gdp's Comments

Breitbart.com : Branson opens world\'s first \'spaceport\' in US

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:25:15 +0000

It's hangar, not hanger.

Big Journalism : Local Reporter Betrays Bias in O'Keefe Interview

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:31:22 +0000

Most journalists get into the biz because they believe they can fix the world, and that they have all the talent, strength of character and moral righteousness that is required. Most leave the business fairly early. Do you recall what the Grateful Dead fan said after he ran out of weed? "Say, this music sucks!" The insight for most reporters is the same. When they grow up a little, they realize the pay and the required pandering suck. Only the truly egotistical can hang in there (think Geraldo. think Anderson Cooper. Now think this guy).

Big Journalism : Keep the Tea Kool-Aid-Free: 5 Stupid Conservative Tactics that Serve the MSM’s Narrative

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:34:49 +0000

I hope you'll bring some of your reasonableness to Breitbart.com. You probably don't recall, but at least one jackass writer here went after census workers, claiming they were Nazis spying for Obama on ordinary Americans. Lovely. Some of us took the job because it was a job -- period! -- and Breitbart and company were trying to get us shot by some mental defective. There are a great many real issues for conservatives to deal with. Paranoid rants will, as you suggest, run off those who are simply philosophically opposed to big government.

Big Journalism : Keep the Tea Kool-Aid-Free: 5 Stupid Conservative Tactics that Serve the MSM’s Narrative

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:31:54 +0000

There's no such word as alright. It's all right. But on the other hand, he's only 23 and this is a sound, insightful article.

Big Hollywood : GOP Resurgence: What’s a Cynic to Do?

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:47:45 +0000

The Republicans have gone along with the nonsense that cutting the amount that budgets are scheduled to grow constitutes "cuts" in spending. Nonsense. Cut spending. Cut programs. Or get out of the way.

Big Hollywood : Blu-ray Review: 25 Years Later, 'The Breakfast Club' Matters

Sun, 8 Aug 2010 17:06:00 +0000

Toto, you're making the same mistake virtually everyone in Hollywood makes, confusing seriousness with serious. That's why every year they hand out oscars to the most pretentious, "serious" movies. This isn't just a Hollywood phenomenon, of course. Pretentious people do it all the time. Steinbeck thought "Grapes of Wrath" was a failure. Compared to his comic novels (Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat), it is. Academics love the second book of Don Quixote because it is a "serious" look at human cruelty. The first book is better, BECAUSE it is the funniest book ever written. "Much Ado About Nothing" is a spectacular piece of work -- not, perhaps in the league with Shakespeare's best tragedies, but infinitely better than most modern stage pieces, because it is sweet and funny and unapologetically (and un-ironically) so. "For man is ... a giddy thing." The Breakfast Club is an entertaining movie. But for sheer imaginative bravura -- for astounding confidence and good humor -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a classic.

Big Journalism : Your Unbiased MSM In Action: The Media vs. Black Conservatives

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 04:35:17 +0000

There are 35 black conservatives running for the Congress this year.

Big Journalism : Overnight Thread: Let's Use de Tocqueville and Shirley Sherrod to Rip America!

Sun, 1 Aug 2010 20:40:13 +0000

Rosehips: why don't you just say, "I hate people who don't live and think like I do" ? Might be better than your current indulgent temper tantrum.

Big Journalism : Overnight Thread: Let's Use de Tocqueville and Shirley Sherrod to Rip America!

Sun, 1 Aug 2010 02:53:31 +0000

Pogria, Thanks for the comments. I found Baird's article snooty, and therefore surprising. You don't often hear snooty comments from down under. In fact I think the responses from other readers here were altogether too reflexive. Ross asks, "Oz has two-thirds the population of California, and is only slightly larger than the Greater New York metropolitan area, so who really cares what they think?" I do. We share a common heritage, and have both grown up similarly. Australia was a penal colony. As to who we are, I'll just quote Bill Murray in Stripes: "We're Americans. That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world." Now we are two of the very few nations whose people celebrate independence in thought, and we neither of us give a damn about those who believe they have the right, or the superior expertise, to tell us how we should live. That means some people will think we're weird. Of course, you won't meet many such elites (read: condescending jackasses) in the U.S., though you can find the exceptions, particularly on the east and west coasts. Our media folks -- particularly those that populate Newsweek, Time, and the networks -- love to believe themselves particularly cerebral. By the way, democracy certainly can be ugly, and mad at times. That's why Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Most of us have no problems with being a little weird. That beats the hell out of being conventional, which is usually attended by conventional wisdom.

Big Hollywood : From Book Publishers to the Media: The Left's Crusade to End Debate

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:43:44 +0000

AreaMan, you may not be familiar with this great old quote (a favorite of Buckley's): "Everything changes ... except the avant garde." Paul Valéry

Big Peace : Annoying Leftist Bumperstickers (Part 2): The Revenge

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:36:25 +0000

Then there is the famous quote from Einstein: "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." He said that BEFORE World War II. After six million of his Jewish kin were murdered, he changed the formulation, and began calling himself a "militant pacifist." By that he meant that if you want to prevent war, you must first arm yourself to the teeth, thereby ensuring anyone who attacks you will regret it. Or as Reagan later put it, "None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong."

Big Journalism : A Misleading Story on 'Facts'

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:27:33 +0000

They always conveniently forget that Saddam used WMDs -- against the Kurds, who were his own countrymen. That's a fact.

Digital Trends : Toshiba DR420 DVD Recorder Review

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 03:07:03 +0000

Just to make sure: I can plug the RCA cables from my VHS directly into this? I assume the recorder takes the analog feed and digitizes it?

Big Journalism : 'We're Not the Enemy Here' -- When You've Lost Anderson Cooper and CNN... Maybe the MSM Is Finally B

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 21:34:20 +0000

That's a popular saying, but it's incorrect, I'm afraid. See Grammar Girl http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/lay-versus-l... "The supposed rule 'people lie, things lay,' is a horrible rule that will make you wrong more often than if you guess randomly." Or Grammar Curmudgeon: "If you see something lying on the ground, it is just resting there; if you see something laying on the ground, it must be doing something else, such as laying eggs." http://www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com/articles/ar...

Big Journalism : 'We're Not the Enemy Here' -- When You've Lost Anderson Cooper and CNN... Maybe the MSM Is Finally B

Sun, 4 Jul 2010 04:33:31 +0000

For God's sake, Anderson. It's "lying in the water," not "laying in the water."

NewsReal Blog : Jews in Oz: How Did We Get Here, Dorothy?

Wed, 9 Jun 2010 21:34:30 +0000

Mike, Your old friends, whose character you are now discovering, will soon make it clear what happens to apostates, and it won't be pretty. I admire your courage. Furthermore, I admire Israel. Mark

Big Government : Undercover Census Fraud Investigation: Louisiana

Wed, 2 Jun 2010 19:49:18 +0000

I don't doubt this, but it wasn't my experience at all. We spent so much time discussing the ethical imperatives, and dissecting hypotheticals, that I sometimes felt like I'd fallen in with Middle Age scholastics. We were expected to act responsibly and ethically. Could it be abused? Sure. But that was through no fault of the folks who were in charge of our little group. I have great respect for them.

Breitbart.com : UK bans drinking games, but resists price controls

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:40:55 +0000

Ah, yes. The archetypal "nanny government" to the rescue. Here is what one fellow had to say about hard drink, and hard drinking -- before this became a nation of weenies. By the way, Falstaff was talking about sack, a fortified sherry. I would you had but the wit: 'twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober- blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and delectable shapes, which, delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme: it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.