I mentioned earlier that some people were having a problem getting to the blog or going to links on this blog. They were being redirected to a number of other websites instead. Apparently there is some problem with sitemeter that is causing this to happen, so I removed sitemeter and have installed statcounter.
Let me know if any of you continue to have difficulty, or if it’s been fixed now.
While it may be that Everybody Loves Raymond, does everyone actually love sex, as film director Gaspar Noe said at the Cannes Film Festival the other day?:
“I have friends who love money, some who love coke, some who love cinema, but the common point is that everyone loves having sex,” the Paris-based director said at a press conference.
“So why is it so poorly represented in cinema? It’s to do with commercial and legal pressures,” he added.
Noe’s latest film was the hot ticket on the French Riviera, with hundreds trying to squeeze their way into the midnight screening on Wednesday night.
“Love” leaves nothing to the imagination as it tells the story of a young couple’s tempestuous love affair, featuring over a dozen extremely graphic unsimulated sex scenes, including close-up ejaculations, swingers’ clubs, a threesome and a transvestite prostitute.
Asked why he felt the need to show such explicit scenes, the Argentine-born Noe said, “I was making a film about love, not about Swiss banks or Scientology.”
Pornography has always been with us. But few people have ever thought pornography was about love. There is indeed an audience—a vast one—for explicit sex. But it didn’t used to be in the regular film industry. Now that everything goes, I suppose films such as Noe’s were inevitable.
Love and sex may go together like a horse and carriage, but not necessarily and not always. People sometimes love and yet aren’t that keen for sex. And it’s an indisputable fact that people sometimes engage in sex without love—it’s not for nothing that prostitution is called “the oldest profession.” What’s more, some people find sex, even with someone they love, either difficult, distasteful, painful, uninspiring, dull, or frightening. And some have little or no sex drive at all.
But that’s not really the issue. Even for those who do love sex, does that mean they necessarily love watching actors engage in it on the big screen? The answer is a resounding “no” (not “Noe”). Noe’s film probably will get many viewers because of its novelty and excitement factor, as well as curiosity, but if it’s anything like HBO’s “Tell Me You Love Me,” it will be a big snooze when it’s not busy being an embarrassment.
I watched “Tell Me You Live Me” out of curiosity and also because it was supposedly about the lives and relationships of several couples who were in sex therapy. I believe the sex was somewhat simulated, but the viewer certainly was treated to a lot of nudity, including male organs and what certainly appeared to be sex. I found myself fast forwarding through the sex scenes in order to get to the dialogue, which for the most part was equally boring and embarrassing. I ended up feeling sorry for the actors, although perhaps they were rather proud of themselves.
In answer to Noe’s question as to why sex is so poorly represented in cinema, I would answer that it’s because most of those who want to watch pornography want to watch pornography, not an art film. And most of those (particularly the female portion of the viewing public) who want to watch a film about a love affair don’t really want to watch a lot of actual sex up on the big screen mixed with that love affair dialogue. There’s something called privacy, and something called the power of the imagination.
There also used to be something called community standards of modesty and decency, but we won’t even talk about that anymore.
[NOTE: I would add that it’s interesting to see the other things Noe lists as being what his friends love besides sex: money, coke, and cinema.]
“What difference does it make?” has become a joking ironic reference to something that actually is important but that is being treated as unimportant because it reflects poorly on a favored Democrat.
Hillary asked the question two and a half years ago at the Benghazi hearings. This was the quote in context:
With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.
Clinton has been criticized for her indifference, her brushing aside of the questions being asked her. But I’ve long been puzzled as to why few seem to point out that her answer is actually nonsensical. She sets up a choice between alternative explanations A and B for the killings. Alternative A is “because of a protest;” we know that was not the case. But Alternative B, “guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans,” is also not the case—nor, as far as I know, has it ever been alleged to been the case by anyone. The actual accusation has been that the Benghazi killings were acts that were not spontaneous but instead were planned ahead of time by terrorists, and the September 11 anniversary date was part of the plan.
But in this fake-choice, Hillary posits a spontaneous thrill-crime, the sort of thing that might happen when a bunch of teens are out walking the streets at night and decide to smash a store window and take a few things. She might just as well have said of the four Benghazi dead “or a meteor fell on their heads;” that’s how implausible and irrelevant her Alternative B was.
