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Post by paulpogue on Sept 29, 2008 15:42:54 GMT -8
Well, she'll probably be slightly better prepared for the debate, and she's apparently been called back for reprogramming intense pre-debate training to help her say thing in her own words instead of just mindlessly repeating (inappropriate) talking points. Rumor today, though, is that CBS has a couple more stinkers from her, that were from a series of questions that were asked of both her and Biden. They are helpfully holding them until Friday at this point. Word has it that one of those stinkers is that she was asked to name a Supreme Court decision besides Roe v. Wade -- AND COULDN'T. BEST ELECTION EVER.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 29, 2008 13:23:31 GMT -8
I might actually watch this, for the lulz. This debate will be such epic lulz that it might come to REDEFINE the term, in much the same way "MILF" will never be the same now that Palin is involved.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 29, 2008 9:18:48 GMT -8
Obama up by 8 in Gallup daily tracking, which is generally among the most reliable out there. And he's kept it for two days, with the majority of the inteviews coming AFTER the debate, which means he's on a smokin' hot streak. This week's VPOTUS debate is going to be FAN-tastic. Normally I get very nervous about the expectations game, which states that when expectations are so low for Palin, all she has to do is not trip on the way to the podium and she'll be declared the winner. But she's been such a mess in the public so far that I have full confidence she'll meet all our expectactions > Honestly, I think this whole strategy of hiding her from the press has been a massive catastrophe, because both of her very carefully vetted "safe" interviews have been a mess. If she'd been taking press questions for four weeks solid, not only would her gaffes have become commonplace, but she'd have the real-world experience in unscripted territory required to think on her feet on the national stage. Biden won't even NEED to rip her head off, because if she stumbles MERELY as badly as she did with Couric and Gibson, she's going to look like the bumblingest fool ever. Even Bush, who is not exactly one for the English langauge, is generally able to string together coherent sentences. So now, by hiding her from the press, the McCain camp has: -- pissed off the press, who used to be totally in the tank for them, INCLUDING Fox -- failed to give Palin meaningful experience in a tough environment -- made them look bad every time she does open her mouth -- given the world a blank slate so that EVERYTHING people perceive about Palin will be determined Thursday night. That's the real kicker, which undermines the old expectations-game argument. People who are at least VAGUELY a known quantity have an advantage; if they screw up, they have a public record to fall back on. Palin? Nothing. She defines herself and the campaign, for better or worse, in 90 minutes Thursday night. Incidentally, the McCain campaign's inability to look more than two moves ahead has probably bitten them in the ass once again. These guys are masters of the short-term gain for long-term loss; if they were running an auto race, they'd skip pit stops and laugh because they got a lap ahead, then wonder what the hell happened when they ran out of gas. Case in point: negotiating the VP debates. They wanted a controlled environment, so they asked for 18 questions in five-minute batches, with limited interaction, so that Biden couldn't tear her apart. What they didn't understand was that Biden was NEVER going to tear her apart -- the Obama camp knows how dangerous it would be for him to look like a bully. But by doubling the number of questions, they're vastly expanding the field of knowledge Palin will have to have on hand, and doubling, if not exponentially increasing, the possibility for fuckups. Massive, campaign-ending fuckups.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 28, 2008 12:57:07 GMT -8
A couple of thoughts:
Of the hillion jillion things wrong with "OMD/BND", the issue of who knew what when is actually near the bottom of the pile. Hell, this is far from the first mass mindwipe ever done of a hero's ID -- Tony Stark and Wally West come immediately to mind. Of course, none has ever been dissected as thoroughly as this one, nor were they as ill-conceived. But honestly, the question of "How does DD remember exactly how the Sin-Eater played out?" can be pretty easily explained by the basic comic book trope of "when shit like this happens, people's minds sort of process around it into something that vaguely makes sense."
There are, however, two points that DO require explanation: The Civil War reveal, and the characters whose entire raison d'etre revolves around knowing who Peter really is. With CW, it's inconceivable that the Reeds and Tonys of the world wouldn't be at least vaguely concerned that a major thing happened that they just can't quite remember. And there are some characters out there (Masque comes to mind) who are paranoid enough about this that they back up their own memories regularly. (Seriously, Dr. Doom and T'Challa both totally know.) Admittedly, you could get past all of them with "It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense," but you're asking Tony Stark to chameleon-arch away a memory of one of the most important events of his adult life, one that indirectly led to Cap getting killed. It's one thing if nobody remembers the unmasking, but they've specifically said that everyone DOES remember the unmasking but has vaguely sort of forgotten how it happened.
