a few years ago, but the programs he’d created over the course of a forty year career in broadcasting remained resonant even after he’d officially retired and PBS continued to air repeats daily. It’s hard to [...]

With SCotUS finally ruling in favor of the individual’s right to bear arms today, the toughest part of the decades-long struggle for gun-rights in D.C. is over. Some are already arguing that today’s ruling has rendered guns a “non-issue” in American politics - which seems pretty darn premature in my eyes.
What seems likely to [...]

WaPo: McCain Denounces Detainee Ruling
“We made it very clear these are enemy combatants,” he told more than 1,000 supporters at a town hall meeting here, echoing the president’s criticism of the court decision. “They have not, and never have been, given the rights of citizens of this country.”
The presumptive GOP nominee then read from Chief [...]

1 - McCain
I’m not sure I would’ve popped up tonight if I were Big Mac, but such is life. He gave a mediocre speech to an anemic crowd for reasons that are unclear, at best.
That being said, attempting to undercut Obama’s “McCain = Bush” nonsense is probably not a bad idea. I’m just [...]