It took Cameron 15 years to come up with an idea so formulaic, he had to make the characters blue to create difference. Then again, perhaps he didn’t come up with the idea at all.

Here’s an excerpt from a Dean Koontz novel from 1994. Hmmm….about 16 years ago. Interesting.

To set up the scene (and this includes a few spoilers), a nameless government agency employs a man named Roy, who – in his spare time – uses compassion has a holy reason for ruthless killing. Stressed over work? He’ll shoot you in the head so that you no longer have to be stressed. Confined to a wheelchair? He’ll pop you for the good of mankind and to relieve you of the your burden of living.
Roy is a fascist. And to understand the twisted logic of anything from Communism to Fascism to even Compassionate Government, you need to understand the insane thought process of a man like Roy.
Or just read Dean Koontz book, Dark Rivers of the Heart.

This is the passage that has Avatar written all over it.

(Roy) took comfort from the knowledge that if he were to die, he would go to the great cosmic party and be welcomed by so many friends whom he’d sent ahead of him with great tenderness. For Eve’s sake, he wanted to live, but to some extent he longed for that higher plane where there was a single sex, where everyone had the same radiant-blue skin color, where every person was perfectly beautiful in an androgynous blue way, where no one was dumb, no one too smart, where everyone had identical living quarters and wardrobes and footwear, where there was high-quality mineral water and fresh fruit for the asking.

Roy wants everyone to be blue, as does Cameron. He also wants them not too smart, i.e. not all that technologically advanced like…say…the Na’vi, but not too dumb either. Oh, and can the men and women look pretty much the same? God didn’t quite get the gender idea right, making them both so different. Thankfully, Cameron fixed that.
What I really want to know is, why be so prejudiced against purple? Huh? Or coral? You lavender bigots.

“I’ve heard people say this film is un-American, while part of being an American is having the freedom to have dissenting ideas,” Cameron said, prompting loud applause from a capacity crowd at the ArcLight Hollywood.

Exactly. Yet you want a world with none. No dissenting ideas. No ideas, period, unless they are yours.
Liberals, like Cameron, want a world where everyone is punished for accomplishment, punished for excelling, silenced for differing opinions, then homogenized and living the exact same lives. Thinking the same, speaking the same, all the same. Should our uniforms have buttons? Or hook and eyes?
This is what they want for everyone…except themselves.

Roy was a pudgy fellow, unattractive, rather plain in most circumstances. Yet he’d murder others for holding these same attributes. Mediocrity for thee, not for me.
These Hollywood loudmouths, like Will Ferrell or Jim Carrey or Matt Damon or James Cameron, are Roy – minus the killing. They practice the same self-righteous hypocrisy, bemoaning supposed greed while making tens and hundreds of millions to entertain (though often not well) an audience for two hours.

That’s fine. Make your money. Have success. Live your life. Splurge where you want. Give where you want. Live however you want. But do not revel in your lavish, carbon-gluttonous lifestyle while beating others over the head because we prefer toilet paper to reusable clothes, or making our own money to begging from the government. Basically, try not to be such a hypocrite.

What makes America great, Mr. Cameron, isn’t only the dissenting ideas, it’s the freedom to also live them.

CABLE NEWS RACE
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This is why liberals aren’t into results. They don’t have any.

I’ve been on seven planes in my entire life. Only seven. And despite my curly hair, girlish dimples, innocent blue eyes, and angelic heart of gold, I’ve been scanned. That odd wand was waved up and down my body while I looked at my friend sitting in the waiting area and gave her a look that said, “I’m being discriminated for my cuteness.”
Yes, I was a potential threat. Perhaps it was that bomb I had in my underwear. Wait…no, that wasn’t me.

And I thought I had a lot of bad hair days.

Why does he remind me of Max Headroom?

Jake Tapper from ABC and another reporter from NBC asked Gibbs today about why the President is refusing to do what he so adamantly campaigned to do – broadcast ObamaCare discussions on C-Span.
Gibbs won’t answer the question, instead getting testy to the reporters who ask. Ingrates! How dare you question The One and his minions. He’s been gracious enough to let you take pictures of him, put him on your magazine covers, and slobber over his pecs. Show some appreciation.
Video here.

I’ve never paid much attention to David Brooks. I can’t see myself being thought-policed by a man still wearing circular spectacles from 1995. But that’s just me. I’m one of the dumb masses.
Brooks has built himself as an intellectual Republican. He disdains the conservative movements. We’re only ill-educated, redneck throngs that his party must put up with to their great dismay and disgust. As long as we keep voting Republican and keep our mouths shut, then he’ll suffer through a few handshakes as long as he’s gloved and armed with disinfectant.