The other bit are the characters who HAVE to know. Kaine comes immediately to mind (and hey, isn't it weird that Wacker brings him up yet AGAIN?), as does Venom. I suppose they've gotten around Venom by having the symbiote and Brock both remember hating Spider-Man but not Parker. And as for Kaine -- well, if they ever bring him back at all, it's inconceivable that this whole mess WON'T specifically address if he knows or not.
As for this: "Peter also comes off like an asshole"
I don't think that's been in question at all since this whole thing started.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 28, 2008 12:44:58 GMT -8
I'm not so sure about the Leo=Lex thing. If there was a hint somewhere that Lex had a time machine, that would be different, but without that throwaway hint, you have to make too many assumptions. Yeah, but it's not like you have to write an entirely new script or wildly jump out of character to reach the conclusion of "LEX LUTHOR is capable of building a time machine." Hell, there's enough time travelers actually wandering around the series that I wouldn't be surprised if a very close examination indicated a point at which Lex could have swiped a time machine or get a good view as to how one works. (And prison wouldn't stop him; #6 indicated that he would wander in and out of jail any time he chose.) Come to think of it, doesn't Supes have a time machine in the Morrison version of the Fortress -- which Lex successfully infiltrated in order to steal the single most dangerous chemical Superman has ever designed? And then COPY IT HIMSELF?
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 27, 2008 16:01:49 GMT -8
Paul Newman was one of those guys who gave me great hope in the possibilities for older actors. Some guys turned batshit insane (Brando) and others just embarrassed themselves, but Newman was always the epitome of dignity. (It used to be that I figured it was a good thing that James Dean died young, because I fear he would have turned into another Brando, but then again, if he'd been another Newman, he would have turned out fine.)
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 27, 2008 10:58:26 GMT -8
"If Lex was Leo, Morrison would have overtly said it."
Are you sure we're talking about the same Morrison here? This guy REVELS in secondary sub-rosa plotting that never gets overtly explained. There are people to this day who still don't fully understand what the hell was going on with Sublime in New X-Men, and even Marvel editorial didn't grasp how Xorn had healing powers if he was Magneto all along. (All of Xorn's "healing" tricks were magnetism based -- killing the sentinel virus, gluing Xavier's spine back together with the nanosentinels -- but this is never directly stated in the comic.)
And that's Morrison Mainstream. The Invisibles requires a doctorate in metaphysical storytelling to properly untangle all its plotlines, and even then most of them have two or three different answers. Morrison loves doing things without overtly saying them.
Plus, there's a solid in-story reason for never saying it overtly -- it isn't NECESSARILY the case, while it is simultaneously ABSOLUTELY the case. Morrison DOES very overtly use as a plot point how quantum physics allows one person to exist in two states at once, and Leo's name itself evokes quantum theory. He's Lex, and he's Anti-Lex, and he's both at the same time. Schroedinger's Cat. Overtly explaining it would be like opening the cat box -- as long as the final answer hasn't been openly stated, both possibilities are equally true.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 27, 2008 10:27:47 GMT -8
You know, I thought Obama did pretty well and McCain seemed tired and grumpy, but I'm a crazy left-winger who apparently doesn't understand the world. In the end I figured it was a close thing, so I'm very happily surprised at the way Obama seems to have completely pwned McCain in every poll that matters.
I think McCain is really, really, really fixated on earmarks and "meeting without preconditions," because he harped on those two things for fucking AGES. I think he seriously doesn't understand that most American people could barely tell you what an earmark is and almost certainly aren't letting that issue decide their vote. (And if you explained earmarks in terms that related directly to them -- "Remember that new senior center your senator was able to sponsor last year? Earmark" -- they'd want to hang the guy that was trying to shut them down.)
"Meeting without preconditions" has a little more weight, but I think the average American understands that in most cases, it is better to be talking than shooting, and reasonably well-informed Americans know just how well it turned out when we refused to talk to North Korea. I don't honestly understand McCain's repeated line, "You legitimize these people." Legitimize? They're THERE! They EXIST! Achmadenijad IS the president of Iran and he DOES control a very powerful force in this world; should we fucking IGNORE HIM?
McCain gave Obama a golden opportunity when he said, "What are you going to tell him when he says he wants to wipe Israel off the map -- Oh no you won't?" The proper response would have been, "When he says that, we tell him he's going to have to go through us first." Or something to that effect to drive home the point that meeting with foreign leaders does NOT mean wimping out on them.
Honestly, McCain made some MAJOR fucking gaffes last night that I'm amazed aren't making the rounds. Calling Pakistan -- a country whose current leader seized power in a MILITARY COUP -- a failed state is one of them. Another was the idea of the spending freeze, which I'm convinced he made up on the spot and had all his aides clutching their chests as soon as he said it. Yet a third was the fact that he committed to voting in favor of the $700 billion bailout -- the one he's been ambivalent about all week and tried to swoop in like Superman to draft a new one at the last minute -- but when Lehrer asked specifically about whether he supported the bailout plan on the table, McCain tossed off a "Yeah, sure" and then changed the subject at lightspeed, as if he realized what he'd done.
