***No Spoilers***

I grade movies hard, kids.  I try to support films and undermine them depending on what side of the political spectrum that I know they are on.  For example, I won’t be buying Leonardo DiCapricock’s “J. Edgar” liberal gravepissing off Instant Demand any time soon.

However, that can get me burnt sometimes.  I’m looking in your direction An American Carol and Atlas Shrugged (Part 1).

Act of Valor is something else though.  Currently, the liberal critics sampled at Rotten Tomatoes are scoring it 31% while the users are rating it 85%.  Quite a disconnect.

No, these critics want Hurt Locker-ish nuance.  The kind of nuance that wins Oscars.  Deep thoughts that portray our military as mindless adrenaline-fueled killbots who gleefully abandon their families and risk the lives of their fellow soldiers for the thrill of murdering some brown people because life so is like so pointless in America because we have 250 different kinds of breakfast cereal to choose from.

Seriously.  Hurt Locker blows a syphilitic donkey named Pedro.

They need a film where the good guys swim in the gray and the bad guys really are justified in their hatred of us – like they are.  Moreso, that they would prefer Real Actors ™ faking Real Soldier action rather than Real Soldiers pretending to be Real Actors ™.  Because that’s just degrading to see the kind of people Obama handpicked to kill bin Laden prostituting their profession this way:

It’s undeniably reverent of the real-life heroes in its cast, but Act of Valor lets them down with a clichéd script, stilted acting, and a jingoistic attitude that ignores the complexities of war.

What?  Some of the acting and script is a bit stilted.  No more than say the script and dialogue of Aliens.  But for a first outing, the directors did a fine job of addressing the complexities of war albeit from a vantage point traditionally ignored by Hollywood.

As far as “jingoistic attitude” goes, critics are correct that Act of Valor did not produce such heroic nuance like Matt Damon’s “Green Zone” where the audiences were supposed to be cheering when US soldiers were killed.  The critics loved that one and the people left it like an ugly baby on the steps of every movie house it played.

From the Damning With Faint Praise Dept., Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, frags:

And it’s hardly the fault of these commandos that their acting deserves no salute. In truth, they’re a lot better than Charlie Sheen was in the 1990 crapfest that was Navy SEALs. I don’t know what to make of Act of Valor. It’s like reviewing a recruiting poster.

Frankly, I’m surprised Travers can claim to have seen this movie at all given his field of vision at his advanced age from that far down the end of his nose.  This isn’t a recruiting poster any more than “Alive” makes you want to join a Uruguayan rugby team.

This offering isn’t Apocalypse Now, it’s Apocalypse Eventually.  Kick in the door waving an M4.  A first person shooter with some of the best action sequences I’ve ever seen.  At moments, the tension is as tight as a tourniquet. While the scenes between the Seals and their families isn’t as bad as anything Michael Bay has ever done, the Tom Clancy-like attention to technical details makes up for the lack of Delta Strike Force diaperchanging at home.

There were moments in the theater that were so silent you could hear a shell casings drop.

Definitely worth a look.

7.5 out of a possible 10 sausage links.

They’re just being cockblocked by the vagina dentata that is the Republican party.

But “you hardly post anymore” you’d say.

True.  The world’s gone to shit.  South America’s going to blow up when Chavez dies.  Mexico’s a failed state.  Obama’s foreign policy consists of pissing off our allies and trying to surrender without dignity to the Taliban, as if they are some kind of honest broker for peace, in time for election season.

On the other side of the aisle, the clown show of the Republican Party will enter Ringling Brother’s vaunted third circle at the convention when they unilaterally pick Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio over anyone who is running now.  Because if there’s one thing America’s clamoring for it’s another Bush.

I toyed with the idea of Gary Johnson before I saw him speak.  Herman Cain was never ready for primetime.  Huntsman was Obama’s Mandarin-speaking Manchurian and Michelle Bachmann couldn’t ever get off the ground despite her outfits borrowed from wardrobe of the last Star Trek outing.

Which leaves us with the cream of the crap:  Santorum the Self-Righteous, Romneybot, the always erratic yet quotable Gingrich & the every 3rd world dictator’s idea of a good time – Ron Paul.

With those choices, what’s there not to be excited about?

As someone who’s crawled over broken glass before, let me say that I would gladly do it again to punch a bloody “VOTE” button against Obama regardless of who’s running.  Even for Ron Paul despite my long held hatred of that consistently myopic troll.