Somehow, in all the fuss about “what difference does it make?” we’ve lost sight of the duplicity and illogic of the rest of her statement. And her illogic doesn’t end there. When she suggests it doesn’t make any difference at this point what the circumstances were that caused the murder of the four Americans in Benghazi, and then follows that by immediately stating, “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again,” she is saying something absurd. How on earth can you “figure out what happened” and “do everything” to prevent a repeat of the occurrence if you don’t care to even ask how it happened and why?
Now over two years later we’re being treated to the slow dribbling out of whichever of her emails Hillary decided to spare from destruction. I’m sure there are some interesting things revealed by the emails she’s releasing, as detailed by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Right now the topic is Clinton’s communications with Sidney Blumenthal, and at what point in time she received information that the Benghazi attack was caused by terrorism.
For now, however, I will leave it to others to sift through the fine points of the Clinton emails, because I continue to think these details only matter to us on the right. If the rest of America didn’t care about the events of Benghazi and the initial coverup, it seems to me that they are highly unlikely to care now about what Sidney Blumenthal said, when he said it, and in what capacity. Before the Obama years I thought that the majority of Americans would probably care about something like the entire Benghazi episode and the details of the coverup, but I have become convinced that they do not anymore unless such acts are perpetrated (or alleged to have been perpetrated) by Republicans and therefore hammered home by the MSM.
That said, however, the recent MSM coverage of the Hillary email problems (and the Clinton Foundation problems) has been puzzling to me from the first because it has been more hard-hitting than I would have expected. In my initial posts on the subject (see this and this), I wondered why newspapers such as the NY Times were covering the story in a manner that, if not as aggressive as if it had been about a Republican, was still a great deal more critical than I was expecting. I aired a number of theories, including the fact that they want someone other than Hillary to run. But it’s not yet clear.
One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that most of Hillary’s supporters would support her no matter what and are not at all interested in this story whatever it may end up revealing. What’s more, if somehow Clinton is not nominated next year by the Democratic Party (although I continue to think she will be), they will vote for whoever is nominated.
So my answer to the question “what difference does it make?” is “None.” Actually, I’ll revise that to say that perhaps the only difference it makes is that it serves to further a deepen the cynicism among the American public about politicians and the way they function. Increasingly, they are all seen by growing numbers of voters as corrupt liars, and the only choice is the choice of which liar is more likely to help that voter’s particular interest group and give it more benefits.
There is no way that Obama is ever going to send any significant or effective number of troops to Iraq, or initiate any policy that has a prayer of being effective, no matter what ISIS does.
His back is turned—and they know it.
From the responses to this post, I’ve concluded that there are enough problems generated by sitemeter that I’m going to look into moving to statcounter. I used to have statcounter long ago and preferred sitemeter, but I don’t like this redirecting business and it’s probably worth the annoyance of making the move for the plus of eliminating the problem. It may take me a few days for me to get around to it, though.
As they say, thanks for your patience.
A couple of people have commented that they’ve been having problems with this blog—or links on this blog—redirecting them to a site known as vindicosuite. I did some research on this, and apparently this blog is not the only one are having this difficulty and it seems to have something to do with sitemeter. Sitemeter has been the traffic counter here for years and years and has done a good job, and I’m loathe to remove it and start looking for a substitute unless this continues.
Here’s an article that explains what’s probably going on. Another site indicate that it also may be occurring more on computers that don’t have adblocker.
So my question is: how many of you are having problems with this (and do you have adblocker), how long has it been happening, and how often? When it happens, does it stop you from coming here, or can you get around it?
Stream-of-consciousness bot:
The Rufous-tailed Hummingbird is about four inches long and
weights only one-fifth of an ounce. People make themselves basic furniture such as bed, blankets, and kitchen. While I slept, my ex had done his usual exploration and scope of the place.
So, how do you “make” a kitchen?
I know from personal experience. For years I had a $10,000 deductible, and the insurance cost me plenty, too.
Shirley Maclaine speculates:
In her memoir, the 80-year-old, who won an Oscar for Terms Of Endearment, writes: “What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before, when they were Roman soldiers putting Christians to death, the Crusaders who murdered millions in the name of Christianity, soldiers with Hannibal, or those who stormed across the Near East with Alexander? The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.”
