EXTREME MAKEOVER (GOP TRAINWRECK EDITION)

And now, unnecessary political commentary from Team Frog’s Political Batshit Curator, Lucky Bensonhurst.

As you may know, the GOP can’t believe Mitt Romney is not POTUS. Certainly Mitt Romney can’t believe it. And it is killing him. Look what you’ve done America. You have HURT WILLARD’S FEELINGS. I hope yr satisfied.

Anyway, yes. The GOP is struggling to process this. How could you possibly run against a proven Muslim-Appeasin’ Benghazi-Cover-Uppin’ Economy-Ruinin’ Fiscal Irresponsiblin’ Gun-Stealin’ Thug 4 Life Socialist like Barry Hussein Obama and LOSE? Besides Obama buying a second term by giving the blacks and the Mexicans and the young people free stuff?

Inconceivable!

Hence all the mea culpas and ponderous commentary from various GOP brand names who feel the GOP probably shouldn’t be going out of its way to alienate women, black people, Latino people, and pretty much everyone else who isn’t a straight white guy making over $250K p.a. Also, it should probably stop encouraging people like Todd Akin to stop saying really fucking dumb things about rape.

Apparently that’s not going so well.

The GOP leadership has decided that the problem isn't their hardcore ideology so much as how they express it. “No, see, the GOP isn’t really a bunch of Angry White Guys – we just sound that way sometimes.”

The problem is that too many conservatives can’t seem to help expressing themselves in a way that sounds batshit crazy to the rest of us. Despite the GOP leadership’s acknowledgment of the need for a makeover, they keep kissing up to the same people that have gotten them in trouble in the first place.

And even discounting that, it’s hard to reinvent yrself as The Party Of Reasonable People when yr own members are blathering on about Obama’s dictatorship plan. Or telling women that the best way to avoid sexual assault in the Armed Forces is to not join the Armed Forces. Or inadvertently starting Facebook memes about illegal aliens invading yr office or masturbating fetuses.

Even Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal – the guy who has said the GOP needs to “stop being the stupid party” – seems to have given up. 

In an editorial, Jindal blasted the GOP for sitting around navel-gazing over their 2012 losses, and told them to suck it up and start doing something about it.

That’s actually good advice. Only Jindal goes on to explain why the GOP needs to get over itself and get into gear:

At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don’t know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon.

Why?

Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don’t have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don’t matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too.

Yes, Bob. That is exactly what the Left wants.

And so much for that.

Sure, you can say Bobby is resorting to comic exaggeration there. If that’s the case, he picked a pretty bad time to deploy it.

On the other hand, given everything I just typed – and given the tendency by both sides of the aisle these days to reduce each other to weird, demented, evil caricatures, which they will defend to the death with anecdotes as if that were the same thing as science – it’s not like it makes much of a difference at this stage.

– L. Bensonhurst

IRON MAN VS SCIENTOLOGY PROPAGANDA ONOES!

Catching up on my cinema activities:

After Earth

Let’s get the obvious out of the way – the main reason this film is getting so much hate is because (1) M. Night Shyalaman co-wrote and directed it, (2) Jaden Smith co-stars with his dad, and (3) Scientology something blah blah blah. Take away those memes, and what you have with After Earth is a flawed but decent film.

The premise doesn’t get much simpler: a teenage son must overcome fear and prove himself to his hard-ass military war-hero father after the two crash-land on post-apocalyptic Earth. Not the most original idea, but it’s executed well – at least on a functional level. My main beef is that they don’t really do anything surprising with the father-son coming-of-age meme, and the “Earth a thousand years later” angle seems underbaked – honestly this could have taken place on any planet.

But for all that, it’s not bad. Will Smith makes a surprisingly convincing hard-ass soldier with his emotional range buried under layers of self-discipline. And while it’s true that Jaden Smith is the weak link in terms of acting ability, he’s still better than everyone in The Happening. So all up, it’s another great-looking but average sci-fi film, unless you have it in for Shyalaman and/or Scientology, in which case you’ve probably already made up yr mind about it.

Iron Man 3

In which Tony Stark is pitted against a terrorist called The Mandarin. Action ensues, and things are destroyed.

I’m not the biggest Iron Man fan in the world, and it’s mainly Robert Downey Jr that makes the films watchable for me. This one is no exception in that regard. That said, I enjoyed this one more than the first two. The first Iron Man has a lot going for it as an origin story, but IM3 has the best villains of the series. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce make the most of it as The Mandarin and Killian Aldrich. Discussions about the difference between the comics and the film are irrelevant to me, so I got a kick out of the way both characters were used.

Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it. It is what it is – a lot of fun, but not much else.

Heavy boots of lead,

This is dF