Comments Posted By Wes S.
Displaying 1 To 10 Of 18 Comments
TWITS IN MCCAIN CAMP MISFIRE IN PALIN ATTACKS
OK, so where's McCain himself in all of this? He's supposed to be a man of honor; why isn't he out there publicly putting a hard stop to this backstabbing crap?
We had enough of this BS during the campaign from the likes of Tina Fey, Andrew Sullivan and the entire mainstream media.
We don't need it from alleged Republicans too.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 6.11.2008 @ 11:41
McCAIN-HUCKABEE: A TICKET MADE IN HELL
Ugh. The very notion of a McCain/Huckabee ticket just made me throw up in my mouth, a little. Especially since the slimy Huckster qualifies as neither "good" nor "conservative."
I'd rather see somebody like Michael Steele or J.C. Watts as the undercard for the Republican ticket, myself.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 10.02.2008 @ 15:34
NIE REPORT ON IRANIAN NUKES: QUALIFIED GOOD NEWS
Even if you don’t trust the Iranians farther than you can throw them, the National Intelligence Estimate on their nuclear program should enable you to breathe a sigh of relief.
That depends on whether we can trust our own intelligence community farther than we can throw them, doesn't it? How many things have they been wrong about in the recent past? Here's a few:
--They grossly underestimated Saddam's WMD capabilities before and during the first Gulf War - afterwards we found out Saddam was within six months of having a working nuclear device - and grossly overestimated them in the run-up to Gulf War II. And the spies still haven't sastifactorily accounted for the WMD Saddam did have.
--Nobody in the intelligence community saw the Indo-Pakastani nuclear testing duel coming. Or the fall of the USSR. Or 9/11.
--Nor did they do a very good job of keeping track of what the North Koreans had and what they were doing with it. And, now, suddenly we find out that Syria was apparently building a processing plant to turn Nork plutonium into functioning nuclear weapons. Fortunately, the Mossad and the IDF were on the ball there...
I hope the NIE is right, but based on the past performance of some of our intelligence agencies I'm still skeptical. And - regardless of how the Administration and Congress try to spin this - the fact remains that the Iranians are still at war with us, as they have been since 1979. Never mind "squaring Bush's World War III comment" with the NIE; how do you square the apocalyptic and genocidal rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmendinajad and the mullahs with the NIE's apparent "Relax, don't worry" message?
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 3.12.2007 @ 20:06
MY 10 FAVORITE MOVIE VILLAINS OF ALL TIME
My choice for one of those Top Ten Villian slots would have to go to the tag team of Alan Rickman and the late Alexander Godunov in the original Die Hard. Rickman exuded suave, debonair malice as the terrorist leader "Hans Gruber," perfectly complemented by the rugged, in-your-face thuggery of Godunov as "Karl," Rickman's second-in-command.
Up until I saw Godunov in Die Hard, I thought ballet dancers were wimps.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 28.05.2007 @ 17:27
OF SHARK JUMPING AND THE DEATH OF KINGS
Are you telling me that’s the best the writers could do? Please give your ideas for a proper Chloe response in the comments.
"Button up your shirt collar, Morris; your circumcision scar is showing."
Although that line would better be reserved for Little Ricky Schroeder's character...
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 17.04.2007 @ 12:47
My brain is fogged up with some great cough medicine and I find myself spacing from time to time.
Hmmm. Something similar must have happened to "24's" actual scriptwriters this season...
...Seriously, get well soon, Rick. Your episode recaps are one of the highlights of my week.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 10.04.2007 @ 12:36
On the beach, we watch as Gredenko staggers underneath a pier, the life oozing out of him. Finally, he keels over dead as waves wash over his body. Does he have something on him that CTU needs to find? A map? A phone number? Or are the writers done with Gredenko and decided on this anti-climactic end to one of the main villians on the show?
Actually, I think Gredenko's anticlimatic death is just another example of the scriptwriters losing focus, running out of ideas and finally recycling past plotlines in a desperate attempt to get the show moving again. The Gredenko character was basically Dennis Hopper's "Victor Drazen" from Season One reincarnated, right down to the bad hair and worse Russian accent. I've spent the entire season waiting for Gredenko to say "Yew must soffer as I haf soffered, Jek!"...
And Gredenko ended up just like Drazen did: facedown and bobbing in the surf.
Also: As written, there's something childishly petty about Wayne's launching of the Vice President's proposed nuclear strike against "Fayedistan" as his first act back in power, after defeating the VP's attempt to have him removed from office. It's as if the scriptwriters have Wayne saying, "Nobody can play with my toys but me!"
(Funny that President Wayne had to actually call the Pentagon last night to get the launch codes and protocols for the strike, while his Veep only had to phone an admiral. It does beg the question of where the guy with the "football" is, doesn't it?)
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 3.04.2007 @ 09:43
The problem with "24" isn't that it's necessarily politically schizophrenic (as Kevin Drum puts it), but it does seem to me that it's taken a definitely hard left turn this season even as the writing has gone steadlily downhill. Frankly, they've run out of ideas for the show. A Presidential coup? BTDT. Attacking a nuclear power plant? Ditto. Torturing an innocent CTU employee by mistake? Yep. Sinister white guys using Muslim terrorists as patsies? Where have I seen that before...?
Humorist Dave Barry, who features a weekly "24" liveblog on his website (blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog), has suggested that "24" doesn't have writers anymore; actually the show features a Random Plotline Generator and a matching Wooden Dialogue Generator. Unfortunately, the Random Plotline Generator seems to be stuck in a loop and is regurgitating plotlines from past seasons; the only plotline they haven't repeated this season is the cougar (and the reason we haven't seen so much of the Kim-like Josh the last couple of episodes is that the kid is probably lost in the woods, caught in an animal trap).
FOX apparently let CAIR program the Wooden Dialogue Generator, to judge from all the impassioned leftist whining about infringed civil liberties, Islam being a religion of peace, more infringed civil liberties, etc. And Drum is certainly right about the portrayal of conservative politicos on the show, particularly this season. (Except for William Devane's "SECDEF Heller," which was the exception that proved the rule.)
Sorry for the long-windedness, but I'm coming to the conclusion that "24" has jumped the shark for the last time. And I'm about ready to give up on it.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 27.03.2007 @ 11:30
DEMS SCRAMBLING OVER WAR FUNDING BILL
(The) Dems’ seem to have decided that their Slow Bleed strategy (v.018) won’t actually have a chance of passing on its own merits, and so they need to play Let’s Make A Deal. In other words: find a bunch of morally confused Congresscritters who think their districts absolutely must have some nice juicy pork projects, and bring ‘em the bacon, baby!
"Coalition of the Coerced and the Bribed," anyone?
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 21.03.2007 @ 21:16
"Just checking your breath" has got to be the Chloe-ism of all time, not just of the week...*snork*
...No, Awwwdrey can't be dead. Remember back in Season One, when Teri's car went off the cliff with Kim trapped inside, and we all cheered at the thought Kim had been permanently put out of our misery? Of course the little brat survived.
So I'm not going to consider Awwwdrey dead yet. No doubt Awwwdrey is actually trapped in a Chinese gulag, undergoing torture or brainwashing, and she'll show up just in time for the conclusion of this season or next season. Or she'll show up for the "24" theatrical movie that is supposed to start filming as soon as they wrap up the current season.
Either way - sadly - she'll be back.
Comment Posted By Wes S. On 20.03.2007 @ 19:54