Truth is, David Brooks is one of the last fringes of snobbery clinging to the thread of a class trying to be important within the liberal circles by creating a smaller pond. They couldn’t hack it against Lefty showstoppers like Bill Maher and Katie Couric and Comedy Central, so they cleaned out the conservative piranhas from the Republican pool and jumped in. Conservatives – whether Democrats, Independents, or Republican – have made due with Republican Royalty table scraps for years. Not because we don’t demand more. It’s because we’re too freakin’ busy taking care of ourselves, working our jobs, keeping this country running, and paying all the taxes so David and his comrades can sit at their special tables in their special restaurants sipping their special coffee and smacking their unspecial mouths about what ignoramuses we all are. And we’ve done nothing to stop it because….well, we’ve got better things to do. Like living.

Finally, at long last, conservatives have reached the end of their patience.

And how does that make David Brooks feel? Apparently, superior. Of course, he feels superior all the time so nothing should be upsetting his apple cart. The Tea Party Movement, however, is.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

Golly, us here unedumated pursn’s are startin’ to talk and stuff. Its’a still a free country, ain’t it? Uncle Jed says so.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise.

Requirements for the educated class: ignore opposing evidence, silence dissenting opinions and studies, blind yourself to record-breaking cold temperatures, stick your fingers in your ear when anyone talks about the fraudulent data, and try the “lalalalal! I can’t hear you! lalalalala!” as the other half of the scientific community denounces the findings. In other words, stay ignorant.

The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them.

Educated people kill their own children. Devaluing life and ridding the world of our future eggheads is the smart thing to do.

The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

Educated people so love gun control. That is why they don’t carry guns but hire bodyguards to do it for them.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

It’s the educated class in the fields fighting two wars while President Bend Over plays rounds of golf. Meanwhile, men walk onto airplanes and light their shorts on fire, terrorists are released back into Yemen to be terrorists again, and if captured after killing thousands of Americans, we pay for the terrorists’ attorneys and hold public trials. If we went along with that in silence we’d truly be idiots.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the ones high on emotion. Like all drugs, it wore off leaving a country with dry mouth and a hangover. The Tea Party Protesters have always been intense. You, and those educated pythons with your camel-like tendencies of spitting on anyone within reach, had simply not been listening. Now, suddenly, you are. In other words, you’ve been willfully ignorant. Yet again.

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against.

They are defined by what they are for – the individual.

They are against the concentrated power of the educated class.

Don’t be mean to the eggheads, ya’ll. It’s hurting their feelings. The educated class can’t hack criticism.

They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

That sounds about right. We’ve got national debt careening out of control that even China says the entire wealth of the world can’t sustain. What do our friends in Washington do? They pass more spending legislation, legislation to support their special interests, legislation to pad their own pockets, legislation so sodden with pork fat it’s causing sporadic blood clots to any Congressional aide who touches it.

Oh David, David, David. Here’s why I don’t like you. You’re an egotistical snob incapable of admitting when you’re wrong. Instead, you’d rather sit upon your cultural throne of being a “Republican” loved and slobbered upon by the liberal media. Heck, you are the liberal media.

That is your passion. That is your goal. Not the welfare of this nation or it’s people. You, David, are only concerned about you. For that, I shan’t listen to another pompous word. Or, better yet, spoken in my native uneducated tongue, “lalalalalala! I can’t hear you! lalalalalala!”

clearing throat I’m over it.

On a cold day in December, while Americans hustle about their holiday preparations – spending less and saving nothing – a Senator in the capital decided to create a little light reading. Taking the steaming bowl of excrement known as the Senate’s ObamaCare bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders decided to add an amendment. A trifle thing, really. Only 767 pages to insert a single-payer system.

Then stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that national bankruptcy wouldn’t find us there.

Sen. Tom Coburn decided an amendment such as this should be read. And since his fellow Senators aren’t really into reading, as a Christmas gift to all, he demanded the Senate clerk read the entire amendment on the floor. Not the bill, mind you. Only the amendment.

This was Democrat Sen. Max Baucus’s response. chuckle, chuckle And what a giddly response it was, like sugar plum fairies and sneaky mistletoe.

I cannot certify giggle that members of the Senate will understand giggle what they’re reading. That presumes a certain level of perception on my part in understanding in delving in the minds of Senators that not only that they read chuckle but that they’ve taken the time to understand.

Oh Baucus. You silly nilly.
His argument to reading the amendment, let alone the bill, is that he has no idea if his fellow Senators have the reading comprehension skills of a second grader. To read? And also understand? This cannot be determined! It’s too much to ask!

Coburn then explains to Baucus, in the simplest terms possible so that a cricket could understand, that he isn’t asking for Baucus to certify his fellow Senators have the brain capacity to read and understand, but for each Senator to “certify themselves.”
In other words, like the rest of the functioning adult population, that Senators must read the bill and accept – when everything goes to h-e-double hockey sticks – they are responsible for their votes. To face their consituents.

