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That might actually be a good metaphor for the entire Hollywood system. With the ever-dropping price of the relevant technology it's getting much cheaper to produce films that previously would have required tens of millions of dollars that only the big studios could provide. Already there's been alot of production moving away from Hollywood, first to Vancouver, then Australia and New Zealand, and all while the independent scene in American cities grows.

In the next decade or so I won't be surprised if the studios have to adapt to a redefined game. When you can make the same film as Universal for less money and non-Union, Universal is in trouble. Once theaters go completely digital it's even easier, remove the cost and logisitic problems of running a few hundred film prints and tiny production companies can self-distribute a natiowide release. We'll start seeing more movies made in other cities, and not just the usual angst-ridden indie stuff but big Hollywood-style action/adventure films. Movies won't mean Hollywood anymore.

I'm leaning towards Detroit for a big production center, but I'm a bit biased. 

But back on topic, I'll have to go see War of the Worlds in the next week or so. I'm not sure if it's that I want to see War of the Worlds or just a morbid curiosity to see another great filmmaker past his prime trying to hold on. . . I'll decide which after the movie. 

I guess I've always had a soft spot for aliens come and kill everybody stories.  ???

Edited By Cobra Commander on 1120130065

I'd never heard that last one.

But I've not condemned the Clintons, except to disagree with some of that Administration's policies and cite him as a weak, poll-following President. When those more vile allegations were being flung I found them to be just as counter-productive as those against Bush today.

And that's all the effort I care to spend on something long since passed and without much relevance. 

Accepting your premise for the sake of discussion, so what? Immaterial.

No one's saying either side's hands are free of mud, but that's not the issue.

Grypd:

This I can agree with entirely. Unfortunately.

If the complaints are valid, they usually do get addressed. If they revolve around specifics they get addressed. Not always in the manner the complainer wants, but everyone has to give a little. Unfortunately much of the complaining is of the "you're doing everything wrong and you can't do it right cuz you're stupid" variety. What answer can one give but to ignore it or an equally meaningless and childish "uh uh! You are"?

Unfortunately we're unlikely to get an honest national debate and any straight answers because the critics aren't interested so much in civil liberties (which their ilk have had their way with on occasion) or human rights as they are with making Bush look bad.

Quite right. We also have nutbars running around comparing those beginnings to the height of Soviet or Nazi atrocities. The vast majority of people look at the accusation versus the present reality, dismiss the accusation as the lunatic ravings they are, and forget about it.

and forget about it. That's the key. The critics discredit themselves before examination or debate even begins. They couldn't do a better job of furthering the things they claim to oppose if they were on the payroll of whatever despot seeks to rule with impunity.

Also a case of people panicing and making decisions for emotional rather than rational reasons.

Which is the entire point. If we don't deal with it now it will become much harder in the future. The problem is that running around screaming the sky is falling when it just started to rain doesn't help. It makes it that much easier for those in power to dismiss the critics as crackpots and enough agree to marginalize them to irrelevance.

I don't want revolution either and I certainly don't want tyrannical government, but if these screeching mudslingers are the best hope for preventing that tyranny, I suggest a visit to the local non-licensed back alley gun dealer and a transfer of funds into transportable assets. Screaming like stuck pigs over a dropped Koran only makes it worse.

Edited By Cobra Commander on 1120057225

My mistake. I'll make sure my scapegoat lens is more finely focused in the future.

But in all seriousness these allegations represent a very real problem. We've got Gitmo being protrayed as a gulag, America as an imperialist warmongering nation (it won't go away when Bush leaves office) and surely this isn't the last we've heard of prison ships and secret internment camps.

If it's all made up garbage, we have a PR disaster that not only hurts narrow US interests but Western interests in general and will get people killed unnecessarily. We have the UN, an organization shrouded in the ideals of freedom and human rights beaving exactly like the corrupt dictators club they are but with a measure of credibility. It bodes ill for the future.