Nonetheless, Obama has seized on THE major point to run with, which is the fact that McCain never once uttered the words "middle class" the entire evening. McCain's body language -- cranky, condescending, and never once even LOOKING at Obama -- is becoming the second big story. It's as if he didn't know the camera would be trained on him even when he wasn't talking.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 27, 2008 5:24:58 GMT -8
I think it's safe to say that All Star Superman, despite the most unfortunate acronym in comics, has also emerged as one of the best Superman stories in decades, if not one of the best all-out superhero stories in the post-1980s era, period. Morrison stories always take on a new flair on second and third reading, and a full macro view of the series makes one question in more depth what was originally just a Willy Wonka scientist: Who is Leo Quintum, anyway? neilshyminsky.blogspot.com/2008/09/leo-quintum-is-lex-luthor.htmThe logic is, to be perfectly honest, damn near airtight, right down to the Miltonian "In Quintum Novembris" poem, and Superman's monkey from an earlier issue.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 25, 2008 15:34:04 GMT -8
I have to disagree here, because one of the things I think people forget about "The West Wing" is how the staff is depicted as just barely holding together the most fragile of coalitions, and fuck up on staggeringly huge occasions. Look back over the Sorkin years (hell, the whole thing) and you realize that these guys get their asses kicked and completely blow it as often as they pull it together.
Seriously, think back and try to count all the actual legislative achievements these guys managed to pull off. The biggest thing they pulled off all through the first season was confirming Mendoza.
Admittedly, Bartlet said all the right THINGS we wanted to hear from a president, but this is also a guy who was so scared of actually being a liberal that he came damn near to chickenshitting out of important things when the chips were down. He would have fired the surgeon general for all the wrong reasons if his own daughter hadn't guilted the hell out of him for it. And of course, the entire MS thing was one long nonstop parade of fuckups that was a Wrong Thing the minute it started and didn't get any better the more of their friends they sucked into the vortex.
Hell, even the thing they spent most of the fourth season premiere setting up -- Toby's idea to make college tuition tax deductible -- got thrown out the window when it looked like they were going to lose.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 24, 2008 19:23:13 GMT -8
After "Avengers: The Initiative" #17:
Odds that Mutant Zero is anyone other than Jean Grey or Typhoid Mary: 5 percent and dropping.
I really like my theory that it's Kitty Pryde -- and I honestly think she makes a hell of a lot more sense than almost anyone else, right down to the timing of her arrival -- but the events of this issue seem to eliminate almost all characters in the Marvel U. Mutant Zero is a redhead (not necesssarily a deal-breaker in any case, though -- hair dye is an amazing thing), but more importantly, her greatest fear is herself, and more specifically, the dark side of herself, a side that has a name. We never quite get the name, as M-Zero clocks the person checking her out. But I can't foresee any sentence like that, in the circumstances we're seeing, that ends with anythin gbut "the dark side named Phoenix" or "the dark side named Mary."
Typhoid Mary is a long, long shot anyway. If you take seriously Dan Slott's assertion that Mutant Zero is someone who's been cover-worthy many times, and it's someone so familiar that even non-comics-readers would recognize her, it can't be anyone but Jean Grey. (Hell, that "non-comics-readers" line really limits it to the X-Women featured in the movies.)
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 24, 2008 18:52:36 GMT -8
By the way, I find it highly interesting that as of Hulk #6, we have exactly half of the founding Avengers together again as a team (if you want to count Rick Jones, which any sane person does.)
Iron Man, Hank and Janet sort of count (though most of that time, Hank was definitely a Skrull and Janet probably was as well.) I just find it noteworthy that Hulk, Thor and Rick have all but formed an ad hoc team.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 24, 2008 18:33:25 GMT -8
Hey, gang: Now that the old boards appear to be gone for good, can someone refresh my memory as to what the running guesses as to the identity of Red Hulk were?
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 23, 2008 18:03:00 GMT -8
He probably would have said it wasn't a war but a police action or something; Israel going after Hizbollah rather than Lebanon. I thought of several instances of wars between democracies in about ten seconds, but a decent debater could handwave them all away with some hokey-pokey along those lines. Particularly if you want to limit it to DECLARED wars.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 22, 2008 13:57:38 GMT -8
Gee, it's not like the editor, editor-in-chief, senior writer of the retcon itself, and every single writer now handling Spider-Man have given ENTIRELY INCONSISTENT STORIES on the topic! Why on EARTH would any of us be confused?
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