And the title is....

I am somewhat jaundiced as to another Disney rebirth, though this time, one for the lads..While not animation, it displays a typical degree of suitthink..."John Carter of Mars", E.R.Burroughs' beloved book (and series) about a man astrally drawn to Mars, and thence to heroism.

How awesome! How sexiful! Derring-do on Mars, saving beautiful Martian queens, fighting hulking Martian opponents with more than standard limb quantities.
Thoats! All this action ON MARS!

So, they are titling the movie "John Carter".

Not even "John Carter of Flushing" nor even Croyden. His name is so musky with masculinity that it will draw the boys in on its own strength. 'Course, Dejah Thoris helps.

Who needs Mars?

Swiss America ads banned by FOX and other major networks

While the animation is on the level of "Gaither's Pond", the caricatures and writing are clever.

Bad FOX. Naughty FOX. Trying to shed your "Glenn Beck" image like this.

May well be the time to invest in precious metals.
Here are the gladsome tidings:

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.
What was revealed in the audit was startling:
$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious - the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.
      To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.  (unelected.org)

So, yeah. Precious metals like brass and lead.


Also, tar and feathers.

Thanksgiving

The Aardvark wishes ALL my many Reader a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.


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Now to biz. Went to Dollar General last night for a few last-minute things: brown sugar, sweet potatoes, like that. I have become inured to the Christmas-ey colors and toys that have been out since Hallowe'en, but last night, the day before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Eve, even, and they had their radio tuned to 96.9 (used to be "Beautiful 97" in the old analog days, when it didn't matter) which plays non-stop Christmas music starting the day after Thanksgiving.  As Commodore Decker sez, "...But not 'nymore!". The ever-homogenizing glacial creep of holiday mashing-up continues unabated.

I am the guy that is horrified at the business of opening presents on Christmas Eve. That is only acceptable when the opener has already received Last Rites. There are Temporal Lines of Demarcation which should not be crossed. Christmas Day is Christmas Day. Do you eat your turkey dressed as a skeleton or Captain Jack Sparrow whilst handing out fun-sized candy bars? I understand the lead time deemed necessary in retail, but people sure bought well enough in the early '60s to fuel a booming economy without tinsel up at half-past August. Beck's HanaRamaKwanzMas may well be just around the corner. Our culture's inability to wait bodes for debilitating emotional problems in the future. If everything must be RIGHT NOW, then there is little to look forward to. Having your dreams fulfilled instanter is great in fiction, but even then there is a Price. The Genie and the Monkey's Paw all exact their toll.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." In our individual lives, let us try to live seasonally, taking them as they come. Why rush life? Let it come to us as it will, and savor each day's, each season's arrival.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bob Schieffer Attempted to pillory Ron Paul with bumper stickers on Face the Nation this Sunday
 (the link is to the transcript). Of course it is foolish to listen to the reasons an enemy gives for attacking you. Of course to do so is to say "It's all America's fault". Schieffer has ceased to be a newsman, and has devolved into a mere Establishment shill. Oh, wait. He's on CBS.

Paul is correct. Our foreign policy has consequences, some profoundly negative ones. Vox Day deals with the issue with grace and dispatch. We HAVE to be clear on this. The rest of the world is not happy with the presence of the US Armed Forces Police and Pizza Delivery Service. Our budget does not like it either. Oh, wait. "Budget". We cannot afford continued foreign intervention, and President "Never Met Spending He Didn't Like" O'bama cannot get that between his jug ears.

REPRESENTATIVE RON PAUL (Republican Presidential Candidate/R-Texas): Oh, I-- I-- I think there's an influence. And that's exactly what, you know, the 9/11 Commission said. That's what the DOD has said. And that's also what the CIA has said and that's what a lot of researchers have said. And just remember immediately after 9/11 we removed the base from Saudi Arabia. So there is a connection. That doesn't do the whole full explanation. But our policies definitely had an influence. And you talk to the people who committed it and those individuals who would like to do us harm, they say, yes, we don't like American bombs to be falling on our country. And we don't like the intervention that we do in their nations. So to deny this I think is very dangerous. But to argue the case that they want to do us harm because we're free and prosperous I think is a very, very dangerous notion because it's not true.  

Schieffer countered:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I-- I would-- I would question the import of what some of those commissions found that-- that you've cited there. But basically what you're saying, Mister Paul, is that it was America's fault that 9/11 happened and it was our fault that it happened?

Well, there it is. The crux of the whole matter, making Paul's statements broader than they are. Saying that our policies contributed to a problem is patently not saying that it is ALL OUR FAULT.
I love Schieffer's judgment of the commissions. On what basis, by what authority does he render these judgments?

REPRESENTATIVE RON PAUL: No. I-- I think that's-- I think that's a misco-- misconstruing of what I'm saying because America is you and I. And we didn't cause it. The average American didn't cause it. But if you have a flawed policy, it may influence it. When Ronald Reagan went in to Lebanon, he was deeply-- he deeply regretted this because he said if he'd been more neutral those Marines wouldn't have died in Lebanon because the policy was flawed. The same thing that McNamara said after the Vietnam War. He wrote in his memoirs that, you know, if-- if he would have changed-- if it-- if we don't learn from our policies, it won't be worth anything. So I'm saying policies have an effect. But that's a far cry from blaming America.

When I was driving home from YuleCon yesterday, I had to cease listening to Glenn Beck's prattlings about Congressman Paul. Beck and his Merrie Yes-Men were displaying an almost America-love-it-or-leave-it attitude.Clearly we could have done no wrong, could have no culpability at all. Roger Hedgecock and other reliable neo-con (and no, that is not code for "Jew") talkers are all taking the same line, which ultimately is at odds with the Founders. Few of our overseas adventures have been according to Hoyle, much less according to Washington or Jefferson.