But what if it isn't all made up nonsense? I'm not saying I believe the bulk of the allegations, but once a seed is planted it tends to grow. What if as this war against terrorists proceeds these things do start to happen? More arrests of US citizens, held without trial in secret locations. A network of clandestine interrogation facilities at the disposal of a shadow government, all in the name of fighting the vaguely defined "terrorism" that threatens us. Concentration camps, secret police, de facto repeal of the Bill of Rights.

Who would believe the warnings when they've already been sounded so vigorously over trifling things? The UN and the American media are at the moment running through the streets crying "Wolf! Wolf!" at the top of their lungs over nothing but a Wolfowitz. Who will listen when the real thing comes around?

If they're outright making it up, they're just fanning the flames of war for their own short-term gain. If there really is some terror beginning in America the overzealous screeching and flinging of wild accusations only serves to mask it when it truly appears.

Get this guy a new set of wrenches.

Edited By Cobra Commander on 1120048110

I guess it's time to come clean. I have it on good authority that the gist of this is right, but some of the details are wrong. See, what's really going on is that the media fury over Gitmo was intentional to draw attention away from the real gulag. It isn't prison ships though, the US Army Corps of Engineers raised the lost continent of Lemuria and are housing the prisoners there. The entire island is being hidden with ancient shaman invisibility spells, the only reason a shred of it leaked is because some CIA noob used a satellite phone instead of the authorized method of communication on such matters, telepathic link in a jive dialect of Navajo. 

What? When I say it it's silly but we have to take the UN seriously? Sounds like a Tom Clancy novel.

Ooh! Secret prison submarines with silent propulsion systems. Yeah, somebody take a memo.

And let's not even get started on the real reasons for the Moon-Mars initiative. 

Speaking of silly. So Ol' Harry Reid thinks he's gonna pick Bush's Supreme Court nominees eh? One, Bush isn't gonna go for it. Two, if we're going to start the precedent that the Senate pre-nominates the President's nominees it's gonna make for some real chaotic shit-storm fun when the balance shifts.

But for the moment, I think you're missing something. Depending on what Bush does, and judging by his past stubborness it'll be something good, Reid may have stepped in a punji pit on this one. Say Bush nominates right now Reids picks to lower courts, along with a whole new slew of hard conservatives, are they all "extraordinary circumstances?" It will look like Bush is trying to compromise while the Dems are being childish assess. If they yield on a few of the others to placate the moderate electorate they'll piss off their base.

They're being set up. They're building the gallows they'll hang from.

Well, if by "honeypot" you mean big fight in a place of the enemies choosing that we can't afford to lose then yes, Iraq is a honeypot for terrorists.

This is essentially the old "flypaper" position that was floating at the beginning of the war, the general idea being that the invasion will attract terrorists from across the region to that one country, making it easier to kill them. While it isn't really that simple, Iraq is certainly not a magical terrorist paradise.

Hmmm. . . Helicopter mounted machine guns and a retiring Shuttle fleet. . . Against my better nature I'm getting ideas.

I remember the first time I was in the museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, quite young, 9 or ten. I insisted on being lifted up high enough to touch the side of Bock's Car, the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki for those reaching for Google. Don't really know why, I knew the significance having built a model of it not long before, but why the need to touch the aircraft . . .  :hm:

I try to go back there every few years, probably about due.
Last time they had one of Reagan's nuclear launch railcars on display. 

Okay, not bad. Big enough for non-recreational use but not ungodly huge like some. The sort of thing I was looking at when my old cargo van neared its demise.

At least you can do work on it, newer vehicles seem intentionally designed to be unserviceable.

<snickers at banter between Josh and Clark>

Which reminds of another drawback to motorcycles.  :hm:

Something big and hog-like or one of those crotch-rockets?

I considered getting a motorcycle a few years ago, but between snow, rain and those Michigan potholes it seemed kinda pointless. So I got real job and a wife instead. :laugh:

Incidentally I'm thinking of starting a pothole registry. I figure if the diameter of the hole is larger than the tire of a midsize car it ceases to be a pothole and becomes a crater. Someone needs to name them and send that to MDOT.

With misery and discord for all. 

You break it, I'll rebuild it.