Oh contraire! Baucus refutes. You can’t expect Senators to know what the bloody blue blazes they are voting on, do you? Do you Coburn? Huh? Huh? Do you? Do you really think these grown men and women can actually perform their duties? And then be culpable for their own decisions? How absurd.
I mean, hey Coburn, if you want to say you read something and understood it, you go ahead pal. Knock yourself out.

Coburn responds with a simple question:

“The Senator won’t accept that we as a body, on 1/6th of the economy, ought to say that we know what we’re doing?”

Nay. They were elected to make speeches, take junkets, kiss babies of various skin colors, and appear on The Colbert Report, not giggle, giggle read.

Truthfully, I was impressed to see Al Gore walking. I assumed he rode everywhere on one of those battery-charged shopping carts. The man burns so much energy everywhere else, I assumed he’d want to practice conservation with his own.

He doesn’t take questions because sound bites bite him back. Even his rehearsed statements have the spotty substance of an A-list celebrity gorging on the vapid holes in Swiss cheese. The UK Times Online noticed:

There are many kinds of truth.

Actually, there’s only one.

Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.

That would be the one I’m talking about.

The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.

Gore offsets his lies by investing in truth credits.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

Then he offered the audience snow cones, but he wouldn’t stop exhaling so they melted.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

About the same amount of time it’ll take him to fight off a nasty case of dandruff.

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

Even though ice is extinct.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Gore pulled the figure from a speech he made in 1978.

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

“Several” as in five or seven.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

The conference can’t afford any more shadows or clouds or even shade trees. They need full sun, full brilliant sun, full brilliantly warming sun while they suffer under a freezing snow storm and loyal global-warming journalists freeze in press lines.

I’ll leave you with a hilarious article about AP science writer Seth Borenstein, who incorporates so much exaggeration in his articles that scientists have denounced him, in want of global warming:

With U.N. security letting in only those cleared last week, hundreds of accredited delegates, journalists and NGO representatives were left to stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures before being let through. “It was crazy,” AP’s Seth Borenstein said. “You couldn’t leave the line. You couldn’t go to the bathroom, you couldn’t eat. Then snowflakes started falling. One woman even said, ‘if lightning strikes me, would they take me out of line?’”

People started handing out food — one gave out tangerines, another croissants. A man screamed “I don’t need food. I need socks! I’m freezing my ass off out here.” At one point, a U.N. official announced the wait would be longer, prompting the crowd to boo and chant “Let Us In!” [...]

Seth himself stepped into the line at 7:55 a.m. and was through at 3:15 p.m., but only after another AP reporter, John Heilprin, “saved my bacon” by persuading a U.N. security guard to go out and fetch him. “John was afraid to go out himself in case they wouldn’t let him back in … the first thing I did when I saw him was give him a big hug. I have never been so grateful to be indoors.” Seth’s neighbors in line? “Oh they’re still out there.”

Here’s how to tell if a Congressman just isn’t that into you.

Mark Steyn wrote a love letter, or at least a respect letter, about Cary Grant recently. It’s excellent, a winding tale of the man’s humor and greatness, achievement and memorable moments.
I’m a huge Cary Grant fan. You have no idea how huge. Thus, I had to send Steyn a response. Here is his article. I definitely recommend it. And for you, my committed and not-so-committed readers, is my response.

Cary, our suave Capitalist

You can’t create a character like Cary Grant. But Cary Grant did.

Whatever he was or could be, he became. He isn’t simply the embodiment of style and seduction, if either can be considered simple, but a character of capitalism. He dreamed. He gambled. He risked it all. He walked onto the open road and dreamed a dream. Then he reaped the fruition of his labor.

He personified the spirit of American exceptionalism: from a child of poverty to a man of legend, all without the aid of anything more than his charm. And oh what charm.

I was nine-years-old when he died, not even coming to understand his cinematic and personal significance until decades after his death. Then when I noticed, I noticed. I think all who cross the path of Cary Grant find their motion halted. You have to stop, have to notice. There is something about that man that simply cannot be ignored. He’s Cary Grant. And he understood the responsibility it required.

You’re article was magnificently right. Cary Grant pulled off a feat extinct in today’s glamor brigade, he created a sellable product while never losing appreciation for it’s customers. He could be debonair and rogue, manly and flirtatious, all while receiving devotion in humility. He was real. He was grateful. He was gracious. And in the end, that is what solidified his class.

Cary Grant was something, all right. But he would have been nothing without the worn shoes, undying spirit, unfailing gumption, and capitalistic spirit of Archibald Leach. And they both knew it.