I struggle to care.  I love what America has been and what it has historically represented but I increasingly hate Americans themselves.  Too stupid and satisfied to survive on an internet connection and a handout.  57% of them voted for $8.00 gallon gas and then have the nerve to bitch and mewl about it.

This next November isn’t an election – it’s a slow-motion Suicide Watch with a Kevorkian media happily dispensing a veinful of poisonous class envy and State-approved spin to a credentialed but uneducated electorate.

I’d turn the channel if I could.

Is there something magic about going from $3.50 a gallon to $4.00?  I always thought that would have happened at $2.00 a gallon but I evidently underestimated the magnitude of revolving credit Americans were willing to taken on for their cars without stopping off at Home Depot to buy pitchforks and propane torches.

Enter stage Far Left.  The “I Can Invent A Reason To Force You To Buy Everyone Else’s Medical Insurance” President suddenly is helpless in the face of the gas prices that he encouraged.  Get out your bicycle pumps, everybody.  This whole thing can be solved by properly inflating your tires and getting a tune-up:

During an event at the University of Miami, Mr. Obama will discuss the steps the country can take to tackle what the White House sees as an annual cycle of spikes in gas prices, the officials said. At the same time, these officials, who briefed reporters Tuesday on the president’s plans, acknowledged that there is almost nothing the president can do in the near term to lower gas prices.

I’ve lived a couple of years now and “the annual cycle of spikes in gas prices” has never been this bad.

Cut off the gas card to Air Force One and the 22 limousine caravan and see how quick that changes.

The administration officials brushed off the brewing political storm over rising gas prices as an annual affair bolstered by media hysteria. They said the White House anticipated the current spike in gas prices, which they attribute to increased demand around the world, particularly from China.

Has the media been “hysterical” about gas prices?  Up until last week they’ve comatose on the subject of gas prices for three years.  If even one of them had showed anything resembling Terry Schiavo-level animation it would have been nothing short of miraculous.   Under Bush they were apoplectic over $1.80 gas.

Funny how China has increased demand and they make moves to buy Canada’s ethical oil that Obama rejected.  He did reject it, right?

February 6, 2012

On Monday, Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, traveled to China for a week of high-level meetings.  He brought with him a handful of his cabinet ministers, including Joe Oliver, his tough-talking minister of natural resources who, until recently, had been withering in his scorn for the opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Obama rejected a few weeks ago.  The pipeline, of course, was intended to transport vast oil reserves in Alberta to the American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Magic Chi-coms!  No comprehensive energy policy there.  You have something I need so I approach you to buy it with money in my hand.

So Canada thinks that Obama rejected the pipeline.  The environmentally-ill whackjobs take credit for Obama rejecting the pipeline.  Republicans brought it up for a vote several times and Obama rejected the pipeline.  And Obama brags about rejecting the pipeline.

Because the sheer volume of his bullshit is shovel-ready enough to bring the unemployment rate to 0%.  Earlier today in the Cuckoobirdland that is the White House Press Corps / Stenography Pool:

TAPPER: How can you say you have an all-of-the-above approach if the president turned down the Keystone pipeline? And you blame the Republicans for making a political –

CARNEY: But the president didn’t turn down the Keystone pipeline.

This is why no lawyers should ever be President.

“There are no magic solutions to rising oil prices and the pain that Americans feel at the pump,” Carney said.

He’s right about that.  Magic solutions are for healing the earth and stopping the tides from rising with rainbow marshmallows shooting out of a unicorn ass.  It’s not fucking magic to be energy independent through oil.  You either drill it yourself or you buy it from somebody who is friendly to your interests.  You’ve shut down the refineries, lived up to your campaign promise of putting the coal companies out of business and then act shocked when poor and middle-class people can’t afford gas to go to work assuming you haven’t killed their job yet.

Duh, you’re getting three years of welfare so you don’t have to go to yucky work. Between childcare and 25-30% of your take home pay going to the gas tank it doesn’t make sense to go to work and thanks to neverending unemployment benefits – you don’t have to!  You’re welcome.

Who’s up for moving to Australia?  By my count, Mad Max should have been born already and it’s only a matter of time before he joins The Bronze with the last of the V-8 Interceptors.