I guess if you believe in karma plus reincarnation, you could be led to that sort of thinking. It certainly does away with the problem and/or the riddle of evil. If karma is always fair and just, then when bad things happen to good people it’s really because the people were bad in a past life. Payback’s a bitch.
Maclaine’s choices are interesting, though, aren’t they? So let’s see: those Crusaders who killed some Jews on their way to the Holy Land are paid back by becoming Jews killed by Hitler in the Holocaust. Just to add to the cyclical symmetry, Germany was central to both events. According to Maclaine’s theory, those Jews killed in the Holocaust could have been the crusader perpetrators of the Worms massacre. And those 800 Jews of Worms who were killed, they probably were the perpetrators in some earlier—well, you get the idea :
The Worms massacre refers to the murder of 800 Jews of Worms, Germany, at the hands of crusaders headed by Count Emicho during May 1096.
The massacre at Worms was one of number of attacks against Jewish communities perpetrated during the First Crusade (1096”“1099). Followers of Count Emicho arrived at Worms on May 18, 1096. Soon after a rumour spread that the Jews had drowned a Christian and used contaminated water to poison the town’s wells. The local populace later joined forces with Emicho and launched a savage attack on the town’s Jews. Every Jew that was captured was slain. Bishop Adalbert intervened and allowed his palace to serve as a refuge, but eight days later the mob broke in and slaughtered those seeking asylum there. They were in the midst of reciting the Hallel prayer for Rosh Chodesh Sivan.
More:
According to David Nirenberg, the events of 1096 in the Rhineland (such as in Worms) “occupy a significant place in modern Jewish historiography and are often presented as the first instance of an antisemitism that would henceforth never be forgotten and whose climax was the Holocaust.”
Who knew that the Jews were on one side at the beginning and the other at the end?
Look, I know Shirley Maclaine’s a twit, but I hesitate to apply the term “evil” to her. What she says demonstrates a built-in problem with that particular belief system—reincarnation and karma. Talk about blaming the victim! The problem is certainly not just Maclaine;
The free will controversy [connected with the idea of karma] can be outlined in three parts: (1) A person who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, can claim all his bad actions were a product of his karma, he is devoid of free will, he can not make a choice, he is an agent of karma, and that he merely delivering necessary punishments his “wicked” victims deserved for their own karma in past lives. Are crimes and unjust actions due to free will, or because of forces of karma? (2) Does a person who suffers from the unnatural death of a loved one, or rape or any other unjust act, assume a moral agent, gratuitous harm and seek justice? Or, should one blame oneself for bad karma over past lives, assume that the unjust suffering is fate? (3) Does the karma doctrine undermine the incentive for moral-education because all suffering is deserved and consequence of past lives, why learn anything when the balance sheet of karma from past lives will determine one’s action and sufferings?
The explanations and replies to the above free will problem vary by the specific school of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The schools of Hinduism, such as Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, that have emphasized current life over the dynamics of karma residue moving across past lives, allow free will. Their argument, as well of other schools, are threefold: (1) The theory of karma includes both the action and the intent behind that action. Not only is one affected by past karma, one creates new karma whenever one acts with intent – good or bad. If intent and act can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, new karma can be proven, and the process of justice can proceed against this new karma. The actor who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, must be considered as the moral agent for this new karma, and tried. Life forms not only receive and reap the consequence of their past karma, together they are the means to initiate, evaluate, judge, give and deliver consequence of karma to others…Karma is a theory that explains some evils, not all ….
My guess is that most Americans who dabble in the idea of karmic punishment for past lives don’t think it through to the extent Maclaine has. They don’t go there, but she does. The religions themselves (Hinduism, for example) have certainly thought it through, but I bet a lot of people who say they believe in reincarnation wouldn’t especially like the answers those religions have given.
They’ll stick with Hillary, because she’s the only candidate they’ve got:
“She’s a bad mama-jama,” said Kiendra, 36, a librarian. “She’s a strong, competent woman. She knows what she’s doing. She’s not afraid to step up. She’s not afraid to take advice and she’s not afraid to say, ”˜No, I don’t want to do it that way. I’m going to do it this way.’”