Ron Paul is on firm ground in attempting to drag us back to more Constitution-sized government. Please support him, if you have any interest in a more righteous, more Constitutional government.
A more free nation. Don't cherry-pick a single issue; look at his whole platform.

Tonight...tonight...

Your Aardvark has not abandoned you. He has been busy in the non-E-world. When having downtime, he reads. The current book is My Saber is Bent by Jack Paar. Yes, that Jack Paar; the one what got the whole late-night TV talk show rolling. Real talk, with intelligent people saying interesting things to one another: authors, playwrights, politicos like Kennedy & Nixon, raconteurs, up-and-coming comics who, having to follow Broadcast Standards and Practices, had to work at their craft, rather than playing to the sniggering twelve-year-old cultural mind that has been so ably trained since by Johnny Carson and his chat progeny.

The copyright of the book is 1961, the era of FCC head Newton Minow referring to television as a  "vast wasteland". Plus ça change.... The difference in TV from the mid-Fifties to the Sixties is Grand Canyonesque.
Serling's "Twilight Zone" gave way to "Land of the Giants". Paar's "The Tonight Show" gave way to Carson's.  The televised plays were replaced by yuk yuk sitcoms and Westerns churned out by the numbers on the Warner back lots. "Did you learn your lesson, Beav?". Morality plays replaced by the moralizing irreligious. Here is an example of Paar's thought:

The talents of Sid Caesar and Paddy  Chayefsky and Jackie Gleason have departed the home screens because the public didn't care.Apparently people would just as soon watch Hawaiian Eye and Lawrence Welk. The "Golden Age of Television" turned to dross when the fine original dramas of the mid 1950's gave way to the assembly-line, machine-tooled series ground out by the Hollywood film factories. Why should television lavish a vast amount of money on bringing Oedipus Rex or the Moiseyev Dancers to the public when it is just as happy watching something like The Price is Right or Candid Camera? The majority of viewers seem happy with TV as it is - and that's what keeps it the way it is.

Your Aardvark is not sanguine about the future of television. Sometimes cartoons seem to be the best produced and written programs out there. TV programming exists primarily as the gooey filling that keeps us watching commercials. Period. What precisely renders a show "good" merely because of its self-conscious references to other shows? That seems to be the sole raison for Ben10, f'rinstance.

Old-time radio, anyone?

Holy?...Really?

The Bible is a spiritual book. It does not need our help to make it more so.














The illustration above amuses me no end. Assuming that the Bible is God's Word to mankind, than certainly it is "holy", completely other than any other book. Why,then, do we have to help it to be so with our nomenclature? "Holy Bible". Makes it a special place to keep the TV Guide on the coffee table.

And if it is  the Word of God (and I believe it so), why, when God says "X", do teachers and preachers teach "not X", and deem it to be OK with God?

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OH! The King James Bible mentions unicorns six times!

Alien Graveyard FOUND!

Hot DOG!

Disclosure is on the way. For reals. An archaeological dig in Rwanda yielded an awesome graveyard of massive alien bodies.

“There must be 200 bodies buried there and not a single one of them is human,” Dr. Hugo Childs, the Swiss anthropologist, told reporters in Kigali, Rwanda.

“They are in amazing state of preservation to be so old,” he added. “Soil and tissue samples indicate the bodies have been in the ground since the 1400s. We’re now trying to figure out where they came from – and what killed them.”

Dr. Childs and his colleagues reportedly discovered the alien graveyard on a routine survey of the Rwandan jungle.

They originally thought they had stumbled on the remains of a centuries-old village. But excavation reportedly revealed nothing but alien bodies – stacked in fives in a jungle clearing.

“The creatures themselves were much taller and skinnier than humans,” said the expert.

“They stood about 7 feet tall and they were not any bigger around than small sapling trees.

“Their heads were larger than the average man’s and they had no mouth, nose or eyes to speak of.

Dr. Childs would not take reporters to the site, for fear of the bodies being disturbed. However, he promised to reveal the location once the excavation was complete. “It will change the world,” Dr. Childs said.

Here is the photo:

Hey. It's just as I thought they would look. I mean, this is pretty close

Remember kiddies, it's SCIENCE !

(Oh, the newspaper of record was the Weekly World News)

U.F.O. Sighting

Tonight on "Fringe", Walter Bishop was reminded of the death of his son Peter, both here and in Walternate's universe. He retreated into himself, and sought solace in going through a box of Peter's childhood things, including special treasures kept in a U.F.O. lunchbox. Gerry Anderson permeates pop culture.


As do unicorns and rainbows!

So, Jesse Ventura is a Paulista. Good. He says that if Ron Paul does not get the Repub nomination (an event that increasingly gains probability, given the less-than-stellar performances of all the rest) then he should go Libertarian, throwing his support into a viable third-party run (a novelty for the Libertarian Party, given the fringe aspects of many of their candidates).

I dunno. Even as a libertarian, I would think a Paul / LP match would drag Congressman Paul down, rather than uplift the Libertarian Party; too many weirdnesses and schismatic issues in the LP, and especially for those outside the LP that would have either broaden their minds, or have their brains to fall out to vote the ticket.

Then, "The Body" Ventura lets it be known that he would certainly consider a Paul/Ventura run for Prexy.

Pause, and calmly think of that.

Did we say CUTE?

Despite the individual cuteness of unicorns and dolphins, what if you could somehow, magically combine the two?

Sort of.


This one is even cooler!

Vidad needs more narwhals.