But it turns out Planned Parenthood didn’t like competing with the Komen foundation’s research for the milky tit of it’s supporters.  Who knew that the group that murders innocent babies for their sumptuous pelts could be so duplicitous?

Karen Handel really doesn’t like Planned Parenthood.

The former Komen Foundation exec – who resigned over a funding dispute with the nation’s largest abortion provider – is lashing out against Planned Parenthood, calling the organization a “gigantic bully.”

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Handel contends Planned Parenthood reneged on a secret deal to keep quiet about the breast cancer charity’s decision to cut off funding to the organization.

You mean the people who brought you abortions without parental notifications can’t keep a secret?

She argued Planned Parenthood made it a political issue, launching a premeditated attack against Komen – something Planned Parenthood denies.

“Planned Parenthood is a gigantic bully, using Komen as its own personal punching bag,” she added.

*sniff*

Quit complaining lady.  You got off easy.  When their doctors show up at your door drunk with a butcher knife and a shop-vac then you should worry.

She said Komen met with Planned Parenthood reps in December and there was a “ladies’ agreement” to end $680,000 worth of grants to pay for breast exams for poor women, and that no one would go to the press about their breakup.

Planned Parenthood claimed it was taken completely by surprise by Komen’s decision to end their funding relationship.

The decision created a backlash of criticism, and complaints subsequently helped Planned Parenthood rake in $3 million in reaction.

I’ve supported the Komen folks for the better part of the last decade with time and cash.  Count me out for your future.  I hope your donors, like your tits, will dry up and fall off for killing at least half of all of tomorrow’s future breasts today.

That’s certainly one way to beat breast cancer.

Only if he drops out of the work force permanently:

It is so sad and so hard to write it again, but it’s true: Peyton Manning is done in Indianapolis.

After listening to Manning Monday night, after listening to owner Jim Irsay characterize Manning Thursday as “a politician” who should keep his concerns “in house,” there’s no other conclusion to be reached by a sane, sober human being: Manning’s days in Indianapolis are over, and they have been over for quite some time. On a day when the introduction of Chuck Pagano as the Colts new head coach should have been the story, Irsay stole the headlines.

The NFL is a cut-throat industry where the all-American, clean living, do-everything-right poster boy for your organization and the League is tossed out in the street so a mediocre team like the Colts can hope to get Luck-y by throwing the dick of their future on the craps table of the next Draft?  Say it ain’t so!

My heart aches for the state of Indiana.  For about two seconds.  Any way.

If anyone in earshot can communicate this to Manning:  Come home to Tennessee.

Quit designing video games and do it for real.  The University of Tennessee is in such a state of disrepair that they’re having to layoff police officers because the team isn’t even worth arresting anymore.  That burglary is going unsolved.

Take this game to another level.  Use UT to be a flagship student-athlete program where you recruit the talent and bring them up through the ranks to create a next NFL generation with a little more humility and a little less pitbull fighting.

Be the anti-Spurrier.

Were that these berzerker hobos lying-in-wait “islands to themselves”.  Diminishing the 99% with each douche-tastic display.

Needless to say, when you’ve lost a white, vinegary Leftist like Bill Maher – your baggeth runneth over (sausage link to Noel Sheppard at the invaluable NewsBusters):

‘Baggin’ It

BILL MAHER: Let me ask you about another occupation, because this is – and you would be good on this too, panel -, the occupation, the Occupy Wall Street, because similar to Afghanistan, when you occupy anything for too long people do get pissed off. And as I watch them on the news now I find myself almost agreeing with Newt Gingrich. Like, you know what – get a job. Only because, you know, the people who originally started, I think they went home and now it’s just these anarchist stragglers. And this is the problem when you, you know, when your movement involves sleeping over in the park. You wind up attracting the people who were sleeping over in the park anyway.

Please adjust your nozzles accordingly.  That comment may come as a shock to any CBS watching diaper defiler, NPR latte enema-ed poser, or MSNBC kool-aid jello-shooter.

With your feeble attempts to play PR Ernie Pyles for Obama’s Army of unwashed Overcredentialed Under-educateds. Or your futile, shirt-wrenching efforts to plant victory gardens in the barren earth of these buy-now, pay-never Anarchists for greater state control.  The only thing that stood in the way of tilling such a fertile narrative was the immovable stone of Subject and the Content.

Were that we able to douche you out to sea with them.