Kiendra rejected any suggestion that Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, think they can operate by a different set of rules from other people. “I think they just play the game well,” she said.
“She’s not perfect,” said Charlie, 24, a graphic designer. “She’s been in the eye for a long time, in the public’s eye, and you’re going to have some stuff on her. But she has great policies and she knows how to get stuff done.”
“There’s definitely some trust issues there,” added Bill, 55, a chef. “But like everybody else has said, her record pretty much speaks for itself. She is eminently qualified to run this country, and I think she’d probably do a pretty good job.”
Cynicism combined with party loyalty combined with desperation at the thought of the lack of other candidates produces the type of reasoning you see above. Hillary is now the “what difference does it make” candidate. People don’t like her, but I guess (as Obama so famously said) that she’s “likeable enough” for Democrats, who cite her accomplishments but can’t name any.
It seems having had a number of titles is good enough. After all, she’s had more of them than Obama had when he was elected president, right? And look how well that’s gone:
While the group agreed that Clinton possessed the experience and policy positions required to be elected president, the participants were less confident when it came to naming the former secretary of state’s actual accomplishments.
“I really can’t name anything off the top of my head,” said Ryan, the event planner.
Following a brief silence, a 22-year-old student named Amanda added, “I honestly can’t say I followed along [with] everything that was going on.”
I believe that is probably a very honest statement.
[NOTE: I couldn’t resist the title of this post; I think that’s the main reason I decided to write it.
In case you need a memory refresh:
Interesting to watch that now, isn’t it?]
There’s a lot of turmoil roiling around Hillary Clinton today, so much that she actually deigned to answer a few questions for a change.
One piece of news was a ruling re the release of her emails by the State Department:
Hillary Clinton and the State Department on Tuesday insisted they are not slow-walking the public release of her emails during her time as secretary of state, while a federal judge ordered up a plan for a rolling release of the hotly anticipated documents.
“Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do,” Clinton said…
Shades of Whitewater, OJ seeking his wife’s killer, and Obama being the last to find out about everything bad that he’s done.
She says she has no control over the emails because they’re not hers any more. Of course, she made sure of that by destroying the ones she felt like destroying and turning over to State the ones she felt like sharing:
Clinton has said she turned over all messages that were arguably work-related, but decided to delete a roughly equal number of messages that her lawyers determined were personal or private in nature.
What a charade.
But does the public care? Stalwart Democrats will support her no matter what. The question is whether there are enough distrustful swing voters (especially women) to make a difference.
…cause we’re goin’ out tonight. That’s the way the song goes:
We brunettes are aware that red is a very good color for us, but all reds are not created equal. For brunettes, the less orange and the more towards the blue end of the spectrum, the better. Here’s an excellent example that caught my eye, worn by Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai:
I had a dress of that hue when I was about twelve (not the same style, though!) and I recognized even then that the color was flattering. Aishwarya Rai is well aware of the same thing.
But why, oh why, a dress that hits the woman at the wrong place? The pouffy part of the skirt starts just a mite too low and makes it seem as though the dress started out thinking one thing and then changed its mind at the last minute. And the back is just awful; it looks as though they forgot to put a back on at all and instead left a 1950’s undergarment exposed.
I realize that’s the point, but ugh!:
[NOTE: That lyric in the song about putting on high heeled sneakers and a wig hat makes me wonder what he’s talking about. I was around back in ’63, and I sure don’t remember any high-heeled sneakers, just plain old Keds. And although there were hats galore, I don’t recall a wig hat, but here are some people speculating about what it might mean.
This quirk of lyric was transferred to another dress-color song, “Devil With the Blue Dress On,” which debuted a year later in 1964 (here’s a slightly later version that changed the “the” in the title to an “a”):
Look at Molly now [or look out once again, now], here she comes
Wearin’ her wig hat and shades to match
She’s got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat
Wearin’ her pearls and her diamond rings
She’s got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything
She’s the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on…
She’s a little more dressed up in the jewelry department, but the basics of wig hat and high heels are there. The heels are not sneakers, however.
And then there’s the alligator hat. I’ve seen alligator bags, alligator shoes, and alligator belts. But if she had on a hat like this, Mollie needs to consult with a stylist, pronto:
On the other hand, it could have been this:
Better.]